* Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) attended the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing this week and laid out a timeline for the LaSalle Veterans’ Home outbreak. The facility is in her district…
So, on November 1st, that was what we consider the beginning of the outbreak with four people testing positive for COVID. On November 3rd, there were 29 people, employees and patients combined, testing positive for COVID. And on November 6th, there were 60 employees and veterans testing positive for COVID. I believe on November 6th, the home reached out to the USDVA, according to your testimony, and asked for N95 masks. On November 7th, 103 employees and residents tested positive for COVID. On November 9th, which is the day I believe that you had a WebEx, the Department of Veterans Affairs had a WebEx, kind of touch meeting I believe with the Department of Public Health. And on November 9th there were 131 employees and residents who tested positive for COVID. On November 11th, there were 169 residents employees testing positive for COVID and seven, unfortunately, deaths of our veterans. On November 12th, there were 171 employees and residents who tested positive for COVID with 10 residents passing away. November 13th, there were 171 employees and veterans testing positive with for COVID with 13 veterans who passed away. On November 15th, there were 183 employees and veterans testing positive for COVID with 15 veterans passing away. And then, on November 16th, there was a total of 185 residents and employees testing positive for COVID and 17 deaths of our veterans.
It is absolutely shameful to me that this was allowed to go on so long. Shameful. After the Quincy debacle, the IDVA’s top job has been making sure a mass outbreak of any disease never happened again. Yet, it did and IDPH wasn’t even on-site until November 12th. As mentioned below, they’ve pawned off responsibility to the local public health office, but hasn’t anyone learned anything from this pandemic?
* From the Sun-Times on the LaSalle Veteran’s Home hearing…
At a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Hearing last month, [IDVA Director Linda Chapa LaVia] said it’s “no coincidence” that cases within the home “began to rise just as cases rose dramatically in the surrounding community.”
The virus had to get in somehow.
* And community spread was rampant at that time. From IDPH…
The county’s 7-day average test positivity rate a week before the infections were discovered was 7.2 percent. By November 10th, the county’s average rate was 21.2 percent.
That area has a lot of political leaders who have resisted mitigation, including Sen. Rezin.
* August 13th…
State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, said she was disappointed by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules failed vote to suspend Gov. JB Pritzker’s emergency rule that would charge businesses with a Class A misdemeanor for violating mask-wearing and other public health orders.
“By not voting to suspend this overreach of power, the Democratic members of the committee chose to support the administration’s efforts to circumvent the entire General Assembly,” Rezin said in a statement Wednesday.
That decision came from the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, a 12-member, bipartisan, bicameral group that exercises oversight of the state’s regulatory process. […]
The order requires businesses, schools and day care facilities to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure that patrons and employees wear face coverings when they cannot maintain a six-foot distance from others. Reasonable efforts can include such things as posting signage that state face coverings are required, giving verbal warnings to customers to wear face coverings, offering a mask to patrons and asking customers to leave if they refuse.
* November 12th…
* Back to the Sun-Times…
In one heated exchange, LaVia talked over one representative, arguing she’s doing the best she can with “the resources and tools I have to investigate my own department and see where we went wrong” despite elected officials in LaSalle and elsewhere advising people to not adhere to mitigations set up by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month.
“But I also want to put something into play. … Our commander in chief Dr. Ngozi [Ezike], from day one, has been requesting people to wear their face masks, to wash their hands, to keep their distance,” LaVia said. “When you have a state’s attorney in LaSalle telling people not to adhere to mitigations in LaSalle, every one of the long-term care facilities had an outbreak, sir …”
* What we need here is a thorough reckoning, starting with the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs. No matter what was going on outside that veterans’ home, the IDVA is responsible for what happens inside it. We as a state have the deaths of 33 residents on our hands. More needs to be done to prepare for the future and to atone for the dead. Much more.
I also haven’t heard one peep from AFSCME about their members’ responsibility here. Why?
And the local officials who, even at the height of the outbreak, were encouraging resistance to, or sowing doubt about the state mitigations need to finally, once and for all, take a good, hard look in the mirror and realize the harm they are doing to the people who look to them for leadership. You can’t have it both ways.
- Cool Papa Bell - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:08 pm:
=take a good, hard look in the mirror and realize the harm they are doing to the people who look to them for leadership. You can’t have it both ways=
This, all day long.
- Oswego Willy - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:15 pm:
=== What we need here is a thorough reckoning, starting with the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs. No matter what was going on outside that veterans’ home, the IDVA is responsible for what happens inside it. We as a state have the deaths of 33 residents on our hands. More needs to be done to prepare for the future and to atone for the dead. Much more.===
How is Chapa LaVia still director?
=== In one heated exchange, LaVia===
There are 33 deaths with her as director and Chapa LaVia is in a heated exchange?
How has she not resigned? After all she said to Rauner, in April, fishing for “suggestions” of how to do her job… how is Chapa LaVia still director of this agency?
It’s time for a change. It’s been time for a change. The families deserve better.
- Candy Dogood - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:21 pm:
Given the scale of the expansion, and what we know about the virus and the transmission of the virus, by November 1st it may have been too late to prevent the additional infections reported in the 1st week of November.
If they waited until November 3rd before ramping up in response to the additional infections, again it is very likely that those folks testing positive by November 9th were also already infected.
If it is a situation where the protocols followed in the first two or three days were unable to prevent the spread and the massive increase of testing individuals was inevitable, they need to explain why.
Regardless with that amount of acceleration, it sounds like that in the last week of October or first couple of days of November, some of their protocols had been relaxed enough to produce a tide of total failure that by November 3rd was unable to be mitigated.
- Cubs in '16 - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:26 pm:
This was a perfect storm of personal irresponsibility for not adhering to mitigations and professional negligence. Passing the blame like a hot potato does nothing to prevent this type of thing from happening again. Learn from mistakes, accept responsibility for them, and make a plan for moving forward.
- The Dude - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:28 pm:
AFSCME and JB do get along very well to the point where they are not saying much.
I’m curious to see if that good relationship stays once this way once the 75 million negotiation talk starts. It could get ugly as that’s a lot of money.
- Thomas Paine - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:31 pm:
Isn’t Rezin a restaurant owner?
There are three questions I still do not have answers to:
1. Did the IDPH recommendations mirror the CDC recommendations?
2. Did the IDVA policy mirror the IDPH policy?
3. To what degree were the IDVA policies being followed, who was rsponsible for ensuring they were followed, and did any of those lapses give rise to infections or deaths?
3 will have to wait for the investigation, 1 and 2 can be answered now.
- Comma Chameleon - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:32 pm:
Not to minimize anyone’s responsibility for this, since as Rich notes they should have been prepared, but the speed with which COVID-19 swept through the LaSalle veteran’s home reminded me of Horton Foote’s play (and movie) “1918.” It dramatizes the speed with which the ‘Spanish Flu’ swept through the town of ‘Harrison,’ Texas (Wharton), and how devastating it was. It is online at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtjoDSjZ6w
- Candy Dogood - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:40 pm:
===It could get ugly as that’s a lot of money. ===
I don’t know, we could just check Rauner’s couch cushions.
- NIU Grad - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:49 pm:
“I also haven’t heard one peep from AFSCME about their members’ responsibility here. Why?”
This can be applied to a myriad of state scandals. The administration and agency directors are afraid to question the union. With the power they have built over the years, the leadership needs to start showing how they are able to hold negligent employees accountable. Otherwise they’re opening themselves up (again and again) to painting all state employees with a broad brush, which is undeserved.
- TheInvisibleMan - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 4:51 pm:
-=Isn’t Rezin a restaurant owner?=-
Sort of. She certainly has investments in businesses in the restaurant industry.
That comes off her financial disclosures when she was trying to run for another office.
Whether she wanted to push-to-reopen to directly benefit her investments, or because she puts money over life in general is just splitting hairs. Neither one reflects well on her, or her district.
- Lincoln Lad - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 5:37 pm:
Chapa LaVia is responsible. No spin, no acceptable excuse.
Sue Rezin shares responsibility by denying the severity of the pandemic repeatedly and with a purely political intent.
Politicize a crisis… people can die.
Wrap yourself in bureaucratic denial - you aren’t doing your job. People can die.
We need people in office and in the administration willing and able to do their jobs in a crisis.
- MyTwoCents - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 5:44 pm:
Ever since news of the outbreak broke I’ve had the thought that individual employees who violate protocols need to be punished to the fullest extent possible. Sometimes examples need to be made. Let AFSCME argue that employees aren’t responsible for bringing the virus into these facilities. Failing to do that is the fault of IDVA and they should be held responsible for allowing that behavior to continue.
As for Sen. Rezin, the employees of these facilities are a reflection of their local communities. If the community and the local leaders are not taking COVID seriously it is inevitable that there will be employees who do not take COVID seriously. Honestly, everybody involved in this debacle are basically responsible for the wrongful death of our veterans.
- walker - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 5:49 pm:
“”Given the scale of the expansion, and what we know about the virus and the transmission of the virus, by November 1st it may have been too late to prevent the additional infections reported in the 1st week of November.”"
True. It began to surge a bit earlier in LaSalle County overall. Yes, it’s been a serious problem at veterans’ homes across the country.
But that doesn’t mean better protections could not have been taken learning from the earlier outbreak in the Quincy home.
And yes, everybody’s in this hurt locker together, including staff, IDVA, AFSCME leadership, IDPH, local health and law officials, COVIDIOT legislators, and the Feds. Denial of the virus’ power leads directly to tragic deaths.
Learn from it and take action now. Selecting one person to blame and punish is a deflection, unless it directly changes others’ behavior.
- striketoo - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 6:35 pm:
Time to get the state out of trying to care for a relative handful of its elderly veterans. Transfer them to well run private facilities and pay for their care. Don’t take on a responsibility you can’t handle for any others. The state simply does not have the capability to be all things to all people. Time to respect that fact.
- Pot calling kettle - Thursday, Dec 17, 20 @ 6:53 pm:
I understand the frustration and mourn the lives lost, but why limit the focus to the LaSalle Veteran’s home? LaSalle County alone has had three nursing home outbreaks where the death toll exceeded 20.
This problem is not limited to the Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs. It seems to be endemic to the system, where we try to care for as many folks as possible for as little cost as possible.
The hearings should be looking at care standards at all nursing homes as well as looking at how those standards are enforced.
- Candy Dogood - Friday, Dec 18, 20 @ 1:56 am:
===individual employees who violate protocols need to be punished to the fullest extent possible===
Which employees? How do you know it was those employees? How do you know they contracted it and spread it while specifically violating protocols? What rule, law, policy, or contractual agreement are the employees bound to outside of work? What effort was made to create rules for outside of work specifically for COVID-19 or the flu? How was it implemented? If there weren’t any, did management even attempt to approach workers? What did management offer to create work conditions for time they weren’t on the clock?
What kind of comprehensive training was put in place? Was there a union delegated safety officer? For every shift? What effort was for their to enable enforcement of the COVID-19 mitigation efforts at the lowest levels of staffing? How often were there facility level meetings between representatives from the local union and managers to discuss if COVID-19 was going well?
You’re jumping leaps and bounds about the notion that there was something at the low level which was a fire-able offense for a rank and file employee and ignoring that this very contagious deadly pandemic could have many different sources and reared it’s head right after Halloween. Dozens of employees have been sick too.
The Administration can’t even build a case to explain what happened to the legislative branch. Do you really think they have the ability to string together a fact based position to fire someone?
And lets say you do fire all of them, where on earth do you think the State is going to find employees to replace them?
Healthcare workers have a lot of options right now, and I think it’s reasonable for healthcare workers to be sophisticated enough to recognize that an employer that fires everyone at a lower level to mask management’s failures isn’t worth their time.
So, good luck with that attitude. I hope you’re no body’s boss.
- SandyC - Friday, Dec 18, 20 @ 7:17 am:
I live in LaSalle and it’s true, wearing masks and being responsible is a joke to some. Regardless of that, I agree 💯 that this waiting to see was a disaster. These veterans deserve better, as do all those in homes where outbreaks are occurring. But, as usual, they are the last to be seen.