Is my thinking all wrong?

[glueandstick]

The issue in nursing homes and elderly in the community.

Are we just trying to stop the spread of CV19 to release the pressure on hospitals?

I’m not being coherent... but if these older people with poor life expectancy are going to die anyhow, why are we removing what little life they have left? No visits.,. No life.

An older relative spoke to my mother and said she’d rather die in 2 weeks and get to see family than in 2 months completely alone.

I dunno. It feels so cruel and hopeless.

I suppose if you went to visit you could contract it yourself and spread too.

Can anyone talk it through and show me the failings in my thinking. It just seems so so sad.

Not everyone in a care home is there for end of life care. Many are both nursing and residential. I work in a care home and we have residents who are mobile, who have capacity, residents who just enjoy having staff- whether that is for company or because they like to be looked after. Some people are there just for respite after falls or operations. We have residents who have years left in them. Our youngest is 53. Our oldest is 99.

What about the staff? Are we collateral damage? What about our families?

And yes people could come in, pick it up and spread it elsewhere. It could spread to residents in the home who don't want to die for the sake of someone else having a visitor.

It is desperately sad that we are closed to visitors, our ground floor residents are seeing family through the windows. We are facilitating FaceTime and Skype. Staff are spending as much time as possible making it easier for the residents.

It's awful but it really is necessary.

I’ve learned something already. It is a desperately sad situation. I guess we only hear about the stuff that’ll make headlines.

I'm sure philosophers will point out same as you, OP. We've taken away some of their quality of life with no gain because they died anyway.

This whole event is going to be revisited, rinse & repeat, for years or maybe decades to come.