TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has made it “crystal clear”, it wasn’t his fault at all, period, full stop. In an interview with CBS this week Murphy said he’s not the knucklehead responsible for thousands of nursing home COVID-19 deaths in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic after a state order forced those facilities to take back COVID-19 positive patients released from the hospital.
In March of 2020, an order by New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli, signed by Murphy himself made it illegal for understaffed, and ill-equipped nursing homes to refuse COVID-19 residents and patients back into their facility. This order led to the spread of infection in those homes, killing thousands of elderly New Jerseyans.
While Murphy was forcing COVID-19 patients into those homes, he was also clearing out the state’s prison system of inmates, in an attempt to stop the spread in those facilities, but when asked if the decision to send COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, Murphy stands by his record and results.
The governor went as far as claiming the narrative, which was set by his own order, is misinformation. You know, that word the left uses when they want to silence opposition, investigation, and the truth.
“There’s a lot of misinformation around that,” Murphy said. “These are their residences, so this is not like they’re going to a hotel or something like that, this is their home.”
Murphy continued, to blame the nursing homes and their staff for not following the rules of the order to keep patients quarantined.
“Judy and I were crystal clear about what should happen when they return, and that is separate them, either in their own floor, their own wing, or their own building,” Murphy said. “Separate staff so that only staff would take care of those formerly hospitalized COVID patients.”
At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, Murphy says he ordered and on-the-spot reconfigure and mass relocation of senior citizens, a task that would not only be impossible for those facilities but could have also increased the spread of COVID-19 and caused more distress, uprooting seniors from their homes and transferring them and their belongings elsewhere.
Essentially, Murphy wanted those facilities to conduct what used to be called a “Chinese Fire Drill” ahead of receiving COVID-19 patients.
“If you can’t do what we just said, raise your hand and tell us and we’ll find a temporary home for that resident,” Murphy said.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state couldn’t even process unemployment claims, register vehicles, or issue new drivers licenses, but the governor now says the Trenton red tape bureaucracy would have immediately found homes for hundreds or possibly thousands of patients.
Few are buying Phil Murphy’s version of history.
“There’s no question long-term care got clobbered,” he said. “Some of those operators didn’t do what I just said they should do.”