It's bad enough that Governor Andrew Cuomo instituted the dangerous policy that forced nursing homes and long-term care facilities to accept COVID-positive patients against their will.
It's bad enough that this policy appears to have led to the rampant spread of the coronavirus in New York nursing homes and, tragically, thousands of deaths in those facilities.
It's bad enough that it took Cuomo weeks of denial, deflection, and histrionics before he finally re-evaluated this policy and only partially rescinded it.
It's bad enough that Cuomo's office quietly "disappeared" the policy from the New York State website so as to pretend as though the deadly miscue never really happened in the first place.
It's bad enough that Cuomo's feckless brother chose to yuk it up with the governor in primetime interviews on CNN rather than press him on the palpable failures his administration engineered in the Empire State.
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All of that is bad.
What's even worse and, frankly, unforgivable, is that the state of Michigan continues the same type of policy and refuses to release any statistics showing the number of COVID deaths that are associated with nursing homes and the policy.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has not had a very good time of it in the Great Lake State.
She has issued over 100 COVID-related executive orders, absolutely dwarfing neighboring states like Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
If it seems like @GovWhitmer has signed an extraordinary number of confusing and oftentimes conflicting orders during this crisis, it's because she has. pic.twitter.com/4vfRG2DQmC
— Sen. Mike Shirkey (@SenMikeShirkey) May 26, 2020
To add insult to injury, those executive orders were so arbitrary and draconian they inspired some of the largest and ferocious protests relatively early on in the stay-at-home spring. Whitmer then called the protests "racists" and refused to meet her citizens even part of the way, not even allowing them to plant seeds.
Lately, Whitmer has been embroiled in an embarrassing narrative involving her husband trying to "big time" a local boating company with a classic "don't you know who I think I am" move in an attempt to pressure the small business to violate his wife's orders and put the governor's boat in a lake even though regular plebe Michiganders weren't allowed to do the same.
Whitmer wrote this blatant hypocrisy off as "a failed attempt at humor" and that was the end of it because reporters seem to lose any sense of curiosity when a tyrannical, ineffective, corrupt governor has a (D) after her name, has a matched set of "X" chromosomes and is on Joe Biden's shortlist for Veep.
But none of these failures of leadership measure up to Michigan's deadly policy pertaining to nursing homes. Read Guy Benson's great article today featuring the research of Avik Roy, who has been focused like a laser beam on the nursing home tragedy.
The mind-boggling take-away from the stats is this: 0.6% of Americans live in nursing homes, but 42% of COVID-related deaths come from these facilities.
Let. That. Sink. In.
Guy's article goes even further into the statistics, and he has appropriate praise for Roy's great work.
Great minds think alike, I suppose because I interviewed Mr. Roy about this very topic yesterday, and I realized that his research breaks down these nursing home deaths by state, but Michigan is not showing any numbers.
New @FREOPP: Updated report on #COVID19 nursing home fatalities with the latest data as of Friday. https://t.co/ylZ5EqAzWY Nursing homes & assisted living facilities now represent 42% of all deaths from the coronavirus—up from 40% earlier this month—and 52% outside of NY state. pic.twitter.com/78N6vD5Afp
— Avik Roy (@Avik) May 26, 2020
Why is this?
"At least Andrew Cuomo, for all the doubling down on his policy finally - under enormous amounts of pressure and opposition - he finally partially rescinded the policy in mid-may," Roy told me. "But in New Jersey, in Michigan, they are still forcing nursing homes to accept these patients."
"Michigan isn't even disclosing the stats on what percentage of deaths are coming from nursing homes," he added.
Whitmer's failures are starting to leave a mark, even with members of her own party.
Democratic State Representative Leslie Love of Detroit called her out yesterday.
"Why the state of Michigan has chosen this path is beyond me," Love said. "It seems like the most idiotic thing we could come up with."
"It's reckless disregard for human life," State Sen. Pete Lucido said. "It's negligent to allow it to continue, but it's intentional now at this point."
Lucido is a Republican and member of the Senate oversight committee. No doubt, there will be legislation and hearings scrutinizing all of the governor's actions going into the fall.
Whitmer said last week she'd had discussions with Biden's team about potentially joining the ticket. I'm no fortune-teller, but I am from Michigan originally. Let's make a little prediction: If Whitmer's on the ticket, Biden loses the Wolverine State.
Which leads to another prediction: Whitmer will not be on the ticket.
