Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story. Some Democratic governors have been under fire
Speaker 1: for mishandling nursing home outbreaks as the pandemic surged last spring.
Speaker 1: There are Republican critics see that as an opportunity. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in virus news today. Federal health officials
Speaker 1: called on Texas and Mississippi residence to keep wearing masks,
Speaker 1: even as governors there lift COVID nineteen restrictions. Rochelle Wilenski,
Speaker 1: director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says
Speaker 1: it's premature to abandon mitigation efforts and that the virus
Speaker 1: can still erupt again. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Tuesday
Speaker 1: that the state would lift its mask mandate and reopened
Speaker 1: businesses next week. He has also banning counties from finding
Speaker 1: or jailing people who disregard local measures defining previous warnings
Speaker 1: from Woolenski and others. South African authorities said they ceased
Speaker 1: about two thousand, four hundred doses of fake coronavirus vaccines.
Speaker 1: After following up on a global alert issued by Interpol.
Speaker 1: The bogus shots were found at a warehouse in Germiston's
Speaker 1: near Johannesburg, and three Chinese nationals and a Zambian national
Speaker 1: were arrested, according to the police in a statement. Finally,
Speaker 1: at another vaccine in development is showing promising results. Bahara's
Speaker 1: covaccent demonstrated interim efficacy after two doses. Those early results
Speaker 1: come from phase three clinical trials involving thousand, eight hundred patients.
Speaker 1: The study is still ongoing and the company will release
Speaker 1: a final analysis after there are a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: confirmed coronavirus cases. And now for today's main story. In
Speaker 1: recent months, GOP lawmakers have keeped criticism on Democratic governors
Speaker 1: for how they handled outbreaks at nursing homes early in
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Michigan Republicans, who have been hostile to Governor
Speaker 1: Gretchen Whitmer throughout the crisis, are now asking the state's
Speaker 1: attorney general to investigate how she coped with that challenge.
Speaker 1: Republicans say that people died unnecessarily thanks to Whitmer's order
Speaker 1: that nursing homes readmit residents with COVID nineteen if they
Speaker 1: had capacity and quarantine capabilities. I spoke to Detroit Bureau
Speaker 1: Chief David Welch, who says Michigan's fatality rate was lower
Speaker 1: than the national average and that many of those on
Speaker 1: the pandemics front lines dispute the assertions. Governor Gretchen Whitmer
Speaker 1: has recently faced several critiques regarding how she handled Michigan's
Speaker 1: nursing homes during the COVID crisis. I was just wondering
Speaker 1: if you could maybe outline some of those criticisms she's faced.
Speaker 1: The primary one is affected during the summer when COVID
Speaker 1: was really spreading heavily in Michigan, actually spring um, she
Speaker 1: issued an order saying that nursing homes could and in
Speaker 1: fact should, take COVID positive residents back into the homes
Speaker 1: or accept them in u Now, her order did say
Speaker 1: as long as the nursing homes had a place where
Speaker 1: they could quarantine them and and proper equipment in place
Speaker 1: so that everybody could take care of these patients without
Speaker 1: the virus spreading all of the place, then fine. However,
Speaker 1: the Republicans jumped on that immediately, and they pushed her
Speaker 1: to open nursing open up field hospitals and convention centers
Speaker 1: and places like that. And despite lasted all throughout where
Speaker 1: the Republicans wanted her to put them someplace else, and
Speaker 1: as nursing home deaths from COVID kept rising, the criticism
Speaker 1: got hotter and hotter. In reality, Luchi and actually did
Speaker 1: better in terms of percentage of deaths and nursing homes
Speaker 1: than the average state, and actually did quite a bit
Speaker 1: better than neighboring Ohio, which as a Republican governor and
Speaker 1: did kind of the same thing that Whitman did, which
Speaker 1: was allowing people back into nursing homes with COVID as
Speaker 1: long as they could be quarantined somehow. So you can
Speaker 1: see how political this got. The Republican is jumping all
Speaker 1: over her for it, and uh and Witmer standing her
Speaker 1: ground and saying this is this is the best way
Speaker 1: to handle them. It came back up again in the
Speaker 1: wake of Governor Cuoma in New York, Governor Newsman California,
Speaker 1: Governor Wolf in Pennsylvania getting a lot of criticism from
Speaker 1: Republicans and their states over this. Quoma situation is obviously
Speaker 1: different because there are allegations that he actually tried to
Speaker 1: hide numbers. No one has suggested that Whitman did that,
Speaker 1: but once that came up, the Republicans asked the Democratic
Speaker 1: attorney general in Michigan to investigate her over this. So
Speaker 1: what started to the last April May as a big
Speaker 1: controversy and heated up later in the summer has come
Speaker 1: back up again, you know, almost a copyhead calls for
Speaker 1: investigation that we've seen in a handful of other democratic
Speaker 1: states around the US. And as you've already pointed out,
Speaker 1: there is a very significant political angle here. What do
Speaker 1: you see as the perhaps broader national political agenda to
Speaker 1: these critiques. This is very similar to how the Democrats
Speaker 1: got Donald Trump out of the White House. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of things that the Democrats used against Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: issues of race and gender and so forth, But really
Speaker 1: his his response to COVID, and they're alleged in the
Speaker 1: alleged inadequacy of it, really kind of did Trump in
Speaker 1: with a lot of swim voters. So Republicans are trying
Speaker 1: to tear a page out of that same book. They
Speaker 1: see an opening with these nursing home deaths in Michigan,
Speaker 1: and they're going after wit before in the same way
Speaker 1: they have in other states. The reason I brought up
Speaker 1: Ohio earlier is you have in Michigan about thirty three
Speaker 1: percent of COVID death from nursing homes. Patients were allowed
Speaker 1: and if if the nursing home had the space, had
Speaker 1: the equipment to quarantine those people. I had a pretty
Speaker 1: similar set of rules for its nursing homes. Of the
Speaker 1: state's death from COVID. We're in nursing homes, and they
Speaker 1: had a couple of thousand more of them in the
Speaker 1: nursing homes as well. And none of the Republicans have
Speaker 1: gone after Mike Dwine, a Republican for the same thing.
Speaker 1: So there are some obvious political things. There are also
Speaker 1: some legitimate questions about this is how nursing homes were handled,
Speaker 1: and this is the best way to do it, uh
Speaker 1: and we're there potentially better choices, But it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like that's what's going on here. Because this this whole
Speaker 1: thing came up, it had kind of gone quiet for
Speaker 1: a while and then came up again once it became
Speaker 1: controversial in New York and in California, and exactly right,
Speaker 1: I mean, with the recent accusations against Governor Cuomo. As
Speaker 1: you outline that there has been some um suggestion that
Speaker 1: there has been let's say, mishandling of the data or
Speaker 1: even hiding of numbers. I mean, when we look at
Speaker 1: Michigan's numbers, um, I mean, is there any reason not
Speaker 1: to trust the data that Michigan is reporting potentially and
Speaker 1: look at you know, I want to give some of
Speaker 1: the Republicans at least who are questioning this their due.
Speaker 1: Data from nursing homes is not great, and there wasn't
Speaker 1: a great system for gathering that data because we didn't
Speaker 1: have a pandemic like this before. And what's what's what
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen If a nursing home had a
Speaker 1: resident who caught COVID and they got sick enough that
Speaker 1: they had to go to a hospital. If that resident
Speaker 1: had a room still reserved for them in the nursing home,
Speaker 1: but they passed away in the hospital, the nursing home
Speaker 1: was supposed to count that death in their facility. If
Speaker 1: they weren't holding the room, then the hospital would count it.
Speaker 1: Arguably was still a nursing home death. What we also
Speaker 1: don't know is how consistently nursing homes were actually doing this.
Speaker 1: Some of the employees I talked to said that nursing
Speaker 1: homes were actually trying to kind of key the case
Speaker 1: and death count low because they didn't want to be
Speaker 1: seen as a COVID institution. One of the things that
Speaker 1: happened during the pandemic was nursing home capacity rates are say,
Speaker 1: occupancy rates fell from about you know, typically eighty four
Speaker 1: percent to as low as seventies and nursing rooms needed
Speaker 1: patients are needed residents. Is not a great way to
Speaker 1: make a lot of money in that business, so they,
Speaker 1: you know, there was an incentive to try to keep
Speaker 1: the numbers low. Is this something Whitman did? Is something
Speaker 1: that state did know that the residencies were supposed to
Speaker 1: report this stuff and reported accurately. It hasn't been audited.
Speaker 1: No one knows how accurately they were reporting it. Now.
Speaker 1: Robert Gordon, who's the let's say passed head of the
Speaker 1: Michigan Department of Health and Safety, he said he couldn't
Speaker 1: stand by the data for those reasons because they just
Speaker 1: don't know. Now, if you want to say that Michigan
Speaker 1: State is no good and therefore the comparison that a
Speaker 1: third of its death with for from COVID is not
Speaker 1: really valid. That presupposed other states had a great system
Speaker 1: for collecting this data as well, and it's not really
Speaker 1: clear that they did. In fact, we talked to the
Speaker 1: Kaiser Institute well reporting this out and they said, look,
Speaker 1: it is really hard because not every state reports the
Speaker 1: same way and out every state has great data collection.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it's not a terrible number to use,
Speaker 1: but it's never going to be perfect. So yeah, there
Speaker 1: are questions about this, and you would you would only
Speaker 1: know what if you audited it. You know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: one thing the Republicans would like to see. It's not
Speaker 1: a bad idea because then again, we're gonna assess the
Speaker 1: extent of the problem in nursing homes and try to
Speaker 1: have them prepared for the next time around. It's it's
Speaker 1: not that's not an unreasonable request. And when we look
Speaker 1: at the situation that's happening in Michigan and kind of
Speaker 1: these accusations and finger pointing, I mean, is it something
Speaker 1: that you would see is is perhaps a more fundamental
Speaker 1: divide between say Republicans and Democrats about how to stem
Speaker 1: COVID spread, whether to focus on say hot spots like
Speaker 1: nursing homes, or for example, introducing stricter measures at the
Speaker 1: community levels, such as shutting down restaurants or gym's. This
Speaker 1: is a big issue in Michigan and it's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we really focused on the nursing home and
Speaker 1: COVID issue here because the politics have been so divisive.
Speaker 1: You had people armed, protesters marching on the capitol over
Speaker 1: Governor Woodman, shut down orders of gym's, restaurants, bars, and
Speaker 1: so forth. There was a lot of accusation by Republicans
Speaker 1: over the past year that she was overreaching and what
Speaker 1: she was shutting down, and there were probably similar She
Speaker 1: had criticisms there that that businesses like construction contractors that
Speaker 1: that had to down their tools for a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, they were by that by the spring would
Speaker 1: have been working outdoors. That didn't last long though She
Speaker 1: kind of got things going back up pretty quickly. But
Speaker 1: a lot of these other issues, and including mask wearing
Speaker 1: in some cases where the subject of the protests from
Speaker 1: Republicans and from conservative groups. They didn't like the fact
Speaker 1: that the governor had executive orders to tell them what
Speaker 1: to do and what to wear and when to work
Speaker 1: and what could be open. And the biggest indicator of
Speaker 1: whether a nursing home has a serious issue with COVID
Speaker 1: or not is what's going on in the outside community,
Speaker 1: because what the health care studies are saying is that
Speaker 1: the employees bring it in. People are out at restaurants, bars,
Speaker 1: or just from family members, they get COVID symptoms are
Speaker 1: mild in the early days. Testing was really bad in
Speaker 1: the first six months of the pandemic hit, and they
Speaker 1: go to work anyway, and then they spread it around
Speaker 1: the nursing home. You know, the nursing homes are places
Speaker 1: where people are kind of close together, a lot of
Speaker 1: people in a small facility. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who work there couldn't afford to take paid
Speaker 1: time off. So even if they had mild symptoms, didn't
Speaker 1: know they had COVID. They certainly weren't being that cautious
Speaker 1: in all cases. And that's a big issue. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republicans saying, well, these you know, there are other
Speaker 1: ways to manage the nursing homes, and there may have been,
Speaker 1: but none of the solutions were great. But really the
Speaker 1: best way to keep nursing hose from getting it was
Speaker 1: to protect at the outside community. And though and and
Speaker 1: and the measures to protect communities are the things that
Speaker 1: they fought the most. And speaking of nursing homes, let's
Speaker 1: let's look at it from the employee side. I mean,
Speaker 1: how were they supported in Michigan. The employees were not
Speaker 1: equipped and they know. I talked to a number of
Speaker 1: people who work in the nursing homes. They were doing
Speaker 1: things like if they had a mask and the band broke,
Speaker 1: they were stapling it back on. Some of them told
Speaker 1: me that if they had the basic surgical mask, let
Speaker 1: alone in the nine had a basical surgical mask, they
Speaker 1: were doing pretty well. So they were not equipped at all.
Speaker 1: And the other problem is they make about thirteen hours
Speaker 1: an hour. Governor Whitmer eventually ordered a two doll an
Speaker 1: hour raise to give these people a little bit of
Speaker 1: breathing room. But a lot of them didn't have paid
Speaker 1: time off. The nursing home Reunion, the s c IU
Speaker 1: was negotiating a new contract during the pandemic to try
Speaker 1: to get paid time off, trying to get a raise,
Speaker 1: to get better healthcare because a lot of the workers,
Speaker 1: if they had some symptoms, they were only being tested
Speaker 1: every seven days and it took another week to get
Speaker 1: the test back, so they could have COVID symptoms or
Speaker 1: be symptom free, and the test would take six or
Speaker 1: seven days to come back, and they would be working
Speaker 1: with and amongst intreating nursing home residents while they may
Speaker 1: have had the virus in the early and most contagious stages.
Speaker 1: So when you can't afford to take time off, you
Speaker 1: go into work, and these people had to be there.
Speaker 1: And people are also quitting nursing homes because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to catch COVID during the pandemic, so you had
Speaker 1: fewer and fewer people. They were working long hours, some
Speaker 1: of the moonlight in different nursing homes, so it really
Speaker 1: was a bad situation. They didn't have the equipment, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the training, and there were too few of
Speaker 1: them working long hours um and they were either afraid
Speaker 1: or couldn't afford to take the time off if they
Speaker 1: had some symptoms. It was quite a bad situation. That
Speaker 1: was David Welch and that's it for our show to Day.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus
Speaker 1: around the world, visit bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and
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Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top for foreheads
Speaker 1: Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was
Speaker 1: reported by David Welch. Original music by Leo Cedrin. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.