NY Take Action: Second nursing home hearing today. Will Cuomo finally tell us how many died?
From John Gilmore & Autism Action Network
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August 10, 2020 — The New York Assembly and Senate held a hearing last Monday on the covid 19 diaster in nursing homes. Another hearing on covid 19 is scheduled for today, Monday, August 10 at 10 am. The primary witness last week was Health Commissioner Howard Zucker. He used every trick in the book to avoid answering questions. He rambled on about irrelevant data. He preceded “answers” with detailed, but pointless, preambles. He answered questions that were not asked. He used every bureaucratic trick in the book to avoid saying anything of substance. And when directly questioned on the most important question of the day: How many people got ill with covid 19 in nursing homes but died in hospitals? He just simply refused to answer, saying he wanted to be sure he gave them a precise answer and would not even attempt an approximation.
Nursing industry insiders have said they believe the death count in the hospitals is at least eual to the deaths in the nursing homes and probably greater, which puts the nursing home resident death count somewhere around 13,000 to 16,000. Zucker’s overt contempt for the legislature, and the people who elected them, was evident when he excuse himself early because he claimed he had some more important engagement!
Deaths skyrocketed after Cuomo ordered on March 25 nursing homes to accept people with active cases of covid 19. Cuomo disregarded federal guidelines that said covid 19 patients should only be allowed in nursing homes IF they could be physically separated from other residents, IF there could be separate staffs, and IF the nursing home had adequate personal protective equipment. None of these guidelines were followed, and Cuomo prohibited the nursing homes from even testing residents to see if they have covid 19. In the aftermath, Cuomo blamed the deaths first on Howard Zucker, then nursing home employees, nursing home operators, nursing home visitors, the CDC, Trump, Republicans, and the media.
Nursing home issues are not usually with the scope of the Autism Action Network, but Cuomo used the same policy at groups homes and residential settings for people with disabilites. And if Cuomo set out to deliberatly injure the autism and vaccine-injured community during the last four years what would he have done differently?
Before you take action on these issues if you value the information and advocacy provided to you by the autism action network please make us possible for us to do so by supporting our one fundraising event of the year we do in conjunction with the Autism Community Walk, here: https://grouprev.com/autismcommunitywalk2020-AutismActionNetwork which is TENTATIVELY scheduled for Sunday, October 18 in Belmont Lake State Park in Babylon, NY. Cuomo willing.
Please click here Take Action to send a message to the decisionmakers asking what is the point to have hearings on covid 19 and nursing homes if the Governor continues to keep the number of deaths secret?
(If “Take Action” hyperlink doesn’t work, click on this link: https://cqrcengage.com/achamp/app/write-a-letter?6&engagementId=508922&ep=AAAAC2Flc0NpcGhlcjAxYnk7SKwemlDA_Z1jjRTso7yk4qjSvNINhc3P_H25i4quNlmwZx8oFxolfo9GAVr0147mY9xMbdK4AvD5bq9-jWQ_vNyxOptik6Iaz0ByU8M&lp=0)
Please get on the phone to the decisionmakers and ask them what is the point of another hearing on covid 19 and the nursing homes if we don’t know how may nursing home residents died in hospitals?
Start with your own State Senator and Assemblymember:
Find YOUR Assemblymember here – https://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/search/
Find YOUR Senator here – https://www.nysenate.gov/registration/nojs/form/start/find-my-senator
Then call all of the following influential Albany Lawmakers:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, (518) 474-8390
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, (518) 455-2584, (914) 423-4031
Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie, (518) 455-3791, (718) 654-6539
Senate Health Committee Chair Gustavo Rivera, (518) 455-3395, (718) 933-2825
Senate Aging Committee Chair Rachel May, (518) 455-2838, (315) 478-8745
Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee Chair James Skoufis, (518) 455- 3290, (845) 567-1270
Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried, (212) 807-7900, (518) 474-4941
Assembly Aging Committee Chair Harry Bronson, 518-455-4527, 585-244-5255
Assembly Investigations Oversight, Analysis and Investigations Committee, Chair John McDonald, (518) 455-4474.
The facts are clear. Governor Andrew Cuomo decided that he would place people with active cases of covid 19 into nursing homes even though, in his own words, he knew the disease would spread like, “fire through dry grass.” He prohibited nursing homes from testing residents to determine if they have covid 19 which made it impossible to following federal guidelines, that required keeping covid 19 patients physically separate, using separate staffs and using adequate personal protective equipment. Once the death count exploded, he gave the nursing homes retroactive liability protect form any lawsuits. Now he refuses to tell us how many of our family members died.
Governor Cuomo is a disaster for any family affected by the issues the Autism Action Network works to change.
He has cut developmental disability funding by more than half since he came into office.
Early intervention is falling apart in many parts of the state due to inadequate resources.
Special education resources are getting thinner and thinner due to exploding numbers of students with autism 9-13% growth from more than 20 years
There are ten-year waiting lists for group homes
Group home residents have no functioning legal protection from abuse or other criminal acts since Cuomo’s own invention, the “Justice Center” was declared unconstitutional 3 years ago.
He eliminated the religious exemption from vaccine mandates to attend school
Obtaining a medical exemption from a vaccine mandates is nearly impossible now without a lawsuit
And he had volunteered you and your children to be lab rats with whatever the covid 19 industry decides is in their best interest to impose on us. “Anything we can do to work with the federal government to get the vaccine done faster, we are all in,” Cuomo said on April 16. “We want to use New York as a laboratory. We are ready, willing and able.”
See the hearing hre: https://www.nysenate.gov/events or https://nyassembly.gov/av/live
Please share this message with friends and family and please share to social networks while we still can.
Fed Up Democrat 
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