New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Halts Elective Surgery In Response to Omicron Covid Variant
On the West Coast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom extends emergency powers until March 2022.
One definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
If that is the case, than New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s response to the Omicron COVID-19 variant is insane.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Friday to postpone elective hospital surgeries — something that hasn’t been done since the worst of the initial coronavirus outbreak last year.
Hochul said she made the move to deal with staffing shortages and boost bed capacity amid an anticipated “spike” in new cases and the emergence of the new Omicron variant in South Africa. The strain is named after a letter of the Greek alphabet.
“We’ve taken extraordinary action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and combat this pandemic. However, we continue to see warning signs of spikes this upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said.
Hochul is clearly using the developments to assume sweeping powers and readopting policies that clearly did not halt the virus nor stop it from mutating in the first place.
The declaration unlocks sweeping powers for her to take emergency measures, without the usual state congressional approval.
‘We continue to see warning signs of spikes in COVID this winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,’ Hochul tweeted.
…Hochul’s declaration of a disaster emergency acknowledges that the state is struggling – even before Omicron possibly hits.
‘A disaster has occurred in New York State, for which the affected local governments are unable to respond adequately,’ the declaration states.
‘New York is now experiencing COVID-19 transmission at rates the State has not seen since April 2020.
It must be noted that Hochul isn’t the only politician bitterly clinging to emergency powers. Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order allowing his emergency powers to remain in place until March 2022.
California has been under a state of emergency since March 4, 2020. Since then, Newsom has authorized billions of dollars in emergency spending and issued at least 47 executive orders to alter or suspend 200 state laws and regulations because of the virus, according to a resolution authored by Republican state senators.
With this extension, Newsom will have emergency orders for more than two years.
With the emergency remaining in effect, Newsom has the flexibility to take certain steps in case something were to happen.
Of course, his retention of said emergency powers has not broken the cycles of infection being experienced in the Golden State.
In central California, a region that struggled with resistance to masks and vaccines throughout the pandemic, the strained public health system has been pushed to the brink. Hospitals this week are over-capacity and officials are seeking to transfer more patients out of the region for treatment in Los Angeles.
“We’re just running around like crazy,” said Rachel Spray, a nurse at the Kaiser hospital in Fresno. “Call lights are going off, alarms are going off. We just don’t have the resources.” The hospital’s emergency room, intensive care unit, coronavirus overflow zones, and tent are not enough to accommodate the surge of sick patients, she said. “It’s not slowing down.”
Contrast their responses to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Wisely, DeSantis has avoided vaccine mandates, has emphasized treatments as part of his state’s approach, and has met with success.
Florida is reporting the lowest amount of coronavirus cases per capita in the nation after Gov. Ron DeSantis was widely criticized by media outlets for his handling of the virus.
DeSantis has been slammed by critics in the media since the start of the pandemic over his opposition to government-imposed mask and vaccine mandates. In 2020, DeSantis was accused by a Democratic politician of going on a “killing spree” for opposing mask mandates and a Vanity Fair headline from September of this year referred to the governor as an “angel of death.”
At the same time Florida reported the lowest amount of new cases in the country per capita, coronavirus cases are surging in many states where strict lockdown orders were issued by Democratic governors.
Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most controversial restrictions in the nation during the height of the pandemic, leads the nation in daily coronavirus cases per capita.
The Sunshine State reported a daily average of 1,393 coronavirus cases as of Friday, six per 100,000, which was a two percent decrease over the last two weeks.
There are so many reasons for the media and political focus on Omicron: Distraction from Bay Area crime sprees and the Waukesha slaughter, diversion from news related to inflation and the supply chain crisis, and the upcoming mid-terms (perhaps paving the way for more mail-in ballot harvesting). But given the limited information on the variant, the amount of attention and hysteria is absurd.
And implementing the same policies over and over, and expecting the now-endemic coronavirus to disappear, is insane.
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May God spare the citizenry from these tinpot dictators.
The Lord helps those who help themselves. He must be taking really good care of those looters in California who’ve been helping themselves to everything in Nordstrom’s and every other store in the Bay area.
It was black Friday. (Where you been?)
It’s racist to call looting “black Friday.”
Wait, it’s racist to call looting looting.
Never mind.
It is racist to be born with white skin.
Now I know why the Black Friday discounts were unimpressive. Those early “Christmas Shoppers” cleaned out the inventory.
God’s work must truly be our own.
You can’t sit around and wait.
God set the system in motion, advised his children to follow the science, and provided a religion (i.e. behavioral protocol, fitness function) to order our world for a functional evolution (“life”).
This woman is batshit crazy. Literally.
And about as honest as Pelosi.
As far as brainpower goes, she’s already pretty much proven that she’s nothing more than Cuomo without the testosterone poisoning. And that combination is usually accompanied by an overdose of Karen. So glad I live nowhere near.
The cargo cult informs us that if the staff wear masks, there is viable legal indemnity… safety. Better still, if they are full vaccinated, the odds of transmission are ostensibly in your favor. Perhaps you could sacrifice a virgin or senior life to planned parent/hood to increase your social standing.
You know, Kathy, I am aware you don’t really care about the people, but the better solution would be to can the worthless mandates on halthcare professionals to get health-endangering injections that don’t even slow the virus.
Or, this is even better, admit it’s an endemic virus and drop all the bull.
Why would she do that?
She’s an insane leftist. Her job is to destroy.
Most of us here in the free state of Florida have seen enough abuse by politicians, judges and the medical industrial complex in some 2 years that we just want to move on. The only fear-mongers are the Covid Cultists.
It ain’t ‘fear’, natdj. It’s about fascism – and looting, from the street all the way up to the White House.
In this neo-Marxist world, the Useful Idiots are afraid; they’re afraid of “Climate Crisis”, they’re afraid of “White Supremacists”, they’re afraid of “Omicron” or whatever they’re told to be afraid of.
The people making them afraid are fascists, but don’t underestimate the legion of scared lemmings that these fascists have to leverage. It’s a short leap from fear to rage.
Our biggest enemy is the GOPe.
When we look back and eventually we will, history is going to judge these actions harshly. How many excess deaths or severe complications from missed screenings will be recorded? How many small businesses will be unnecessarily shutdown, how many students irreparably set back academically, how many families broken by the combined strain?
Stalin, Hitler nor Mao or Pol Pot are turning in their graves. If anything, they’re giggling, wishing they could be back in the action at the ground floor here in the US.
“Lets substitute a definite harm for a potential harm”?
Another overreach by a power hungry despot…the left claims to be so intellectually superior to the masses that they and they alone can lord over us.
There is no need to make such a preemptive move. Many lives will be hurt or lost as healthcare services are reined in. If cases truly rise and ICU’s begin to fill up THEN make such a decision…This is akin to fleeing your home in fear of a house fire when the closest house on fire is miles across town.
The real situation here is one of total incompetence. Since Lord Fauci says we will have variants “forever”, and they all worship his pronouncements, why have they not used some of the “free” Covid money to stand up more ICU beds? They have had 2 flipping years! So much for them being our “saviors”…pathetic.
“Another overreach by a power hungry despot…”
That’s all you had to say.
Flubbing to make way for Letitia, no doubt.
More beds alleviates the problem, which doesn’t create fear.
How unusual. They entrust their healthcare to those who profit from their sickness.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/meme%2020211126%2006.jpg
Halting “nonessential” procedures was a bad idea 18 months ago. It’s an even worse one now.
Cancer surgery and joint repair are, technically, elective procedures. You can think of many more. Quite a few people are going to die or live with unnecessary pain and disability because of this rule. If they expand it to elective surgeries generally, like Queensland did for the unvaccinated, it gets exponentially worse.
I’d call it criminal.
The cynical part of me is thinking that one reason she’s doing this is Hochul would like to win election for a full term as governor next year, she remembers how Cuomo was being hailed across the U.S. as a great leader, better than Trump, and getting all sorts of positive media attention, so she wants the same accolades even though the citizens of her state will be made to suffer as a result.
Central CA? This is my shocked face. How many people of dubious legal status are living in that area and are on public benefits, including state health care benefits? No wonder the public hospitals are over capacity and the staff can’t keep up, not to mention they still have to deal with the joys of complying with the rules and regulations imposed by hospital and state bureaucrats that are time-consuming on a good day. I also wonder how many hospital employees have lost their jobs because they refuse to take the shot(s).
Any excuse to extend their power grabs.
Seems like the hospitals didn’t flip the campaign money from Cuomo to Hochul
Man I hope Inslee doesn’t pull that shite in WA. Wifey needs parathyroid surgery in January – the condition can be very painful and has been for her. If elective surgery is cancelled here, we’ll be on the next flight to Tampa where there is a clinic that specializes in that surgery.
Will your insurance, if you have it, pay for it? Probably out of network. You gotta do what you gotta do, though.
If it’s a private clinic like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma you’ll probably pay less.
These scumbag politicans act as of they own all the hospotals and ay for everyone’s health care. they don’t own any of the hospitals and most normal people have always paid for their own health insurance and health care. The government(s) have NO RIGHT to be micromanaging hospital beds and ICU room. It’s none of their business. If the hospitals run out of room and have some medical emergencies that demand more space then the government can build some MASH hospitals (like Trump did) to take care of the overflow, but any of these politicians who acts as if they are the managing director of a hospital – or worse, of all hospitals – need to be arrested and taken out of society. They are seriously abusing the powers of their offices and committing the worst sort of crime against America and against Americans.
This is beyond infuriating.
what’s the point of having power if you are not using it. They didn’t earn all that power to promote individual freedom. That’s how I define Liberalism over the past 100 years.
“his upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said.”
Governor Omniscient said.
FIFY
That’s a horrible picture. I can see her face morphing into Nancy Pelosi’s ugly mug within 10 years. Ok, maybe 30, she’s got a lot of road to cover to catch up with Nancy.
And without much scientific evidence, the world freaks out over the Chairman Xi variant.
Doctor who first discovered the Omicron variant telling us it is “extremely mild”.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/omicron-extremely-mild-says-doctor-who-first-discovered-strain-numerous-mutations
So my comment above about locking down the global economy again for the common cold is pretty close if not dead-on accurate. And Fauci today is talking nothing but partisan politics, Jan. 6 insurrection, conservatives are getting us killed while he is saving lives….. I can’t take that guy any more. I would just like to punch his smug, arrogant face.
Dr Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who first spotted the new Covid variant Omicron, appeared on the BBC this weekend.
Dr. Coetzee says the patients seen so far have had “extremely mild symptoms” – but more time is needed before we know the seriousness of the disease for vulnerable people.
Governors Hochul and Newsom are morons.
Looks like NY has just gone from the Cuomo frying pan to the Hochul fire. I wonder if they will learn anything before the next election.
Elective surgery is defined as a non-emergency procedure that can be scheduled in advance. Breast cancer surgery, colonoscopes, tonsillectomies, and many heart surgeries are considered “elective”. People are going to die from many things not related to Covid if this fool doesn’t reverse course. I wonder if the people of NY will hold her accountable.