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Covid Policy Killed My Grandmother

40 points| riverlong | 4 years ago |jayriverlong.github.io

25 comments

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[+] zibzab|4 years ago|reply
Counterpoint 1: Sweden delayed locking down nursing homes and then implemented it really poorly. A huge percentage of COVID deaths were due to a nurse getting sick, coming to work anyway and basically killing half of the residents. Without lockdowns your 95 old grandmother would probably have been dead by now.

Counterpoint 2: did you take care of her and talked to her everyday, or maybe taken her home? Otherwise at 95 she could end up like this with and without lockdowns.

I find it funny that you bring numbers into this (at her age she had only 3.4 years to live but only 11% chance if dying of COVID). You cannot mix emotional and cold like that in the same post...

[+] CryptoPunk|4 years ago|reply
>>Sweden delayed locking down nursing homes and then implemented it really poorly.

Canada locked down nursing homes completely yet 98.5% of COVID deaths were in nursing homes.

After a year, a hundred and fifty thousand nursing home patients were still confined in their room in the province of Ontario:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/long-term-care-covid-...

What has been done to so many people, in the name of safety, during this pandemic, is obscene, and an affront to the principles of liberal democracy. This episode in our history demonstrates the utter inhumanity and banal brutality of anti-libertarian ideology.

>>did you take care of her and talked to her everyday, or maybe taken her home? Otherwise at 95 she could end up like this with and without lockdowns.

When you advocate for a forceful intervention, it's your responsibility to anticipate how the target of your intervention may fall short in adjusting to it.

Your argument is reminiscent of neocons blaming the post-invasion chaos in Iraq on the people of Iraq not forming a civil society and functional democracy quickly enough.

>>I find it funny that you bring numbers into this (at her age she had only 3.4 years to live but only 11% chance if dying of COVID). You cannot mix emotional and cold like that in the same post...

You can absolutely mix emotions in with numbers. In fact, you should. Emotional reactions should be informed by facts.

[+] carlosdp|4 years ago|reply
My grandparents had just moved into a nice elder care home right before COVID lockdowns started. They were put into the same conditions as described by the OP (although at least they had each other). I remember receiving a photo of them looking at my mom and her siblings through glass doors, that was the maximum of contact they were allowed from visits.

They and my family decided to take them out and put them back in their own house instead of leaving them in lockdown. Reading this, I'm glad that decision was made.

[+] car_analogy|4 years ago|reply
A compelling, emotionally charged personal story, backed up with cold actuarial statistics. A rare gem.
[+] nullbytesmatter|4 years ago|reply
Post was emotionally charged but left me thinking, “If you cared so much about her why did you stick her in a nursing home?”
[+] truffdog|4 years ago|reply
Because taking care of someone full time means you have to quit your job. Often this means that you can't pay rent.
[+] jleyank|4 years ago|reply
Depends on where the facility was I guess, as they burned through many states/provinces (underfunded?) places pretty badly when covid started. Hard to manage when the usually-part-time staff is either the transmission vector or flees the scene. Perhaps Covid revealed that far too many of these places are merely storage containers for those unable to live on their own?
[+] mbfg|4 years ago|reply
Correlation is not causation. As sad as it is, saying that a 95 year old doesn't suffer from age related decline is a tall assumption. What is the purpose of nursing homes for advanced aged people? That is the question that one has to answer, i guess. Is it to keep them alive and physically healthy? I'm sure there are disagreements on this. But if it is not this, what is the purpose? To give t hem as much joy as possible without regard to longevity? A Nursing home likely cannot customize the priorities per patient. If a person wants a different priority than what is supplied i suppose they are on their own to supply that.
[+] rubatuga|4 years ago|reply
This is what happens when health policy is based on media optics and public opinion, along with a myopic view on “health”. Can’t really blame health authorities too much, they would have met a lot more criticism if they had a more loose Covid policy.
[+] nradov|4 years ago|reply
Some other countries had looser COVID policies. Did their health authorities meet a lot of criticism?
[+] ichugwindex|4 years ago|reply
Why not try to use technology to bridge the gap? I know video chat might be beyond some people, but a phone call from a couple family members every week seems simple enough.
[+] copperwater69|4 years ago|reply
Why not just take her out of the nursing home?
[+] waste_monk|4 years ago|reply
The house may not be elder-safe in terms of fall hazards and so on, the family may not have the ability to afford a home nurse or to have someone unemployed acting as a carer, carer burnout is a real danger and can break families, the grandparent may have specialised medical needs that require skilled care that is not available in a household setting, one or more family members may be involved in high covid risk jobs that make it inappropriate to host a vulnerable person... I'm sure there are many more good reasons, these are just a few off the top of my head.
[+] encryptluks2|4 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] moistly|4 years ago|reply
> What did we learn about rates of suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic (first 16 months)? In contrast to alarmist predictions of increasing rates of suicide as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, overall rates actually declined or at worst stayed stable

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8110323/

First hit on “covid suicide” on DDG. Care to provide rebutting evidence?

[+] Gibbon1|4 years ago|reply
> COVID policy has increased suicide in youths

No