Seniors are increasingly left to protect themselves as the rest of the country abandons precautions: “Americans do not agree about the duty to protect others.”
Ed note: Are seniors being forgotten as we try to break out of isolation and masks? Why are so few team members and directors unwilling to wear masks when around us–even in the elevators? Paula Span in this NYT article outlines the problem. COVID is NOT GONE. Continuing precautions are reasonable. IMHO we do have a moral duty to protect others!
By Paula Span Published Feb. 11, 2023 Updated Feb. 13, 2023
In early December, Aldo Caretti developed a cough and, despite all his precautions, came up positive for Covid on a home test. It took his family a couple of days to persuade Mr. Caretti, never fond of doctors, to go to the emergency room. There, he was sent directly to the intensive care unit.
Mr. Caretti and his wife, Consiglia, both 85, lived quietly in a condo in Plano, Texas. “He liked to read and learn, in English and Italian,” said his son Vic Caretti, 49. “He absolutely adored his three grandchildren.”
Aldo Caretti had encountered some health setbacks last year, including a mild stroke and a serious bout of shingles, but “he recuperated from all that.”
Covid was different. Even on a ventilator, Mr. Caretti struggled to breathe. After 10 days, “he wasn’t getting better,” said Vic Caretti, who flew in from Salt Lake City. “His organs were starting to break down. They said, ‘He’s not going to make it.’”
At least, this late in the pandemic, families can be with their loved ones at the end of life. When the family agreed to remove Mr. Caretti from the ventilator and provide comfort care, “he was alert, very aware of what was happening,” his son said. “He was holding everyone’s hand.” He died a few hours later, on Dec. 14.
For older Americans, the pandemic still poses significant dangers. About three-quarters of Covid deaths have occurred in people over 65, with the greatest losses concentrated among those over 75.
In January, the number of Covid-related deaths fell after a holiday spike but nevertheless numbered about 2,100 among those ages 65 to 74, more than 3,500 among 75- to 84-year-olds and nearly 5,000 among those over 85. Those three groups accounted for about 90 percent of the nation’s Covid deaths last month.
Hospital admissions, which have also been dropping, remain more than five times as high among people over 70 as among those in their 50s. Hospitals can endanger older patients even when the conditions that brought them in are successfully treated; the harmful effects of drugs, inactivity, sleep deprivation, delirium and other stresses can take months to recover from — or can land them back in the hospital.
“There continue to be very high costs of Covid,” said Julia Raifman, a public health policy specialist at the Boston University School of Public Health and a co-author of a recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine. (continued)
I am very worried about our community and all of those who act as through they will always be exempt from COVID. The waiters who do not wear masks. The people who travel and come back with COVID. And we do not know how many cases there are and whether these folks are following protocal. IT seems as if, to me anyway, many people have decided all is well. Right now, I know a number of people who have it, yet our leadership acts as though ‘all is well’ again. SHAME of them. Thanks for bringing up the subject for those of us who do care, and who know we have responsibility to ourselves and to our fellow residents.