Pittsburgh’s Phantom Pandemic, Part III — Nursing homes deaths are the big scandal
You wouldn’t know it from the media reports, but in Pennsylvania and other states like New York, the disproportionate number of nursing home deaths is the biggest scandal of the coronavirus crisis.
Across the state of Pennsylvania there have been a total of 3,012 deaths attributed to Covid-19 — and 2,029 ( about 67 percent) have been in nursing homes and care facilities.
As my old pal Andy Sheehan reported on KDKA tonight at 6 p.m., the virus has hit nursing homes in our Western Pennsylvania region even harder.
Andy reported that 80 percent of the region’s victims were infected at nursing homes or care facilities.
Of Allegheny County/Pittsburgh’s 109 deaths, 86 have been in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
For the math impaired, that means in two months there have been only 23 deaths in a population of 1.3 million.
In Beaver County nursing homes have accounted for 66 of the 73 deaths. And in Westmoreland County, it’s 24 of 27 deaths.
In other words, the pandemic has hit the old and the already sick in nursing homes but has hardly touched the Western Pennsylvania region’s general population — further evidence that this end of the state should be liberated from governor’s severe, crippling and idiotic shutdown.