“It is the responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” — Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Sowell, PhD
“A society that removes decision-making from individuals and places it in the hands of central planners invites disorder and endangerment. It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” Thomas Sowell, Hoover institute economist. [1]
The pandemic demonstrated the lethal consequences that follow when the dictates of public officials – i.e., central planners – are followed blindly without an opportunity for debate. The pandemic provided public officials with n opportunity to abuse their authority, and to impose draconian restrictions on our freedom and our human interactions. The restrictions constrained commercial, educational, religious, cultural, and social activities – even family gatherings. They did so in violation of our constitutional rights and human rights as free human beings.
Public officials justified the imposition of restrictions on our lives, and suspension of citizens’ civil, legal, and fundamental human rights by claiming that the policies they adopted relied on “science” and the advice of “experts”. The truth is, those policies and restrictions were aimed at gaining control over our lives. They were not justified by SCIENTIFIC evidence.
The unprecedented shutdowns and restrictions on our freedom to make our own life decisions have had catastrophic consequences. The restrictions robbed millions of people of their livelihood and their financial independence. Medical dictates undermined the fundamental right of adults to make informed medical choices for themselves and their family, undermining their sense of self-worth. Medical dictates disregard individual human differences, frailties, and vulnerabilities. Government dictates overrode the professional judgment of treating physicians.
Blanket medical dictates violate the Hippocratic Oath, the foundational ethical principle of medicine: “First, do no harm”. History has painfully demonstrated that the deviation from the Hippocratic Oath, leads to the perversion of medicine from a healing profession to a murderous state operation.
The dire economic, societal, and human consequences of those draconian dictates are painfully visible. The agony of human suffering in isolation; the unprecedented government usurpation of our right to make personal choices; the deprivation that children suffer, being denied an education, and the emotional devastation caused by the COVID-19 lockdown is revealed by the recurring words used by the elderly to describe their plight:
“isolated, alone, lonely, depressed, muzzled and trapped.” [1a]
“The isolation felt like living behind bars. Except that prisoners are treated better. I now weep for our human race and mankind.”
Deadly government directives essentially ordered elderly residents in long-term care facilities to be deprived of their humanity and to be euthanized.
Nursing home “Hug room”
New York State became the epicenter in the US of government-decreed Euthanasia
New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo and state Health Commissioner, Dr. Andrew Zucker, issued (the now infamous) executive order on March 25th forbidding hospitals from treating Covid-infected elderly people, who were to be sent to nursing homes.
The deadly order to nursing homes was disingenuously framed as an anti-discrimination measure: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the (nursing home) solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”
The callous disregard for the intrinsic value of human life encapsulates the essence of Eugenics. Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order essentially signed a death warrant for 15,000 elderly New Yorkers.
He issued the order in collusion with NYS Health Commissioner Dr. Zucker, who is imbued with the prevailing eugenicist mind-set within the public health establishment comprised of doctors and bioethicists who are imbued with the ideology of eugenics which assigns a societal cost-benefit value on human beings.
Well before Cuomo’s order, Media reports featured public health experts who warned of nursing home residents’ vulnerability. Nursing Home residents and staff rightly feared that Cuomo’s policy was risking their lives. Neil Nibur, an 80-year old man in a nursing home in Poughkeepsie, NY objected:
“I don’t like them playing Russian roulette with my life. It’s putting us at risk.
I am 80 years old with underlying problems. Everybody here has an underlying problem.”[2]
Similarly, disabled people recognized the threat as “Ableism” which they feared more than the virus. A person with cerebral palsy wrote a searing crie du coeur:
Karin Willison
“There is something I fear more [than the virus]. ]I am terrified of dying from COVID-19 not because my death is inevitable, but because
my life may not be viewed as worth saving.
“That would never happen…Surely people with disabilities have some kind of protection under the law against being denied life-saving treatment? Unfortunately, at this very moment, states are putting triage policies in place in case there is a shortage of ventilators and other equipment that would allow doctors to ration and deny care based factors including the patient’s age and medical history.” [2a]
Their pleas to live out their lives, were disregarded.
Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition stated: “I think it was an utter lack of regard for nursing home residents.”
The devaluation of people with disabilities and the elderly — and the depletion of nursing homes is a chilling red flag.
It is a signal that a eugenics agenda is being implemented – as it was in Nazi Germany. The first human casualties of the Holocaust were German infants and disabled young children; next to be medically murdered were the mentally ill, and then the old folks in long-term care facilities.[3] These devalued human beings were deemed to be “worthless eaters”; their beds were needed for wounded soldiers.
When a reporter asked Gov. Cuomo on April 23rd if anyone had objected to the state policy that forced nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients from hospitals, he replied:
“They don’t have the right to object.
That is the rule, and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with it.”[4]
Like all tyrants, Cuomo demanded unquestioning obedience!
The murderous nursing home policy demonstrates the moral perils of government decrees that circumvent physicians’ clinical care judgments and ethical constraints to “do no harm.”
Neither governors, nor heads of state, have the moral or legal right to deny life-saving medical treatment. Nor do they have a right to select human beings for death.
A report in STAT News (Feb 28th) reveals that Cuomo’s policy was influenced by and served the financial interest of the powerful hospital industry.
Jim Lytle, a legal expert on NYS governance, is quoted stating:
“Cuomo has expressed open distrust toward scientific experts, and instead has preferred to work with the health care industry.”
At press conferences, Andrew Cuomo brushed off questions about his nursing home directive by declaring that his policy decisions were based on “science”; in accordance with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Cuomo declared:
“There’s only one model that we look at that has the number of projected deaths which is the IHME model which is funded by the Gates Foundation, and
we thank the Gates Foundation for the national service that they’ve done.”
Andrew Cuomo’s unreserved admiration for Bill Gates confirms the inordinate influence that Bill Gates wields on public officials in highest positions. The “service” that Bill Gates is providing is exposed in a series of investigative reports in The Nation documenting how Bill Gates is distorting public health data through the controversial Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) which he bankrolls.[6]
Bill Gates, the unscrupulous Microsoft oligarch is a zealot about reducing the global human population. He has been preaching eugenics for decades, following in his parents’ footsteps.
News reports on May 26, 2009, described the “top secret” meeting of billionaires Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, David Rockefeller, Eli Broad, George Soros, Ted Turner, Oprah, Michael Bloomberg and others in New York.
The Times of London headlined: “Billionaire Club in Bid to Curb World Population,” said the issues discussed in the top-secret meeting included health care, education and–by far the most controversial–slowing the global population growth.
“Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.” Some right leaning blogs have started attacking the billionaires as forming a kind of secret sterilization society or giant ATM to fund abortions. It fed the time-honored fears of the rich using their wealth to reshape mankind in its preferred image. Some are raising the specter of eugenics.”
Gates uses his multi-billion dollar tax-exempt Foundation to influence global public policies that are crafted to enrich him personally. Gates’ “charitable” donations are investments. Gates partners with governments, Big Agra and Big Pharma /Biotech giants, as well as the World Health Organization, and both health metrics data producing institutes that issue projections. Bill Gates’ goal is to shift agriculture to genetically manipulated produce; to shift health care policies and budgets toward vaccine-intensive health care; and to reduce the human population.
Bill Gates’ population reduction agenda has penetrated public health policies around the globe. The Covid-19 “pandemic” provided the opportunity to implement population reduction. An investigation by New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, confirmed the worst. The Jan 28thAG report concluded that the official number — 8,505 — of long-term care residents who died of the virus understated the actual number of deaths by 50%.
Cuomo and his administration concealed the true number of human beings that he callously condemned to death.[7] The actual NYS nursing home death toll is more than 15,000.[8] And he lied about the dire shortage of hospital beds.[9] [Read Covid Public Health….Pt. I]
Letitia James NYS AG
“As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily suffered at such an alarming rate. While we cannot bring back the individuals we lost to this crisis, this report seeks to offer transparency that the public deserves and to spur increased action to protect our most vulnerable residents.”
Cuomo’s response to the scathing Attorney General report, and to those who criticized his actions, was to lash out at his critics in a torrent of abuse. He accused his detractors of creating “a toxic political environment… There [are] political positions and there are facts. There’s been much distortion, confusion and cynicism…We were too focused on doing the job… ”
Lorraine Sullivan & daughter Oct 2019; Lorraine was one of 70 people who died at Our Lady of Consolation nursing home in NY.
Lorry & Lorraine Sullivan
“less than two weeks after Governor Cuomo issued the lockdown of nursing homes, his administration, scrambling to free up beds in hospitals, ordered that nursing homes must accept Covid-positive patients from the hospitals. This was despite objections from some of the nursing homes themselves, which felt unprepared to handle these patients.”
“Her biggest fear was dying by herself. That’s how she spent her last days. There’s nothing but guilt. Because I’m like, I’m going to take her out of there. They told me she would be safe there. And she died by herself, which was her biggest fear.”
Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist, whose parents-in-law died after being infected with the virus in a New York nursing home, wrote an essay for foxnews.com, stating:
“We lost them both to COVID last spring as the virus ravaged their long-term care facilities. Their death warrant was signed as an executive order by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who put infected patients into the places where our most vulnerable resided.”
The administration falsely attributed the deaths to hospitals to hide the magnitude of the number of deaths at nursing home facilities.
Cuomo referred to his cover-up of the death toll as – “a void was created” – for which he took responsibility. But he accused his critics of filling the void with “conspiracy theories, and disinformation. Politics and rumors filled the void.” [11]
Conspiracy theories” is the meme used to cover-up government deception, unlawful covert policies, secret corporate-government agreements, and criminal activities. By accusing critics of spreading “conspiracy theories” those who have much to hide attempt to discredit and silence truth sayers.
Dr. Andrew Zucker & Cuomo
NYS Health commissioner, Dr. Andrew Zucker, who crafted the state’s murderous policy, defended the policy: “it was the correct decision from a public health point of view…to protect the hospital system as a whole.”[12] Adding insult to injury, Dr. Zucker absolved himself and the governor, and blamed the nursing home outbreaks and deaths on “asymptomatic staff members.” Those staff members are mostly Black and Hispanic.
Another eugenics red flag is the fact that Blacks, Hispanics at 40% Higher Risk of COVID Death in U.S. Nursing Homes.[13] An analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Feb 10th, confirms that COVID-19 death rates were more than three times higher at U.S. nursing homes with the highest proportions of Black and Hispanic residents, compared to those with mostly white residents.
Cuomo is not the only public official who issued orders that killed thousands of elderly people. The governors of California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan also issued Executive Orders mandating nursing homes to accept Covid-19 infected patients from hospitals. These states had the highest death rates.
Each of the Governors of these states provided the corporations owning the nursing homes and hospitals full indemnification against any injuries or wrongful death lawsuits. Coroners were instructed to remove the bodies in under 60 minutes. Death certificates were completed by personnel who never treated the patient, or autopsied them. The bodies were buried ASAP, often in “Potter’s Field” mass graves so the likelihood of being able to exhume their bodies for any kind of forensic examination was completely lost.
According to ProPublica, the governor of California quickly rescinded the order. And Business Insider reported in May, that Gov. Cuomo’s controversial order was removed from the NYS Department of Health website.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who had issued an executive order similar to Governor Cuomo. According to state data, Michigan Covid-19 death toll in the state’s long term care facilities was 5,712. Gov. Whitmer has kept the records concealed. On May 13th the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee voted to subpoena nursing home records.[14]
Bill Gates’ population reduction agenda has penetrated public health policies around the globe. Deadly Triage protocols were implemented in the wealthiest, industrialized countries.
Who delegated the right to determine whose lives are worth saving and whose lives can be summarily sacrificed by government decree?
The right to life is not within the purview of government. Since there was no public referendum for anyone to make such life and death decisions, under what legal authority were those death warrants issued?
“We suggest triage protocols (clinical decision support systems), rather than clinical judgment alone, be used in triage whenever possible…We suggest consideration be given to excluding patient groups that have a life expectancy < 1 year.”[15]
The CHEST task force has never been authorized to make decision; they are merely an advisory panel.
The shocking evidence is that at the start of the Covid pandemic, murderous directives were issued in industrialized, economically wealthy countries, whose citizens enjoy the highest standard of living.
The extraordinary high mortality rate among elderly people in nursing homes across North America, Europe, and the other economically advanced nations has led some of us to suspect that these deaths were a deliberate outcome of public health policies that follow utilitarian ethics which sacrifice the individual for the so-called “greater good.”[16]
Public health officials and heads of state signed decrees that denied basic life-saving medical treatment for elderly people in nursing homes – essentially condemning them to death — just as doctors during the Nazi regime, had signed off on medical murder directives.
In Canada, 72% of Covid-19 deaths are the elderly in nursing homes.
A Canadian military report (May, 2021) reveals that patients died from neglect, not COVID-19, in Ontario LTC homes, military report finds: “All they needed was water and a wipe down.”[17]
In Spain, 59% of Covid deaths are in nursing homes; in Belgium 57%; in the Netherlands 49%; in Sweden 47%; and in Australia, of the 908 Covid-19 deaths, 75% were nursing home residents.[18]
Half of all European COVID-19-related deaths have occurred among residents in nursing homes: A report by the London School of Economics found that in Italy, France, Ireland, Spain and Belgium between 42 percent and 57 percent of deaths from the virus have taken place in nursing homes.[19] In Italy, people call it the “silent massacre.”
In the UK, more than 20,000 residents of care homes died from Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic. The decision to discharge thousands of hospital patients into care homes was ostensibly made to free up hospital beds and protect the National Health Service. Some members of Parliament accused the Government of throwing care homes ‘to the wolves’.[20]
BBC reported that the Care Quality Commission received a huge jump in complaints about doctors who made “do not resuscitate” decisions on a blanket basis. One witness told CQC that an “on-call doctor had informed care home staff that a DNAR would automatically be put in place” should any resident get infected.
Dr. Jon Tallinger, a Swedish physician and human rights activist refused to obey immoral government dictates that required violating the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm.” He refused to withhold life-saving oxygen from elderly patients. Dr. Tallinger also recognizes the importance and the reliability of testimonies by eye-witnesses:
“It’s only when you hear the stories of the victims that the scale of this scandal is really apparent…[The government is] essentially, asking me to get rid of anyone who is sick. Is it ethical to instruct doctors to first prescribe morphine, rather oxygen? Is it ethical to deny elderly patients oxygen in most situations? How would you feel on finding out that your parent in a care home will not be given critical care, or curative care, or oxygen therapy, because they are deemed irrelevant?[21]
The Wall Street Journal reported that families blame the government for the high death toll in nursing homes.[22]“Many people have died unnecessarily,” said Dr. Yngve Gustafson, a geriatric-medicine specialist, adding that doctors were too quick to put patients on palliative care. Dr. Gustafson looked into more than 200 cases in which people were denied care. He said he believed many would have survived and lived years longer had they been provided basic care. Sweden issued triage recommendations that ostensibly were intended to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But critics point out that:
“these guidelines have too often resulted in older patients being denied treatment, even when hospitals were operating below capacity… The ICU wards were comparatively empty,” said Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a physician at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.
That is “because elderly people were not taken to hospitals—they are given sedatives but not oxygen or basic care. About 90% of nursing-home residents who succumbed to Covid-19 in Sweden were never admitted to a hospital”
Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse who worked for a company providing medical services to several nursing homes north of Stockholm, said she sought treatment for residents with Covid-19 and was told by company physicians to administer morphine and a sedative. “People suffocated, it was horrible to watch. One patient asked me what I was giving him when I gave him the morphine injection, and I lied to him. Many died before their time. It was very, very difficult.”
The Silent Massacre: Politico reported that after 150 residents were hospitalized and 66 died, 34 families in Milan, Italy, joined forces and filed a lawsuit against a nursing home.[23] They charged the home with attempted murder and mishandling the epidemic, A woman in Milan describes her mother’s final days:
“In the days before, they told us that they gave [our mother] oxygen, but a person who worked inside the facility sent my sister a video of our mom in bed. In the video she didn’t have oxygen, she was without blankets, and her arms were blue…”
According to the U.S. Long-Term Care COVID Tracker, less than 1% of America’s population lives in long-term care facilities; 1.8 million older people are housed in 16, 000 nursing homes. At least 100,000 elderly residents in US nursing home facilities died of between March and Thanksgiving of 2020.[24] As of Feb 11th this tiny fraction of the country accounts for 36% of US COVID-19 deaths.
A report by the American Association of Retired People (AARP) found that many of those deaths could have been prevented.[25] Multiple factors contributed: the legal, financial, and bureaucratic structure of government-funded, nursing homes that adhere to the medical model. Medicare pays for short-term rehab, but not long-term care. The federal funding restriction makes nursing homes the only option for most people who are in need of long-term care.
The New York Timesreported that 70% of 15,400 nursing homes are for-profit; they are owned by private equity and investment firms that bought the nursing home real estate assets. Equity buyouts of nursing homes shifted the focus entirely from providing services to a strict profit-focused business model –i.e., increasing profit margins. Investors charged nursing home operators high management and consultant fees; and pushed them to purchase expensive equipment and products at above market rates from companies they owned. As a result, nursing home budgets for staff and services were severely cut; nursing staff hours per patient were reduced and patients per staff were increase; thereby appreciably lowering the quality of care. Understaffed under equipped nursing homes were completely unprepared to contain the spread of the virus.[26]
Image by Craig Stephens
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) reports that in response to public furor about the mounting Covid deaths, the Trump administration sent over $21 billion in federal relief funds to nursing homes, but allocated only $2.5 billion specifically for infection control. More than $18.5 billion in taxpayer money was dispensed to nursing home owners – with no strings, no required quality of care standards, and no accountability.
This disparity confirms Thomas Sowell’s observation: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.“
Dr. Jon Tallinger, a Swedish physician and human rights activist refused to obey immoral government dictates that required violating the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm.” He refused to withhold life-saving oxygen from elderly patients. Dr. Tallinger also recognizes the importance and the reliability of testimonies by eye-witnesses:Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse who worked for a company providing medical services to several nursing homes north of Stockholm, said she sought treatment for residents with Covid-19 and was told by company physicians to administer morphine and a sedative. “People suffocated, it was horrible to watch. One patient asked me what I was giving him when I gave him the morphine injection, and I lied to him. Many died before their time. It was very, very difficult.”
