Care home covid disaster - new info

[beentoldcomputersaysno]

goodlawproject.org/news/they-let-covid-rip-through-care-homes/

It’s all so sad

It's the false reassurance that got me, along with them having capacity to test.

Inexcusable. Whether it was deliberate (and I sadly think it was) or ignorance of so called experts and government ministers, people need to be held accountable. If us ordinary people could see that sending covid positive people out into carehomes would be disastrous then why couldn't they?

It looks like it was deliberate - just like mass infection of kids now.

My dmum caught Covid and died a week later in Jan this year. In fact my dad (in the same unit) also caught it but he was fine. Over 90% of the residents had it at that time. I will never ever get over seeing her die like that while I could stay for 5 mins (in ppe and holding her hand with plastic gloves on).

Horrific & someone needs to be held to account for it. @Kenworthington so sorry for your loss

I'm so sorry @Kenworthington Devastating for you and your family. There's no words for this. xxx

Very sad Did Jenny Harries put out that statement that the government asked her to? It's sickening the lies that we've been fed over the course of the pandemic, all the u-turns that's been done no the wonder everyone is mentally worn out.

I've very sorry for your loss @Kenworthington

This is just awful

I read an article few weeks back about the care homes and midazolam. Deliberate. Saying no more. Just glad ive no relatives in homes.

As someone who works in a care home, I knew this all along, we were thrown to the wolves and as usual no one was listening.
I've seen with my own eyes what happened, and we still have people who insist that the young have given up so much to protect the old.
We're supposed to advocate for those is our care, why the fuck is no one listening when we try to?

I doubt this will go anywhere either, though I'm heartened to see it's been addressed in some way, I really felt that the move to mandatory vaccination for only care workers and the backlash around that would totally eclipse this and it'd be forgotten - which is I'm sure, the government's intentions.
If I put residents at risk like that I'd be facing criminal charges.
The people who made this happen need to answer for it, and for the lack of PPE and the rest of the shit show.

And people wonder why we have a shortage of care staff!

It really does appear to be criminal manslaughter. From the very top, Matt Hancock, Dr Jenny Harries, Boris Johnson, all complicit in sending untested residents into carehomes March to April 2020. The email to Jenny Harries asking her to put some positive spin response out to reassure care homes is damning. The author Ros Roughton disappeared on a 'career break' not long after. Those care homes were forced to do this even though they knew it was not acceptable and fought to refuse to accept discharged patients. Why is Jenny Harries still preaching to us when it is obvious she will say or do anything the Government asks of her?

I worked in a local authority at the time and I remember true panic and worry. And the absolute and utter lack of direction and leadership from central government.

I was angry because they clearly had no clue about how to run things on the ground/front line and they didn’t trust those on the front line (local authorities) so either ignored or circumvented them.

All those deaths, it’s heart breaking.

I hope this makes some progress in the courts.

In the national memory, March is when the pandemic hit us. The excuse is that it was a "novel" virus, never previously experienced.

But that ignores the wealth of data that was circulating in scientific circles from China and other countries.

It was well known how it overwhelmingly negatively affected older people, and we had a working estimate for its infectiousness.

It does not take a genius to join those two facts up.

It turns out that any basic strategy like "discharge them if you have to; but hold on to them as long as possible" would have saved the day. No genius needed again.

Disorganisation and panic seems to be the reason, but it's not acceptable as an excuse. I hope ministers are held to account.

Regrettably I believe this may flounder as probably senior NHS and PHE leadership may have had to be in agreement, and I don't think there's appetite to lay blame there. I hope that is not right.

@puppeteer

I hope this makes some progress in the courts.

In the national memory, March is when the pandemic hit us. The excuse is that it was a "novel" virus, never previously experienced.

But that ignores the wealth of data that was circulating in scientific circles from China and other countries.

It was well known how it overwhelmingly negatively affected older people, and we had a working estimate for its infectiousness.

It does not take a genius to join those two facts up.

It turns out that any basic strategy like "discharge them if you have to; but hold on to them as long as possible" would have saved the day. No genius needed again.

Disorganisation and panic seems to be the reason, but it's not acceptable as an excuse. I hope ministers are held to account.

Regrettably I believe this may flounder as probably senior NHS and PHE leadership may have had to be in agreement, and I don't think there's appetite to lay blame there. I hope that is not right.

I think there is appetite to blame senior NHS and PHE, these people at the top making these decisions are not the same people who have been working tirelessly to provide care in some of the most challenging times the NHS had ever faced. These people have been paid millions to commit corporate manslaughter and have signed their names to documents and guidelines that have led to the deaths of thousands of vulnerable people, while care workers suffer PTSD from having had to work in the conditions that these bosses decided we're acceptable. If it was a private care company there would be criminal actions over policies like these, global pandemic or not, and Hancock, Harries, Johnson and all the others are not immune. They are paid to take the decisions, and should be held to account when those decisions cost 1000s of lives

looking at that it would be logical to conclude that, knowing there was not enough hospital capacity to treat everyone, care home residents were sacrificied. Back when Covid first hit the information coming out of China Feb / March 2020 was that men in their older middle age were highly at risk from it (e.g. such as the PM). With not enough capacity to treat everyone, decisions were made. This C4 documentary that was on recently summarises well the stats for the lack of facilities in the UK compared to many other European countries
www.channel4.com/programmes/clapped-out-is-the-nhs-broken-dispatches/on-demand/72600-001
and the ever increasing lack of staff to work them

But it’s not about treatment, is it?

The elderly were shunted back to care homes, not because they were being treated (at least not for covid), but because they took up space. And they happened to contract covid while in hospital.

Or at least that’s what I understood.

Are you saying they were taking up covid beds for the incoming wave?

But that’s even worse, isn’t it? It means we actively took them off covid treatment, as well as returning them home, for the sake of patients that never came. (I guess I understand withdrawing treatment towards a patient that is unlikely on balance to recover for sake of another that is, but not if that patient doesn’t actually exist.)

The elderly were shunted back to care homes, not because they were being treated (at least not for covid), but because they took up space. And they happened to contract covid while in hospital

In effect yes it was this. NHS trusts were given instructions from the government to discharge around 25000 patients. There is a lot more to come out but I understand that when patients were identified to be discharged it had to be done within 1 hour. There was still capacity in hospitals but remember at the time there was such uncertainty as to how high hospital admissions were going to escalate. There was no protection considered to residents or staff in care homes.

"We threw a protective ring around our care homes" was a lie surprise surprise.

@Kenworthington

My dmum caught Covid and died a week later in Jan this year. In fact my dad (in the same unit) also caught it but he was fine. Over 90% of the residents had it at that time. I will never ever get over seeing her die like that while I could stay for 5 mins (in ppe and holding her hand with plastic gloves on).

I'm sorry for your loss.

Collateral damage of people seems to have come (and is still coming) a bit too easily for those in power.

So sorry to hear about everyone's beyond awful experiences. My uncle was in hospital at the time Covid broke out. He was then sent to a rehabilitation unit and tested regularly and really looked after. He was 'released into the wild' is the only way I can describe it in June 2020. He should have been allocated a Social Worker within 6 weeks. It took 6 months, and we were told it was for 24 hours only. He was shoved into Assisted Living Accommodation at the age of 84 with no means of supporting himself. I'm his only family and I'm a single parent who is 350 miles away from my uncle. He now has Covid, after his carer came down with it, and passed it on to him. He is Diabetic and hasn't eaten in 7 days. When I speak to him, he is just a shell of the man I knew. My cousin is a carer and refuses to take the vaccine. My head can't quite process how all of this has been allowed to pan out as it has.

For comparison, I watched Pearl Harbour with my 9 year old DD last night. At the end, she said "that wasn't real though was it Mummy?" I had to tell her that it was a story based on real facts of WW2, but it was decades ago and wouldn't happen now. Except she's just seen 4 elderly relatives die of Covid in the past 16 months and will hopefully tell the story to her own kids telling them about this historical time (and be able to say it's in the past now)

Care home bosses are responsible too. They did not isolate new residents and cohort staff.
They had staff moving from covid positive to negative residents.
They are still doing it, the government guidelines permit it.
Also only surgical masks for staff working with COVID positive residents, also in line with guidelines.

All the money spent on the Nightingales and Test and Trace - cross infection principles and treatment could have prevented deaths.

@pombal

Care home bosses are responsible too. They did not isolate new residents and cohort staff. They had staff moving from covid positive to negative residents. They are still doing it, the government guidelines permit it. Also only surgical masks for staff working with COVID positive residents, also in line with guidelines.

All the money spent on the Nightingales and Test and Trace - cross infection principles and treatment could have prevented deaths.

It’s very difficult to isolate if you don’t have testing capacity or the layout to do it. The testing capacity was pretty shocking in the early months.

I hope there’s a proper investigation into what happened and how to avoid again

It’s difficult to isolate but not impossible but it involves planning, adjusting rotas, moving residents.
Some care homes have had no covid cases others have had wave after wave and it’s not just luck.