[quote WeddingFavour]**@Cornettoninja* I’m seeing a disconnect between these statements…*
No disconnect. PP is saying that if you are actively unwell and contagious you shouldn't visit. Not avoid visiting for months on end on the off chance you might be asymptomatic. I'm sorry to hear about your father but if anything you're proving the opposite point. He's had covid twice despite restrictions. The time he has left to see his family has been limited due to restrictions and it still didn't stop him catching it. Also, antivirals could still be offered to care home patients if they meet medical criteria, same as any other patients.[/quote]
Only my experience, but restrictions for my df’s nursing home haven’t impacted in the sense we haven’t been able to see him for months on ends. Prolonged periods of 2-3 weeks, yes and it’s absolutely shit but we haven’t been kept apart for months.
I do see what you’re saying and given the high rates of infection it’s like pissing in the ocean, BUT morally, it’s not a black and white decision to expose a location which by default is caring for the CEV to an infection that stands a good chance of killing them, even if that’s likely to happen imminently anyway.
To draw on personal experience again, a conversation with my df’s consultants where they were tasked with explaining the prognosis included that his heart was too weak and damaged to even contemplate a procedure which may offer him more time. This procedure would likely kill him. My df’s feeling was that he’d rather have the procedure and just not wake up if it didn’t work than suffering the waiting for his heart to finally give up, I think I’d prefer that too but that’s not something any medical professional could agree to knowing his chance of survival. I see the nursing/care home / hospital situation as the same. There are very good arguments against their current policies but the barrier of knowingly fatally exposing them to something is a huge one.
Imho there is still very much an expectation that cases will naturally decline and covid will become less prevalent meaning that these policies will have to be enacted less. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, I hope it does.
On the point of antivirals, I genuinely don’t think my df would be given them, I could be wrong but I would understand if he wasn’t. Antivirals are also part of the reason testing will (or should) continue to seek out covid in risk groups because they have to be started so early in the infection. Things might have changed widely but for good reasons like this, there are groups that just aren’t there yet and simply won’t be able to catch up with everything else until there are either lower rates of infection or better options provided by science.