FoxNews.com reports that

With New York City’s lockdown executive order set to expire on May 15, Gov. Andrew Cuomo celebrated a steep decline in hospitalizations and deaths due to the coronavirus during Sunday’s daily briefing with reporters — even as he sought to address the state’s sky-high nursing home death count, which came after a state directive mandating that nursing homes take on positive COVID-19 patients.

Cuomo said new hospitalizations were roughly where they were on March 20, when the “New York State on Pause” executive order locked down the state. And, the number of deaths in the state — just 203 on Saturday — was similar to where it was in late March, as well.

The numbers “take us right back to where we started this hellish journey,” Cuomo said. “March 20 is when we did the close down order, and where we are today with the number of new cases is basically right where we were when we started.”

“It’s all thanks to what New Yorkers did,” he added.

This weekend, Cuomo extended New York’s coronavirus emergency declaration through June 6, but the “pause” order is still set to expire within days. Locales in New York can begin slowly reopening on May 15, depending on a variety of factors — including the rolling average of new coronavirus cases, the daily rate of decline of hospitalizations and testing per capita.

Workers wheeling out a patient from the Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., this past April. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
Cuomo said he would have more to say about the pause order on Monday.

He further announced on Sunday that all nursing home staff must now be tested for COVID-19 twice a week, saying, “this rule is not optional — it’s mandatory.”

Cuomo also issued a new directive stating that hospitals cannot send patients back to nursing homes in the state unless they tested negative for the virus. The move appeared to largely invalidate his March 25 state directive that required nursing homes to take on new patients infected with COVID-19.

The previous directive stated that “[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 policy, similar to one in neighboring New Jersey, was intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged.

Now, “we’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” Cuomo said Sunday. He said such patients would be accommodated elsewhere, such as sites originally set up as temporary hospitals.

The new policy still allows nursing homes to take some people with COVID-19, such as those who are at home and need care. But hospitals are responsible for finding alternatives for the patients they discharge, and nursing facilities shouldn’t take on coronavirus patients if unable to care for them, Cuomo said.

Stephen Hanse, the president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living, told Fox News in a statement that “we are grateful that hospitals can no longer discharge new patients into nursing homes that have tested positive or were suspected to have COVID-19.”

“From the onset of this pandemic, nursing homes and assisted living providers have been on the front lines of the battle,” Hanse said. “The only way we will defeat this virus is working together with the State to ensure all nursing homes and assisted living providers are afforded the necessary resources to accomplish this goal.”

Hanse added: “The State’s action today acknowledges the concerns providers voiced over the March 25th Department of Health advisory and we must continue to work together to implement solutions to assist long-term care providers. We are all in this together, and together, all of our actions must be directed at safeguarding our most vulnerable and lead us to overcome our present circumstances and create a stronger and safer future.”

Previously, Cuomo has seemed dismissive and resigned to defeat when asked about his state leading the nation in nursing-home deaths.

Of the nation’s more than 26,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, a fifth of them — about 5,300 — are in New York, according to a count by The Associated Press, and the toll has been increasing by an average of 20 to 25 deaths a day for the past few weeks.

…One key criticism is that New York took weeks after the first known care home outbreaks to begin publicly reporting the number of deaths in individual homes — and still doesn’t report the number of cases. By the time New York began disclosing the deaths in the middle of last month, the state had several major outbreaks with at least 40 deaths each, most of which were a surprise to the surrounding communities and even some family members.

“They should have announced to the public: ‘We have a problem in nursing homes. We’re going to help them, but you need to know where it is,'” said former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, a Republican now heading the nonprofit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. “Instead, they took the opposite tack: They hid it.”

My mother passed on Christmas Eve Morning in 19971, having spent the last year of her life in a nursing home, bedridden from complications of Diabetes.

What Governor Cuomo did by bringing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes in New York State was so horrible and unfeeling, it reminds me of a quote by the title character in Charles Dickens’ Classic book “Scrooge” after a conversation with two gentlemen from the charitable society seeking a contribution to help the poor at Christmas.

Ebeneezer Scrooge’s response was

“If they would rather die, they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population”

Callousness is definitely a character trait of New York’s Democratic Governor.

In January of 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill legalizing abortion for basically any reason up to birth.

Cuomo and New York City’s Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio make quite a pair.

The following observation appeared in an article posted on WashingtonExaminer.com back in March…

Why is it that New Yorkers aren’t heeding public health recommendations for socially distancing to protect the most vulnerable members of the community, as advised by every major public health leader and organization? It has something to do with who’s steering the ship. Appallingly, the day after strict restrictions were applied to New York City businesses and schools, the mayor refused to change his behavior and made his way to the YMCA gym.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on coronavirus measures in NYC: “We cannot shut down because of undue fear.”https://t.co/nQTr56zMtP

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 10, 2020
Mayor de Blasio is indeed here at the Park Slope YMCA this morning. Passers by have commented negatively. One called him an idot. pic.twitter.com/FIgEmlf4Gf

— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) March 16, 2020

Liberals on Social Media Platforms like Facebook are holding up New York State and City as the example which every state and city in America should pattern their response to the Chinese Coronavirus from.

These people are off their meds.

New York City has nothing in common with Amarillo, Texas, Bainbridge, Georgia, Horn Lake, Mississippi or ANY town or city in America’s Heartland.

To be blunt, we don’t ride around underground on subway trains packed like a can of sardines on its way to a grocery shelf.

And, we sure as h@ll would not have elected a cop-hating Communist who gives his wife unbelievably high-paying jobs on the taxpayer’s dime.

At this point, all New York City is, is an example of what a failure “Democratic Socialism” would be, if America elected a Democrat as President this November.

We down here in “Flyover Country” appreciate all of the “concern” from “the smartest people in the room”.

But, as President Ronald Reagan said so eloquently,

“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.”

So, y’all can keep your “advice” to yourselves.

Until He Comes,

KJ