Janice Dean returns to the podcast this week. She joined last year to talk about her book Mostly Sunny: How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days and now she is putting her own advice into practice after the tragic loss of her in-laws due to COVID-19. Janice talks about the bad nursing home policies, issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, that led to this tragedy and how bad policy can affect all Americans.
Janice currently serves as senior meteorologist for the FOX News Channel (FNC). She joined the network in 2004 and during her time, Janice has covered a slew of devastating storms including: Hurricanes Harvey and Huricane Katrina. In addition to her role at the FNC and her book Mostly Sunny, Janice is the author of “Freddy the Frogcaster” a series of children’s books tailored towards teaching the weather.
Transcript
Beverly:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and I’m so glad that we have Janice Dean with us once again. She joined us last year to talk about her book, Mostly Sunny: How I Learned to Keep Smiling Through the Rainiest Days. Please do get it as 2020 has been hard for everyone, I think we could all learn to smile a little bit more. And she is actually having to put her own advice into practice after the tragic loss of her in-laws due to COVID-19. She’s here bravely to talk about what took place, the bad nursing home policies that were issued by the governor of New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo. Those policies led to this tragedy and the reality is that since bad policy affects all Americans, we’re so glad she’s here to share her story.
A little bit more about Janice, she currently serves as Senior Meteorologist for the Fox News Channel. She joined the network in 2004 and during her time, she has covered a slew of devastating storms, including Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina. And in addition to her role at the Fox News Channel and her book, Mostly Sunny, Janice is the author of Freddy the Frogcaster, a series of children’s books tailored towards teaching the weather. Janice, such a pleasure to have you on She Thinks. I’m sorry that it’s for this topic.
Janice:
Listen, I appreciate you asking me to come on and talk about this because I feel that it’s affecting millions of Americans, not only in New York state, but all over the country. We’ve had thousands of deaths in nursing homes. My state happens to be the worst in terms of the amount of deaths, not only in the state, but in nursing homes in particular. And part of the reason I believe is because of the governor’s mandate to force COVID recovering patients into nursing homes. That mandate went into effect March 25th and was in place for 46 days until he reversed it. And the mandate itself, you can’t find on the government website because it’s been scrubbed since. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s not only Cuomo, it’s four other governors that have the same mandate and that was Wolf in Pennsylvania, Whitmer in Michigan, Newsom in California and Murphy of New Jersey.
Beverly:
And you’ve been very vocal about this on Twitter. I have been following your constant barrage of facts that you will tweet out, especially retweet, when Governor Cuomo wants to pat himself on the back for the job he’s doing in New York. And you’ll constantly remind him about your situation and what happened to your in-laws. Before we get into some specifics of the policy, can you share a little bit about even the decision that you had discussed when you went on Tucker Carlson about putting your in-laws into a nursing home? I think a lot of people are in that position of they have someone in a nursing home, I know my grandmother’s in a nursing home and we can’t visit her, and we ask ourselves, “Did we do the wrong thing by doing it?” So can you give us a little background about that decision?
Janice:
The toughest decision we’ve ever made as a family was putting my husband’s parents in both assisted living. His mom was in an assisted living facility, his dad was in a nursing home. The plan was to have them both together in the assisted living residence, but his dad wasn’t doing very well. He had dementia, he had health problems. And Sean, my husband, for many years was going to their apartment. They lived in a four-story walk-up that they had lived there for over 50 years and it was rent control. They never wanted to give it up. And their health started to fail them. So it was getting to the point where we were going to have to go visit them, we had aids that were going to see them, but there were still many trips to the ER.
So, we decided we found a good place for both of them. The plan was to have them together in the same room with his mother-in-law in the assisted living facility, we just needed to get his dad in better shape. And then COVID-19 happens and takes both of their lives and truly, they weren’t in their elder care facilities for more than a couple of months when this happened.
Beverly:
And when you get that call, when you learn this, how does a family process that when you didn’t get a chance to be by their side, when the possibility for funeral arrangements is completely affected? How does it affect the mourning process? Because like you were saying, this is personal to you because you dealt with it, but so many people are dealing with this and dealing with this in isolation.
Janice:
Yeah. We were living a nightmare essentially. We got a call in late March, from the nursing home that Mickey was staying in, asking if it was okay if they could put him on another floor. And we found that odd because he was on the same floor for many weeks and all of a sudden, they were asking permission if they could move him to a different floor. In hindsight, I wonder if that was because they were bringing in COVID positive patients. The governor’s mandate was to put COVID positive patients back into nursing homes. And I wonder were they taking those COVID patients and putting them into my father-in-law’s home and that’s why they had to move them to another floor? I don’t know if we’ll ever find out the answer to that, but I do know that several weeks later, we get a call on a Saturday morning and they tell my husband that his dad isn’t feeling well. And three hours later, we get a call and they tell us he died.
And we didn’t find out that he had COVID, that he died of COVID, until we saw the death certificate. And we had not seen him for many weeks, we were quarantined. So here in New York state, by the way, people are still not able to see their loved ones in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. So the fact that we couldn’t see his dad when he died and then having to try to find a place for his body until we were able to have at least a burial service, because we couldn’t have a funeral or we couldn’t have last rites for him. We couldn’t have a funeral. We couldn’t mourn him properly. And then his mom dies two weeks later. She got COVID in the assisted living facility that she was in and was transported to the hospital.
But her number won’t be counted because Governor Cuomo said that if they die in the hospital of COVID, regardless of where they got it from, it cannot be counted as a nursing home or an eldercare death if they died in the hospital. So that tells me he’s also trying to play with the numbers and downplay the numbers, even though they are completely off the charts in terms of deaths in elder care facilities.
Beverly:
And here’s something that I don’t understand and that is how did this policy happen to begin with? So we knew from the beginning that this was… Well we thought it was highly contagious. So it’s not that, “Oh, we’ve learned more. We just didn’t know enough then.” People were worried about this. So how is this policy even made? How did that happen?
Janice:
That’s a very good question and one that I would like answers to because it doesn’t make sense to me. The governor actually pleaded for other places to put COVID patients. So he was granted the job at center in New York City and had a big ship that was brought in, the Mercy ship, and neither of those were used. Instead, he passed the nursing homes with COVID patients and again, he wasn’t the only governor to do that. There were four others that did it, but 45 other governors in the rest of the states of the United States of America decided not to do that. So yes, that’s a huge question that I would like the answer to because we didn’t know. No one told us that COVID positive patients were going to be going into these homes where we put our loved ones and where most people knew, including the people that worked at the nursing care facilities, that if you bring positive patients, COVID positive patients, into their elder facilities, it’s going to spread like wildfire.
Beverly:
And so, you didn’t even have a decision. You weren’t even given the decision to make other arrangements, figure out a different plan, which you would have done had you known that COVID patients were being moved in.
Janice:
Absolutely, if we had known what was going on. But I don’t know that we could have moved Sean’s parents into another place or into our home because we weren’t even allowed to visit them. So how are we going to take them out?
Beverly:
Yeah. All around it’s a horrible situation, but I think what you have done is shine a light on a policy that it seems like many politicians don’t want to bring to the light. I feel like your pressure, you’ve been tweeting about this nonstop, your pressure on Cuomo has caused them to at least have to respond to a certain extent. Now, I think the responses, to put it kindly, lackluster. They released a report a couple of weeks ago basically exonerating them from this. They claimed the nursing home policy was not a significant factor for the thousands of nursing home deaths. And he’s been very, very defensive. I’m assuming you’re not going to stop asking for answers with his answer being this.
Janice:
The reason why I’ve become vocal about this subject is exactly what you just touched upon, that I wasn’t seeing the coverage of this story that it should have gotten. This is 6,000 lives that were lost. This is more than 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina put together. These are family members. They’re not just some numbers on a curve, and I wasn’t seeing mainstream media covering the story. They would have Cuomo on their show, they would never ask the question and it was driving me bonkers. So I finally said… I wasn’t going to talk about it at all because it was so personal and my husband was having a very difficult time with me asking him if it was okay, if I could go on and talk about this. But the minute that I told him I wasn’t seeing coverage or him being held accountable, he told me, “Okay. I don’t mind if you do this,” because maybe their lives need to be in the spotlight to shame these governors into having to respond to the questions.
And Cuomo, when he gets asked the nursing home question, Beverly, he has had at least a dozen answers in different interviews. So that tells me he’s lying. If he doesn’t have a solid answer that he can go to, instead of blaming God, mother nature, nursing care home workers, the New York Post. There was one I saw today that he said in May, basically saying no one should be prosecuted for the nursing home mandate because they’re going to die anyway. I mean he really did say something like that. So that’s the reason I became more vocal is because he wasn’t being asked the question and when he finally was asked the question, he never knew how to answer it.
Beverly:
So, let me ask you this. What is the answer you want to hear from him? So I think you’re going to continue to bring this up until there is acknowledgement of it. But what, for you, obviously nothing can bring your in-laws back and the lives of others, their family members that were lost, but whether it’s you or others that you have talked to who are going through this similar situation, what is it that you’re looking for?
Janice:
I just want accountability. I want an investigation and I don’t want a partisan investigation. The one where he investigated himself and said there was nothing wrong and the conclusion was it was the nursing care workers that brought COVID into the nursing home. That’s what his latest is. I want a non-partisan investigation. I’d love a 9/11 style commission on a level that it brings national attention to it because we have to fix this. There might be a next time and we can’t have the same mistakes. So I want to see him answer questions and I want people to ask why this was happening, why we didn’t get answers, and is there any more shady businesses hashed to this?
I know that some of these nursing care homes gave him quite a bit of money a few years ago. And he put in place when he knew that there were many deaths that we could not sue the nursing homes. Now, listen, I don’t want to sue anybody to be honest with you. All I want is answers and accountability. And since this began, Beverly, I haven’t even seen him be remorseful. In the beginning, had he come out and actually said, “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. I made this incredible mistake. I apologize.” If he made phone calls, but I have not seen one ounce of empathy from him, just complete arrogance and pointing fingers and not taking any accountability. That’s what drives me crazy.
Beverly:
Even going on his brother’s TV show and joking about COVID and whatnot, and still doing his PowerPoint presentations on a regular basis. Yeah, I’m sure that’s infuriating. I get mad watching it and I’m not even in your shoes on this one. You mentioned the news media. So there has been coverage, your own Fox News has covered this. They’ve allowed you to speak on this. They’ve reported this story. Why are we not seeing more coverage from other outlets?
Janice:
I think the answer is he doesn’t have an R next to his name. And I’m not a political person, Beverly, I am the meteorologist. I get very uncomfortable talking about politics. But the fact that Governor Cuomo has been in office for a very long time as a Democrat, I believe they have protected him and he has been treated like a king and no one has ever questioned his decisions. And if I have this platform to be able to raise awareness, and I believe now he is being asked the question. He has to be asked the question. Now that at least people are asking him and we’re starting to see him squirm a little bit, this needs to continue. And there is going to be in New York state, I just learned that they are going to have some hearings coming up very soon at some point in the next few weeks, where there will be questions raised on both sides. But I do believe that if he was a Republican, this would be a front page story and it would be a lead story on every major network.
Beverly:
Well I know so many families out there, thank you for your courage and talking about this and we’re, again, so sorry for the loss of your in-laws. Before you go, I want to ask one quick question just on a lighter note to end, or I would say two quick questions. I would assume that you’re an extrovert. I could be wrong on that, but what is it like for you to do your work from home in your home studio? And I saw a recent tweet that you said you enjoy dipping your pizza in barbecue sauce. Can you please explain that for the audience why that is the case? So what is it like working from home and why pizza in barbecue sauce?
Janice:
Those are two excellent questions. Listen, there’s pros and cons to everything. I do enjoy the fact that I have a green screen in my house. That is very cool. I am now the coolest mom on the block. And I love being at home with my family. This is the most time I’ve ever spent with my family in enclosed quarters since I was on maternity leave. This is the same idea when I was at home when they were babies, but now that they’re growing up, I truly enjoy being with them and seeing them in the morning and being able to, in between weather breaks, to come down and help make their breakfast. So I really enjoy that. And I love that the technology allows me to do my job from home. Very appreciative of that.
The second question about barbecue sauce. This was a recent development for me, Beverly, because I was out with the kids and we had ordered pizza and there was barbecue sauce for wings on the table. And I thought, “Hm. I wonder if that piece of pizza will taste good with barbecue sauce on top?” Because I love both. I dipped it in the barbecue sauce and it was absolutely life changing.
Beverly:
Do your kids agree with you? Did they try it?
Janice:
No, they did not. But my husband did and he would agree with me.
Beverly:
Well, we so appreciate you joining us today. I’m going to continue to follow this and we hope that the pressure that you’re helping to put on Andrew Cuomo may lead to, like you said, some hearing, some investigations to this. We’re so sorry for your loss and we’re so thankful that you came and shared it with us today. So thank you, Janice.
Janice:
Thank you, Beverly. I appreciate you giving me a voice.
Beverly:
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