No one wants this virus to infest senior care facilities in the U.S. Or anywhere else. But at what cost? Social isolation and loneliness can also lead to health problems.
Reboot your iPhone, I wanted to say. But my mother is 96 and doesn’t know how to reboot anything. Plus, she’s hard of hearing. Phone conversations do not go well.She lives 2 miles away in a very nice senior living community, and until four weeks ago, had rarely been away from my father. My dad did everything from run their dishwasher to change channels on the TV. But on February 23, he suddenly collapsed and went from the ER to a nursing home, 2 miles in the other direction.
This has become life for many of us with elderly parents and grandparents in this no-visitor, keep-your-distance world. It makes sense in our collective effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and protect the people most vulnerable from the disease. In China, almost 15 percent of people 80 and older and 8 percent of people 70 to 79 died from Covid-19. No one wants this virus to infest senior care facilities in the U.S. Or anywhere else.
When it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, geriatrician and epidemiologist XinQi Dong told me, we really should be focusing on “the unintended consequences of social distancing” as much as the disease itself.The 19th surgeon general, Murthy has turned his focus recently to the health implications of isolation. .
My parents—and other elderly in lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic—are now missing at least one of these connections, and probably more. I also reminded myself that my parents are lucky. Although they are unable to physically see me or anyone else in the family, their respective facilities are staffed by caring aides, and my mother has lived in the retirement community long enough to have formed bonds with many of them.
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