Shocked by the news coming from care homes

[YogaFaker]

It seems that really vulnerable old people and those adults with conditions that need round-the-clock care are the sacrificial lambs in this government's inept non policies for dealing with COVID-19.

I find this shocking, really shocking. People are of value whatever their age. Yet the policy seems to have been to let them die, if they contract C-19.

There was a thread here or on aIBU which made claims for the preferential treatment of elderly people in this pandemic. I don't think so. The vulnerable elderly have been totally let down.

Shame on us.

ParkheadParadise That is despicable, I would do everything I could to ensure someone so special was comfortable

I worked in a hospital and remember walking into a side room to see a lady in a bare room, with her suitcase on the chair zipped up.

I spent 45 mins putting all her things away, getting blankets for her bed, to make it look nice, fresh towels & I got her tea & biscuits, and found fresh flowers in the day room (that had been left for staff) that I put on her windowsill.

She had cards & drawings from her family that I stuck on the wall in her line of sight.

I did it for her of course but the thought of her family walking into that room fucking horrified me.

Here is some interesting research about how care staff are feeling about all this too www.kent.ac.uk/news/covid19/25045/kent-law-school-research-initiates-covid-19-recommendations-to-government

"You can always have help for them at home,"

Have you ever looked into that for someone?

The staff aren’t likely to be dreadfully unwell with it though so the protective measures are for the elderly residents

Actually, they certainly are dropping like flies - they may not die but they are getting ill and where do you think their replacements come from?

I am fascinated by the moral outrage displayed on boards like this. All health and social care, all public services, have been shamelessly cut for the last 20 years. And we all knew about it. Who didn't know about lengthy waiting lists that some people never got to the end of, pressurised care services privatised for profit, and all the rest?

It appears that in this "new reality" there either isn't a single person who knew how bad things were getting (in which case, which planet were you on?) or wasn't on the side of the great and the good, fighting the cuts (in which case, how did I miss you all?). We are reaping what we sowed, in the name of a few tax cuts. And now you don't like the crop?

But never mind, it'll all be fine. Care staff don't need job security instead of zero hour contracts, or and end to minimum wage jobs. They have a shiny new badge instead.

In Ireland, the resident needs 2 negative tests before being allowed return from hospital to the nursing home.

Well said @Moondust001 I couldn't agree more

@Porcupineinwaiting That's precisely the situation we WOULD be faced with if all these elderly people were admitted to hospital and that's precisely why they're not.

There are around 200 hospitals and 15,000 care homes. We are an ageing population with (stats from last year) nearly 5.5 million over the age of 75 and over a million aged 85 and over. Hundreds of thousands of whom are in care homes.

There are thousands of deaths of people infected with COVID in care homes already and this will sadly continue. That would be thousands, eventually running into hundreds of thousands of acute hospital beds taken up if they were transferred to hospital.

@Zantedeschia I've a friend in Ireland and where she works the hospitals wouldn't take residents and told them to stay at home

You can't always care for them at home if both people work. Stop being so inflammatory and making people feel bad.

It's not that a child's life is with more, it's surely that the child has the right to a life, whereas someone 85 has already had theirs. The elderly person has had their opportunity to grow up, study, experience love, a family, work and travel. To deny a child this is wrong.

The staff arent likely to be dreadfully unwell with it

No, they are less likely to die of it than the residents (but certainly at higher risk of death than Jo Bloggs in the street, just like NHS staff).

As for dreadfully unwell, that's exactly what many people with COVID actually are. I've been I'll for 28 days now, and was dreadfully ill for 18 of those. It's not a walk in the park for very many of us, it's absolutely awful.

@porcupineinwaiting no they shouldn't do without jars of Waitrose artichoke hearts either, oh yes but I didn't say that as I didn't say they should do without oxygen.

I think, we should learn from cultures where people actually take care of their own parents and don't put them into care homes unnecessarily. You can always have help for them at home, in an environment where they live around family

Alot of assumptions being made here.
Firstly- I am an only child. In the cultures you mention, presumably there would be lots of siblings to help, it wouldnt be solely on one person's shoulders.
Secondly, No, you cannot "always have them at home with care". My house hasn't got a spare bedroom. It has enough bedrooms for me and my h and one for my kids. Where do you suggest this elderly relative sleeps if there is no spare bedroom? and no, I cannot afford to move house for this reason.
Thirdly, social services have told me that if you cannot cope independently with 4 carer visits a day then the chances are, you should be in residential/nursing care. How would I have cared for my dad when he couldn't be left alone for more than 5 minutes? when he was getting up for hours and hours at night and rattling the doors and trying to leave the house to go somewhere even he didnt know where? I cannot do that and work full time and I cannot give up my job and still pay the mortgage.

Its all very very easy to say in theory "I'd care for my parents because I love them!" but when you have someone you love needing personal care (help with showering, toileting, dressing etc) and they are becoming aggressive and abusive towards you through no fault of their own and they are constantly at risk of injury its not quite so easy.
Please dont judge until you are in this scenario yourself because you have no idea what its actually like.

@Somebodysringingabell if the first person to fall I'll with COVID in a care home was removed to hospital (they still have capacity in many places) then that protects not only the staff but the other residents too. Leaving them there just creates a "Diamond princess " scenario where it spreads and spreads.

A childs life isnt worth more necessarily than an 85 yr olds

But in any situation if you could save one, you are always going to save the child. Who wouldnt?

If theres one ICU bed left yoir going to give it to the child. Especially when the chance of the 85 yr old surviving with any quality of life is non existant. Its not about their lives being worth more or less but what intervention can give that person.

Your chosing between potentially giving a child their whole life vs an elderly 85 yr old most likely dying, if not 6mnths in hospital where they then die.

@Ernieshere
That was a lovely thing to do, shows that you are a very caring person. Sadly that would never have happened at my mum's place.

As others have said, these patients are unlikely to survive ventilation and if they are dying anyway, dying at the care home is probably the best way they can go under the circumstances. It would be brutally hard for the staff, who aren’t trained to deal with this situation.

Dying at the care home may be the best way to go under the circumstances provided there are enough staff, sufficiently trained, and medications to ease suffering are available.
Dying from coronavirus isn't a peaceful death. People can be very frightened, in pain and struggling to breathe.
Care homes aren't regulated in the same way hospitals are, it's unlikely that staff are all sufficiently trained in giving the hospice-like care that's needed.

MummyPop, I wrote a similar post to yours but thought I'd get a lambasting for it. Back in the 80's both my grandmothers died of old age in their late 70's. Both basically died in their sleep. I never heard of dementia back then.

I know of 2 people who are early 80's, in and out of hospital and then sent home alone. Their families do nothing for them as carers come in to do everything for them. The family don't need to lift a finger. In fact they told me they don't want to claim carers allowance as then they'd be obliged to help. These 2 elderly people cannot do anything for themselves. They are being kept artificially alive. I know it's a morale dilemma, but if this is where we are at now, where is it going to end. I see people living to 106, what's it going to be in 20 years time. 120? It's unsustainable.

If you admitted the elderly onto a cpap machine you might keep them alive, but at some point they will have to die.

They will sit in the hospital bed until they die. They wont ever be discharged home, the hospital would be full of care home residents and there would be no beds, yet the outcome is the same. They die but more people who would have survived die because they didnt have beds for them.

Keeping a care home resident in hospital who hasnt been tested, if they havent been tested this means they were admitted for non-covid. If you keep that person in they will get covid and die.

Testing isnt instant. You test, wait 2 days for results by which point youve got to test again, because theyve spent 2 days hospital and therefore might have caught it. The longer they spend in hospital the more chance of catching it.

People who think they should stay in until they know their covid status are making the same decision but on a smaller scale, that one care home residents life is worth less than all the others.

Friend works in a home and they said,from the start of this, once it gets in they’ll lose everyone in there. They’re basically left to manage as all medical staff are dealing with those who have the highest chance of survival.

@Porcupineinwaiting Do you not know very much about COVID? By the time someone has symptoms they've been carrying it and spreading it for up to 2 weeks.

So no, removing the first resident to get ill to hospital isn't protecting staff or other residents as they've already been exposed and in the case of the residents, already infected because they're elderly and more at risk of contracting it if exposed due to decreased immune function and multimorbidities.

YogaFaker
But I hope that when I'm an 85 year old, and need medical intervention, I don't get treated by the people who think that my life is worth less than a child's. My life is worth everything to me.
Your life is if equal value to everyone else's. I read somewhere that children under ( I think it was) 10 are highly unlikely to contract CV. It's unlikely that the scenario of choosing between a child and an 85-year old adult needing ventilators would occur but, if it did, if neither had underlying health issues and one had to be picked to go on a ventilator, I'd prefer them to have an equal chance. Pick straws if necessary.

@Dish almost none of that made any sense.

We all have to die sometime, but even elderly people can and do survive coronavirus in quite high numbers, with supportive treatment.

We are told hospitals are under capacity so why are care home residents less worthy of that capacity than someone of a similar age who lives at home? And why risk the lives of 20+ other residents by refusing to test patient zero.

Even the government now admits that this is a void argument.

Giving oxygen sounds simple unless you have tried getting a confused,demented ,bewildered person to keep a mask on and stay in their chair or bed.
I don't think there is an answer.It would be cruel to move many of these people to any setting away from the care home and carers they know(and the nightingale idea is simply inhumane.
Whatever we do many of these elderly people are going to die because they are not isolated and can't be because many are there because they need physical care.
We can do something about protecting the staff so they can continue looking after them to keep them as comfortable as they can.
As to what anyone dies of there will be some who die because of Covid in most but not all as their existing health problems make it hard to fight off,some who die with Covid(but died for other reasons) and some who dies from other causes.
A go not seeing patients has to give a best estimate but saying it's all Covid is naive.
It's shit but instead of pointing out all the faults and hand wringing what would you actually do do for these thousands of people in their final years?