Media giddy over historic 'her' but 10,000 dead back home

Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, is a former pediatrician who is currently the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health after Gov. Tom Wolf appointed him to the post in 2017.

The former doctor is overseeing the state’s medical response to the pandemic, which has claimed 19,467 lives and infected another 783,000 citizens as of Jan. 13.

Dianne Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania tells One News Now 10,000 of those COVID-19 deaths --- more than half --- can be attributed to nursing homes, and she lays that blame on Dr. Levine and his “unscientific dictates" that have caused suffering across the state.

The state Dept. of Health website, in fact, confirms that 10,112 deaths have been reported in what are known as long-term care (LTC) facilities.

But is the state’s top medical official to blame?

According to a fact-checking article at Newsweek, published after Biden’s announcement, it is untrue that Dr. Levine is directly responsible for the nursing homes deaths because the state health agency issued guidelines that permitted it. The fact-checking news article states:

In an effort to alleviate the burden on primary care settings such as hospitals, the guidance states that nursing homes "must continue to accept new admissions and receive readmissions for current residents who have been discharged from the hospital who are stable," and that "This may include stable patients who have had the COVID-19 virus."

Last summer, when the nursing home deaths had climbed to 2,500, Dr. Levine downplayed the grim statistics when confronted by reporters at a press conference about the growing deaths. 

“They contracted the virus in the facility,” he said of the elderly. “So it doesn’t mean they were bringing it to the facility. The virus was already there.”

Lawmakers: Your policy is killing our elderly

According to The Press and Journal, a Pennsylvania newspaper, Levine blamed the re-admission policy on federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but two of Pennsylvania’s congressmen told Levine in a May 28 letter that there is no “existing federal guidance.”

The lawmakers, Fred Keller and Scott Perry, also pleaded with Dr. Levine and the state agency to drop its policy or risk more deaths in nursing homes.

Dr. Levine blaming nursing home deaths on federal guidelines mirrors Andrew Cuomo, New York's combative governor. His own state health department also issued orders to re-admit elderly patients, and said nursing homes must comply, only to hide the spiraling death poll from the public. 

Just weeks before that June press conference, Dr. Levine was confronted by reporters after it was learned the state health official had removed his 95-year-old mother from a personal care home after cases of the virus were reported there. That decision was made by the mother, not by him, Levine claimed, and Levine and a sister complied with the request. 

In the state, personal care homes fall under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Human Services, not the Dept. of Health that Dr. Levine oversees.

GLAAD celebrates, threatens 

According to Gramley, social conservatives will oppose Dr. Levine’s HHS nomination not only for thousands of preventable nursing homes deaths but also because Dr. Levine is a vocal activist for transgenderism and homosexual activism.

In the new Biden administration, Gramley says, Dr. Levine can easily be a face for Democrats pushing for passage of The Equality Act.

There is also the lingering issue of mental health in adults, and children, who identify as the opposite sex. Bowing to pressure from LGBT activists, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) dropped the term “Gender Identify Disorder” in 2012, which was used to diagnose patients, and replaced it with the watered-down term “Gender Dysphoria.”

Despite pressure to do so, APA resisted the push to drop the mental health issue entirely from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  

Prominent homosexual-rights groups such as GLAAD celebrated the announcement eight years ago but also openly demanded that compliant media outlets drop the term “Gender Identify Disorder,” too, and refuse to “lend credibility” to what GLAAD called “anti-transgender activists.”

“With Dr. Rachel Levine’s nomination,” GLAAD’s president said this week, “HHS is now set to be home to the first transgender Senate-confirmed federal official, a truly historic and deserved piece of visibility for transgender Americans.”