Who would have thought that a relatively short story called “Death By or With COVID” would have had so many responses from readers? It must have hit an industry chord because it does ring true. Most of the people dying in nursing homes or other senior living communities had serious health issues before COVID struck. And if it wasn’t COVID, it was going to be one of their co-morbidities, if not the 2020-2021 flu season.
And then the “news story” hit that only 6% of the COVID deaths were solely from COVID. Apparently, the conspiracy theorists took to their twitter accounts, President Trump included, obviously to downplay the role that COVID has been playing. We swear, we had nothing to do with it.
The controversy arose because the CDC updated some data showing the underlying conditions for those who died “of” COVID. The other 94% averaged 2.6 additional conditions or causes of death. So there you go, only 6% died solely of COVID, and the others died of a variety of conditions, with COVID coming on top of them and most likely making them worse. Other than for politics, and the industry’s reputation, we are not sure what impact this will have, if any. Regardless, this is something all senior care providers have known since the outbreak of this pandemic. Their customer base is frail and the average length of stay is not too long in the best of times.
But then we received a post yesterday, in response to our first story, from someone who thought we should add another category to the “by” and “with” COVID. That would be death “because of” COVID. What he meant was that because of the pandemic, the isolation caused by the visitation restrictions is having a terrible impact on residents’ health and well-being, and perhaps resulting in death, eventually.
He had just come from visiting with his 92-year old mother in an assisted living community, but the visit was from the other side of a glass window. She had visibly gotten worse in the past six months, confirmed by the staff, partly because of the loneliness of not being able to see family and friends who might visit, and partly because of the stress of the pandemic in general. So, if she dies soon, it will be “because of” COVID, and not by or with COVID.
Why is this important? Because the general media has to begin to understand the health conditions of our seniors in many senior living environments. This isn’t just grandma singing kumbaya and baking cookies. And government officials have to understand the unintended consequences of their policies meant to protect the well-being of senior living residents, and that they can have an opposite effect. When you are 92 years old, you just want to live, and die, in peace, but not in isolation, and not of loneliness, and not “because” of COVID. Let senior living providers make their own decisions for what is best for their residents, and we are sure families will appreciate it.
