Whitmer’s top doctor downplays COVID nursing home deaths: ‘Tough decisions have to be made’

Embattled Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s top medical adviser downplayed the COVID-19 nursing home deaths that have scandalized the governor’s administration.

Michigan’s chief medical executive Natasha Bagdasarian, who joined the Whitmer administration after the scandal broke, said the two-year pandemic has illustrated that “tough choices have to be made.”

“It’s difficult for me to comment on things that occurred before I was both working at the state and, actually, before I was even in Michigan,” Bagdasarian said. “However, I can say that, during the pandemic, what we’ve really seen is that tough decisions have to be made, sometimes with very little notice as we learn new information and as the virus changes.”

“So, this whole pandemic has just been an opportunity to learn and to be as agile and nimble as possible,” she continued. “And it’s difficult, I think, to second-guess some of those decisions that were made early on in the pandemic when, again, we were still learning about the virus and learning about how it behaved in certain settings.”

Typically, the immune systems of the elderly are not as effective as those of younger people, meaning that highly infectious diseases like COVID-19 are more likely to spread among older populations.

Gustavo Portela, communications director of the Michigan GOP, told Fox News Digital it is “despicable that the Whitmer administration’s chief medical executive is defending the actions taken by Gretchen Whitmer that placed COVID positive patients in nursing homes, endangering some of the most vulnerable to this virus.” – READ MORE