RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/coronavirus-pandemic-us-death-toll-passes-100000/

More than 100,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the U.S. as of Wednesday, with almost 1,700,000 infections confirmed throughout the country.

As of May 22, 43 percent of coronavirus victims were residents of nursing homes or assisted-living facilities, according to an analysis conducted for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. In the state of New Jersey alone, one-tenth of all long-term care residents in nursing homes have died during the pandemic.

The state of New York, which has seen over 5,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes, along with New Jersey and Michigan, have compelled nursing homes to readmit coronavirus patients discharged from the hospital. That policy stood in contrast to Florida, where state health officials worked to keep coronavirus patients out of nursing homes. At least 650 Florida nursing home residents have died of coronavirus.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-claims-obligation-is-on-the-nursing-homes-to-reject-covid-patients-despite-his-march-order-prohibiting-testing/?utm_

New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said that nursing homes are obligated to transfer coronavirus patients if they cannot provide “adequate care.”

“The obligation is on the nursing home to say, I can’t take a COVID-positive person,” Cuomo said at a press conference. “The regulation is common sense: if you can’t provide adequate care, you can’t have the patient in your facility and that’s your basic fiduciary obligation — I would say, ethical obligation — and it’s also your legal obligation.”

Cuomo’s March 25 executive order forbid nursing homes from rejecting Covid-positive patients or even testing prospective patients for Covid after they were released from the hospital.

“No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. [Nursing homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission,” the order states.

New York health commissioner Howard Zucker said at the Wednesday press briefing that he was not aware if the state’s Health Department had received any requests from nursing homes to transfer coronavirus patients to other facilities.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/499586-new-fbi-document-confirms-the-trump-campaign-was-investigated-without

Late last week the FBI document that started the Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was publicly released. It hasn’t received a lot of attention but it should, because not too long from now this document likely will be blown up and placed on an easel as Exhibit A in a federal courtroom.

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, will rightly point out that the document that spawned three years of political misery fails to articulate a single justifiable reason for starting the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.  

Those of us who have speculated there was insufficient cause for beginning the investigation could not have imagined the actual opening document was this feeble. It is as if it were written by someone who had no experience as an FBI agent.

Keep in mind the FBI cannot begin to investigate anyone, especially a U.S. citizen or entity, without first creating a document that lists the reasonably suspicious factors that would legally justify the investigation. That’s FBI 101, taught Day 1 at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va.

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below (if you would like to follow along, the document is here):

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/advice-to-keep-d-c-schools-closed-until-theres-a-vaccine-proves-weve-been-gaslit/

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is advising D.C.’s mayor not to fully reopen schools until there’s a vaccine for COVID-19.

“The idea is at least in Stage 1 to have distance learning…but then over the next 2 stages….we would slowly begin to bring students in,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday. Eventually, schools would “basically reopen but in a very measured and deliberate way.”

D.C faces unique challenges, Chertoff explains, given that people from all over the world visit for work and can be vectors for transmission. He didn’t explain how outbreak mitigation efforts are served in any significant way by keeping schools closed to children, who are not only local but at extremely low risk for becoming seriously ill from the disease and are, contact tracing studies show, less likely to spread it.

But we can no longer expect scientific explanations for such absurd recommendations, much less why pandemic mission creep has gone unchecked over the past two months. I’m sure the Homeland Security secretary under George Bush would know nothing about that.