3 lesser-known Cuomo orders that caused COVID deaths

August 25, 2020 – Exclusive: Jim Breslo interviews author of revealing new book, ‘Undercover Epicenter Nurse’

By Jim Breslo

Last week New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he was writing a book, “American Crisis,” to be released before the November election, about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. That same day another book was released that provides an entirely different perspective on his handling of the pandemic.

The book was written by Erin Olszewski, an Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and who worked as a nurse at NYC’s Elmhurst Hospital, labeled the “epicenter of the epicenter” in the battle against COVID-19. Her new book is entitled “Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital.” In an exclusive interview on my “Hidden Truth Show” podcast released today, she asserted that Cuomo is no hero. In fact, she asserts, it was his emergency orders that exacerbated the problem and resulted in hundreds of unnecessary COVID deaths.

Olszewski explained in the interview that she was a registered nurse living with her family in Florida when she accepted a temporary nursing position in New York through Krucial Staffing, an emergency health care company. Krucial was paying nurses $10,000 per week (a rate of over $500,000 per year), provided free hotel rooms and was charging FEMA even more. She reports that Krucial was retained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help the state of New York. (A doctor separately reported to me that she was paid on a temporary basis at a rate of $20,000 per week, equivalent to over $1 million per year).

Olszewski reports that New York hospitals were so disorganized that, upon arrival, many nurses sat in Manhattan hotel rooms awaiting assignment for days or even weeks, receiving full pay all the while.

It took her a few days before she was assigned to Elmhurst, a public hospital in Queens. Olszewski was immediately struck by the “third-world” conditions she observed. She reports that the standard of care was shocking: Rooms were filthy, sanitation was lax, and patients were not provided basic hygiene. But even more concerning, she said, was that patients who had tested negative for COVID were nonetheless routinely mixed with COVID patients.

What she saw was so bad that within a week of her arrival she decided to start documenting the neglect via cellphone video, which she subsequently released publicly and which aired on Fox News Channel. Olszewski says that these practices resulted in many unnecessary deaths. “People were dying because of poor treatment protocol,” she said.

While Cuomo has received the most criticism for his order mandating that nursing homes accept COVID patients, Olszewski points to three lesser-known Cuomo orders that set the table for the disaster she witnessed. The worst of them, she contends, was Cuomo’s order barring people from visiting family members in the hospitals.