A nurse-turned-investigative journalist, who has spent the last few months on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, collected shocking undercover footage of what was happening at the "epicenter of the epicenter" in New York City.
Erin Marie Olszewski worked at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens for about a month as an unprepared New York was devastated by the virus. In an appearance on the Tucker Carlson show Thursday, clips were displayed from a video of her findings and interviews at the hospital.
In the first few days of March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio had assured New Yorkers that everything was under control.
But, their COVID-19 response "was marred by missed warning signs and policies that many health-care workers say put residents at greater risk and led to unnecessary deaths," the Wall Street Journal reported.
Olzewski, a former military nurse, documented what was happening at Elmhurst amid the outbreak, including the following shocking findings:
• COVID and non-COVID patients were being roomed together.
• Patients who tested negative for COVID were being called “presumptive COVID.”
• Patients were put on ventilators but did not need to be.
• Patients were put on ventilators – and died – who likely only had anxiety, not COVID.
• Half the patients said to have COVID in the hospital did not have it.
• If you didn’t have COVID when you came to the hospital, once in, they assumed you had it.
Olzewski also noted:
Ventilators are likely to be the leading cause of death in the pandemic. Sedatives and paralytics combined with barro-trauma from pressurized air kill 90 percent of those vented at Elmhurst (and by extension, much of the world). Nosocomial (in-hospital) infection is the main vector of transmission. At Elmhurst, "Covid Rule-Out" and "Covid Confirmed" are housed in the same rooms. PPE is not changed between patients. Rooms are not properly or even marginally cleaned after Covid deaths. Isolated from family, patients at Elmhurst who do not have "Do Not Resuscitate" orders are being treated as though they did.Olszewski's book, The Undercover Epicenter Nurse, is set for publication on July 6.
Nurses were told not to perform CPR on at least one "full code" patient, in violation of their oaths and licenses. Delayed treatment due to the government mandate to stay inside, and the government recommendation to not seek early outpatient help, combined with the restriction in New York and elsewhere on promising, even proven therapies during the early stages of illness, massively compounds the death rate.
Much of which points to what may be the real reason black and brown Americans seem to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19. They are likely not dying because of some alleged genetic predisposition or a peculiar array of Covi-combustible comorbidities. But they are certainly dying from an underlying condition: a defunded, criminally negligent, and corrupt hospital system, which during this crisis seems to take extra pains to do them in, and which may be financially incentivized to do so.
Experimented on by unsupervised doctors-in-training, misdiagnosed, and rushed onto ventilators based on edicts from anonymous supervisors, Elmhurst and other public hospital patients have not stood a chance. And yet, confirmed by a new study from Yale, hydroxychloroquine and zinc and/or other therapies have been shown to work, especially when given early to those few people who actually develop symptoms of COVID-19.
Free Press International
