Tracing the nursing home COVID tragedy to its source(s): A Q&A with watchdog Richard Mollot Updated Mar 16, 2021; The failure of nursing homes to keep our seniors safe during the COVID outbreak will always be New Jersey’s greatest pandemic disgrace, a perfect storm of inadequate staffing, poor infection control, equipment shortages, inept management, and oversight lapses that contributed to the loss of 8,000 lives. But it also clarified our obligation to transform how long-term care facilities are governed and operated, treating them not like human warehouses but as an integral part of a compassionate health care system. To get there, we checked in with Richard Mollot, the executive director for the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a non-profit group that advocates for nursing home residents. Mollot, a Montclair resident, spoke with Dave D’Alessandro of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board, in a conversation abridged for clarity: