The crime against the nursing home elderly
One of the many horrible things about the COVID lockdowns was the plight of the elderly in care facilities. They were the most vulnerable to serious and even fatal cases of the disease, but they were also especially hurt by the stress and angst of extreme isolation. There are readers on this blog who expressed what is was like for their elderly relatives, and the emotional – and even physical – suffering that ensued from the increased isolation.
It made little sense because staff came and went, and were likely to spread the disease around anyway. But the fear of proprietors that their facilities would experience tremendous – and perhaps legally actionable – loss was understandable. Usually, Draconian measures were put in place, and often residents weren’t even allowed outside.
I have a friend who has a good friend living in an independent living facility who was nearly a prisoner in that place for around a year. At one point, my friend visited her clandestinely (I’m not sure how that was done) and they sneaked outside and slightly off the grounds. It didn’t take but a few minutes for staff to find them and give them a tongue-lashing, re-imprisoning her friend and increasing the quarantine she was under. And this occurred in a facility for healthy, wealthy, active older adults.
Here’s a description of what one man and his elderly parents suffered in the UK. It’s called “Lockdown killed my mother — and thousands like her – ‘It’s cruel,’ she would say, over and over again, in the painful phone calls from her care home”:
:
For my parents, like so many people of their generation living out their later years in care homes, lockdown offered not protection but imprisonment. ‘It’s cruel,’ Mam would say, over and over again, in the painful and awkward phone calls that we shared over the last year or so. ‘Just cruel.’ ‘What have you been doing?’ ‘Nothing. Staring at the walls.’…
Both my parents felt that throughout the pandemic, the balance of risks had been wrong. They could not understand why the focus on avoiding COVID-19 now trumped everything else. As care-home residents, they felt that they had become collateral damage in an increasingly politicized debate. More than anything, they felt forgotten.
Like thousands of other care-home residents, they were asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate letters at the outset. And like thousands of others, they agreed, because they didn’t want to be a bother to anyone. Those letters — and the decision to decant hundreds of untested pensioners out of their hospital beds and back into care homes — showed just how expendable they and their generation were considered to be.
Those who survived were shut away, denied visitors, left to believe that they had been abandoned. Many, like my mother, became profoundly depressed. They died in their thousands, often alone. My mother was right about how cruel this was.
I think that’s a good point – that people of that generation and that age were used to assuming many risks, often greater ones than COVID. Many probably did feel, like the author’s parents, that the effects of the lockdown were worse than the risks of the disease. But they were not consulted, and it didn’t matter what they thought. Ironically, in the end the lockdown probably didn’t even prevent all that much disease, and other policies (sending COVID patients back to nursing homes) put them at greater risk than necessary.
And then there were the funerals:
Everyone had to wear a mask unless they were standing to speak. Singing wasn’t allowed. We all had to be socially distanced. There were about a dozen people in attendance. In normal times, there would have been many more, because Mam touched the lives of so many people.
She had left a very clear set of instructions for a simple funeral and had asked for three hymns, including ‘Away in a Manger’, because it was a favorite and she was called Carol. As the curtains started to close around the coffin and the first bars of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ were played on the organ, my dad said ‘To hell with this’, and we sang anyway. Just him and me.
It seems, from the author’s description, that his mother was beginning to suffer from dementia even before COVID and the lockdown. So she was on a downward trajectory anyway. But it also seems apparent that the lockdown shortened her life and made her last months much worse than they otherwise would have been been, both for her family and for her. And all of this was done by health and governmental authorities who did not seem to take the costs of their policies into consideration.
And it is still going on, at a lesser level for sure, but still. They still insist on masks even though they know, really know, that all these people have been vaccinated and nothing will get the employees to move faster than a resident leaving their room without a mask.
16 months of this garbage and with each day we get closer to fall and winter means it will probably continue maybe forever at these facilities.
My mom and our family have really hit the trifecta on this one. For about 14 months she was in various states of lockdown at her independent living facility then she got an infection (not COVID) and had to go to the hospital where she could have no visitors for a week which led to confusion which led to her being released to a nursing and rehab facility where guess what, one day after arriving a staff member tested positive for COVID so lockdown for what turned out to be three weeks with no visitors and more confusion. Finally we pretty much busted her out of that place and now she is back at her ILF and has readjusted pretty well. There is no doubt that she has slipped some mentally but it has got better since she left the rehab place. It can’t be overstated the damage isolation does to the elderly.
Independent living, hospital, nursing and rehab is truly the trifecta you do not want to hit in our current times.
OT: have you seen this at Fox? Here is what Barry Gibb is like today.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bee-gees-barry-gibb-seen-rare-public-outing-miami
Tangential, but but this is my opportunity to relate this true story.
My wife was admitted to a hospital a few days ago for a scheduled, but nonetheless vital, surgery.
When it came time for a visit, they happily let me through, with a bracelet that read, “COVID-19 PRE-SCREENED.” The next day, I figured that letting me in with no screening, pre- or otherwise, was a slip-up, and I arrived armed with my covid vaccination card, showing I’d been twice Moderna-stabbed, with dates.
I proudly showed my Certificate Of Legitimacy to the front desk person who was dealing out visitors’ bracelets, she looked at it, and she then proceeded to ask me “what’s THAT?”. Guess they just had surplus bracelets to use up. I can understand using up the surplus bracelets, but for this woman to see a covid vax card and ask “what’s THAT” strikes me as an overall lack of seriousness, where I did not expect it.
Well . . . hmmm . . . our esteemed governor dined at a fancy-shmancy restaurant with a state health official and a health industry-related lobbyist, indoors, with about a dozen *un*-masked people in attendance, just around a year or so ago [remember THAT summer?]. Yeah, you know about him, the one who’s facing a recall election in September. (He probably *won’t* be recalled.)
‘Nuff said? (Dear wife is home now, beginning a long, slow recovery.)
expat:
I’ve watched lots of recent interviews with Barry, and so I know what he looks like now. For 74, pretty good, but obviously not the way he looked in his 30s (which was fabulous). But I was especially interested in the larger photos that appeared in this British article, that included his wife. The woman is around 70 years old and she’s wearing stiletto mules on her feet, to go shopping! I am duly impressed.
Griffin:
I’m very glad to hear your mother is doing better. What an ordeal!
Early days with folding COVID lockdowns when the atmosphere around the world full of the scariness with an unexpected deadly disease, when the numbers daying climbing in Italy and Spain, also the UK, with the news targeting this matter, then reported first elderly care facilities casualties from Italy where they found from my memory 21 elderly in care facilities dead, photos on TV shows imbalance, with people wearing full protecting gear brings bodies from inside to the cars from care facilities building, then another story from the UK similar to that in Italy.
We watched those incidents and been asking where the nurses or caregivers?
why the left?
whey no one makes a call to the health office about it?
days past and months and years, nothing comes to light about what’s gone wrong.
What’s disturbing those elderly care facilities have their manger/ owners or companies they paid or make revenue from those care facilities, where were they why not been questioned or may be brought to the court?
We still do not know the full story of why no one holds responsible from staff or the management companies.
Both of my wife’s parents passed away a year or so before COVID hit. They had both been wonderful people in their prime, but in later years ended up in assisted living with dementia, and they both could be very combative at times. Although the staff were great, my wife needed to be there almost every day to calm them down, put out fires, etc.
My wife now says that she is so grateful that they both passed away prior to COVID because she can’t imagine what the last year of their lives would have been without her.
An infection that is more deadly for the elderly. It is passed by close contact. You are in charge of an eldercare facility. Infections and deaths will be a disaster for your facility. What would you do?. Especially considering that the infection and information about it is quickly politicized. It was almost guaranteed to be a mess. Except that in a few cases they did things mostly right.. What did they do in Florida, which seemed to get thigs mostly right in eldercare facilities.? Someone needs to write a book about what happened and provide a guide for the future. If we don’t learn from this, things will not improve.
J.J.,
Yes, and at first we were OK with that at my mom’s facility but as it went along it became more of a make it up as they go random kind of decision making. They made a big deal about how they didn’t have a positive test until February of 2021 but at the same time they only tested the entire facility including staff once in that entire time because they said they never reached the criteria (symptoms) for testing. But then a week after the vast majority of the residents had their second shots a staff member tested positive and that led to them being totally locked down basically from Feb. ’21 to late May ’21 even though all of the vulnerable elderly were fully vaccinated.
And the lockdowns were so stupid. My mom was having a problem with her TV and the staff couldn’t fix it but my fully vaccinated sister knew the problem. But they wouldn’t let her walk 20 ft through the lobby then across the outdoor courtyard and through my mom’s patio to fix the problem. These kinds of things have happened dozens of times.
Now her facility that was 90% full is apparently operating at about 45% capacity right now. Really rolling the dice if you go into one of those facilities right now.
We reached the point after the vaccine where we didn’t think COVID would kill my mother but the insane response to it might kill her. And it still might.
Staying safe from COVID was important but not at the cost of everything else. Living 80,90,100 years only to die alone and confused is no better just because it wasn’t from COVID.
Griffin:
So sorry to hear of your mother’s suffering, though I’m not surprised.
I believe the young are also paying a high price to be locked away from socialization and education at a crucial time in their lives. At best they’ve lost a year. At worst they may be crippled.
You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats the unborn and the elderly. A backup telltale is to listen in on the speech of teenage girls.
Some societies deserve to die — and any rebirths will have to be phoenix-like with all that that entails.
In this sort of inf\ection, historical experience argued to protect the weak.
Instead we shut down all society. The elderly were not well protected. I think it has now become widely known that this was because China said shutdowns were working for them, which was not true.
In China itself, society reopened fairly quickly. But the elderly were fanatically protected. My MIL and FIL live in a Chinese elder-care home. The workers were kept onsite for months. We called daily and often asked about the workers. For months they never left. At first they slept in chairs and mats on the floor, then cots were brought in. After some months, they were allowed to leave for the weekend and tested before re-entry.
JimNorCal,
Yes, the staff was a constant issue with my mom and our family. My mom was always asking why they get to go home to their lives but I am locked in here and if they test positive they stay home with their families and the residents are locked down for months.
Basically the residents lives and freedom were at the mercy of a bunch of low paid twentysomethings.
If memory serves I believe of the five positives at my mom’s facility only one was a resident and that person was asymptomatic. The rest were staff members.
JimNorCal:
That’s fascinating.
The moment I heard that New York was sending Covid positive patients deliberately back into nursing homes, I knew they were deliberately driving the numbers up.
And then there is Whitmer’s state where they sent sick YOUNG patients into nursing homes….
If you wonder if they would load you onto trains if they had the power, you already have your answer….
@Jon Baker:
Luckily these clowns can’t make the trains run on time.
The nursing home thing was scandalous to say the least, but the overall approach used against the populations of Western Civilization by their governments was environmentalist inspired “ Precautionary Principal” , not balanced Risk Management, applied to public health. And that is ignoring the evidence that more nefarious motives were at play, at least in some circles.
“Precautionary Principal”
There’s a time and a place for this… I think it’s more a perverted Pascal’s Wager that our rotten Elites have hoodwinked themselves and much of us with.
Same-same, But Different as that noted race of Philosophers, the Thais, are wont to say.
We are dealing with the Religious Impulse run wild here.
We are now talking about what went wrong. And we know much of what went wrong was due to politics. But we also know that so much was unknown or at least kept from the public – seemingly for political reasons That’s why it’s now necessary to analyze this and make sure that the same mistakes aren’t repeated.
I empathize with anyone who was in an eldercare facility during the pandemic. But for the fact that my wife and I have moved in with our daughter that is where we would have been. We’re both still able to feed/dress/bathe ourselves, and do some home chores, but each year we are progressively less capable. We are determined not to go to eldercare unless it’s the last possible option. Between our daughter doing some things and hiring “visiting angels,” we hope to finish our lives in our home.
For those who must go into a facility, we need to establish better practices. We must get politics out of healthcare and public health. We need some voices of reason to speak out and write about what works and what doesn’t. We can and must do better. But unless someone can write it down for people to study nd analyze, it will all be for naught.
My wife and I do Meals on Wheels, some of whose clients are in independent living. I’ve delivered to four different facilitnies. Instead of entering and going to the apartment, we now bag the meals with room numbers and leave in the foyer for staff to deliver.
Except for one. There, mask, sanitize, walk in, knock, deliver, say hi as in the old days.Same as other deliveries or visitors. No problems.
Somebody had guts.
My father died at the end of January 2020. I’m glad I was able to be with him when he passed and spend time with him during a long hospitalization. If it happened a couple of months later he would have been alone through it all.
I had a friend that died this year. He was in a nursing home with MS. For about a year he could only do zoom meetings. Also while the nursing home had covid cases and he was kept confined to his room.
My wife was at a critical stage of alzheimers where remembering family members was becoming ever more difficult when the facility was locked down. After two months, l got a call informing me that her condition was critical and I should visit her. I was able to get them to allow her son to visit, but no one else. We weren’t able to do much more than watch the final days and doubt if she was aware of our presence.
I suspect the COVID saga will contribute to the end of the feminist-driven anti-family movement that gripped our country in the 20th century. The experiences of families being unable to be with their dying parents will make a strong impression on the minds of the young and women will start insisting they be allowed to reclaim their role as primary caregiver. It simply isn’t the same having an agency, clinic, or nursing home assume that responsibility.
reclaim their role as primary caregiver. It simply isn’t the same having an agency, clinic, or nursing home assume that responsibility.
They’re in nursing homes because (1) they don’t trust their relatives, and (2) they’re not ambulatory, and (3) they’re commonly senile as well. My grandfather and his brother could and did take in their elderly parents in 1945; their parents were capable of braving a 175 mile train ride, climbing stairs, and defecating without assistance. If you can find a nursing home resident who can manage these physically, you’ll find they’re unable to form new memories and are losing their old ones. You had, in 1955, 850,000 people living in state asylums. One reason you have fewer than 100,000 today is that a portion of that clientele is housed in institutions more precisely adapted to their problems, nursing homes among them.
This was indeed one of the most awful aspects of last year.
One place in France figured it out early on and did things right:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/france-vilanova-nursing-home-1.5554296
My aunt, in her late 80s and suffering from cognitive issues, died in March after spending a year locked down in the memory care facility where she lived. Her daughter — an only child — was not allowed to visit throughout that time. They did have Zoom calls, but that’s not much help when your understanding is as limited as my aunt’s was by then. My cousin said, so sadly, that the only communication that meant anything to her mother by that time was to hold her hand or stroke her hair. Of course that’s not possible with Zoom, and my aunt and cousin went through that last year of her life without that loving contact. The blessing of her memory issues was that my aunt didn’t really remember how long she’d been alone, and she stayed cheerful, singing to the staff or anyone who would listen in her lovely voice every day, just as she always had. But that didn’t work for my cousin, who missed her mom every day, and of course still does.
The combination of isolating the elderly in nursing homes to “protect” them while simultaneously undoing the protection by knowingly moving people who actually had Covid into their homes is so cruel, abusive and stupid that I don’t know when I’ll get over being so angry that my heartbeat speeds up and my stomach churns when I think about it. I know the people who run the nursing homes were trying to do their best, even if they made mistakes. But Cuomo wasn’t. Selfish monster.
Another perspective. I worked in numerous nursing homes in New Jersey during the Pandemic. Most of them had covid spread throughout and had 12% of the residents in 3 months. And more that were very ill. What clearly helped was having a separate wing with isolated ventilation for covid patients. And then IMMEDIATELY isolating anyone who had even a cold or one fever. Every facility had lockdown so there was no way to tell if that helped or not.
Not trying to say that a particular lockdown policy was right or wrong, but that some policies did indeed have the potential to save A LOT of lives.