COVID Nurse working Elmhusrt hospital in Queens leaks video footage.
By Peter Bianco
Update Nurse Erin has now written a book, “Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital,” which details her experiences.
Nurse Erin Olszewsk spent almost a month working in Elmhurst hospital which has been described as the epicenter of corona virus deaths in the US. What she witnessed there caused her to speak out.
She made recordings, posted warnings on social media and spoke through proxies.
In a video titled “Perspectives on the Pandemic | The (Undercover) Epicenter Nurse | Episode Nine,” [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDsKdeFOmQ%5B/embedyt%5D nurse Erin shows video footage of patients who repeatedly tested negative by the hospital being listed as “COVID confirmed” in their medical charts.
Nurse Erin also describes that many patients come to the hospital with the concern that they are having difficulty breathing, are really just suffering from anxiety because every one is so scared. She said that when working as a COVID nurse in Florida most patients she would see were just experiencing anxiety.
Erin is quick to say that there are people who are actually suffering from COVID and need help but not to the extent of a ventilator.
She is concerned by seeing patients who repeatedly test negative for COVID being basically told by doctors if you don’t go on a ventilator you probably won’t survive. These patients have no family members with them to help them to make a rational decision.
“The reality,” nurse Erin says, “is if they get on that ventilator the likelihood of them getting out of that hospital is slim to none.”
According to nurse Erin, the ventilators are being operated by “residents” which are essentially students with no hospital experience, not critical care doctors.
And these students are practicing unnecessary invasive procedures on people.
Another concern of nurse Erin is that while she was at Elmhurst only about half of patients tested positive for COVID and half tested negative but they are all housed together on COVID floors of the hospital.
They even put COVID and non-COVID patients in the same two person room. Even after the hospital was no longer short on beds they continued to mix COVID and non-COVID patients in the same room.
One patient’s family members discussed in depth with the doctors that they wanted the hospital to do everything they can to save him. When the patient came to the hospital he was able to talk. Doctors convinced him to go on a ventilator. Nurse Erin was told by doctors if the patient “codes” not to resuscitate or try to save him. This was against the family wishes and family are not allowed into the hospital. She and other nurses fought to save this patient. The higher ups would not allow them to do so.
Other nurses could recognize that many of Elmhusrt’s practices were harming if not killing patients there. Nurse Erin thought they did not intervene because they were rule followers, unwilling to confront authorities even when it was clear the authorities were not making sense.
Another example, a 37 year-old male comes in with respiratory distress, and is otherwise healthy. He tests negative for COVID. His blood oxygen levels test at 88 or 89%. They put him on a rebreather and he was doing fine. The next day when his blood oxygen was 87% he was put on a ventilator and then he got pneumonia. Then they put in a chest tube. Then things went bad and now he is dead.
Back home in Florida when she was treating patients with COVID nurse Erin never had a patient die. All of the patients she saw there recovered. The use of ventilators was not as prominent. And hydroxychloroquine and zinc were used as a treatment.
As part of the same executive order that granted hospitals near blanket immunity from malpractice suits during the “epidemic”, Governor Cuomo singled out hydroxychloroquine as the one drug that cannot be used for an off label therapy for COVID-19.
During her time working as a nurse at Elmhurst, Erin only saw one patient who survived in her unit. This man removed himself from the ventilator that staff put him on.
Looking at a page from the Kaiser foundation it seems that hospitals received about $48,000 per uninsured patient on a ventilator for more than 96 hours during the “COVID-19 emergency period”. That is about $8,000 more than usual because of the CARES act.
Nurse Erin thinks money may be driving these bad policies that seem to be coming from the top.
Hospital staff are not held accountable for malpractice due what nurse Erin calls COVID standards.
The majority of patients are Black, Latino and Asian in their 40’s and 50’s. These patients are low-income, lower class and Elmhurst is a public hospital.
When medical interventions are incentivized and accountability is removed it is an invitation for harm.
Will politicians to set us up for the same type of harm in an attempt at a COVID vaccine? Vaccine manufacturers have great financial incentive paired with no liability. Liability must be reestablished and companies must be held responsible again for paying damages to people or family members who are harmed. Especially if companies are allowed to make massive profits.
