Putting infectious covid patients back into nursing homes isn't nothing. It was a baffling and callous decision, which happened to kill the mother of a good friend, so I'm not exactly neutral on the subject.
I understand the reasoning at the time was to prevent hospitals from needing to turn more people away, by shifting patients who didn't need intensive care back to other facilities (nursing homes) that could handle them. But I agree 100% it was a bad decision and made the situation much worse in NY.