Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 20, 2020 / 02:45 pm (CNA).- Deaths from the new coronavirus (COVID-19) have soared in U.S. nursing homes, a trend that some advocates say reflects society’s disdain for the elderly.
“The nursing homes have been ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic” said Jim Towey, founder and CEO of the group Aging with Dignity.
Towey warned of a “disturbing undercurrent” in the conversation about the high occurrence of COVID deaths among the elderly, one which downplays the numbers because of the age of the patients and their supposed proximity to death.
“That is a function of a utilitarian view that Pope Francis has consistently criticized,” Towey said.
Overall, the New York Times reported more than 28,000 staff and patient deaths from the coronavirus at nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the U.S., as of May 11.
Nursing homes accounted for 11% of the overall COVID cases in the U.S., but have borne 35% of the COVID deaths, the Times reported.
As the coronavirus pandemic spread rapidly in the U.S. in March, nursing homes were at the epicenter. Early on, Life Care Center in Washington state drew national attention for its outbreak, and by mid-April there were more than 40 COVID-related deaths among the home’s patients.
With the virus fast spreading in the Northeast and on the West Coast, some state officials were concerned about a possible lack of hospital beds to treat COVID-19 patients. New York, New Jersey, California, and Pennsylvania began mandating that nursing homes could not reject patients discharged from hospitals, who had the virus and were stable.
On March 25, New York instructed nursing homes that they could not deny new patients even if they carried a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal reported.
This, said Charles Camosy, a theology professor at Fordham University, helped “create an uncontrollable wildfire of infection and death” at nursing homes.
Camosy wrote a Sunday New York Times op-ed on the virus’ toll on nursing homes. He told CNA on Monday that the statistics were “awful,” but a sign of the times.
As nursing homes and long-term care facilities “were already pushed to the margins of our culture, it actually made sense that the dignity of these residents and workers was ignored and their lives discarded,” he said.
In some cases in New York, empty homes were transformed into COVID wards as with one former Catholic nursing home near Buffalo, which reopened as a recovery center for COVID patients.
Other nursing homes in the state were devastated by the virus.
At a single health care center in Queens, New York, there have been 82 reported COVID deaths. Confirmed COVID deaths at nursing homes number 432 in Queens and 489 in Suffolk County; there were 484 “COVID presumed deaths” at Queens, and 227 in Suffolk, according to the state health department.
The situation for some homes grew dire so quickly that, by the beginning of April, the CEO of the Archdiocese of New York’s health system ArchCare advised families of nursing home patients to take their loved ones home if possible.
A high-ranking ArchCare chaplain also told CNA there was a critical shortage of PPE in the nursing homes at the time, with staff being asked to use one face mask for a whole week and beyond rather than change the mask in between each patient, as normally advised.
Nursing home outbreaks in other states have also pushed up death tolls there. There were 45 deaths by mid-April at one Virginia nursing home. Carroll County in Maryland reported more than 50 COVID-related deaths at nursing homes by the end of April.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on Tuesday that 81% of the state’s COVID-related deaths occurred at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities; state officials were still allowing infected COVID-19 patients to be discharged to nursing homes to free up more hospital beds.
In a one-week period in Connecticut, nearly 90% of the state’s COVID-related deaths were nursing home patients.
In Florida, according to a National Review report, Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his administration’s response to the pandemic. He said Florida focused attention from the start on vulnerable populations, especially the elderly, and barred symptomatic workers from entering nursing homes. Staff were required to wear PPE, and state inspectors visited homes to provide guidance.
Even with the precautions, however, 938 of the state’s 2,052 coronavirus deaths–46%–have been patients or staff at long-term care facilities, according to statistics from the state’s health department.
New York reversed its mandate this week, allowing nursing homes to refuse patients who contracted the virus. However, the damage has already been done, Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, told CNA last Friday.
“I have some sympathy that, in the midst of the explosion, people were dealing with a true emergency,” Smith said. Yet, he added, “one can’t imagine the thinking that would go behind” the state’s decision, “unless you thought that they didn’t matter as much as other people.”
If an investigation into state policies uncovers “any hint of that” mentality, Smith said, there should be sanctions for “egregious and invidious discrimination.”
One precaution that could have been taken before the pandemic—and must be considered in the future—is to help families plan for long-term care so they don’t have to make drastic decisions for their loved ones during a public emergency, said Towey.
Towey is also the former director of the White House Faith-Based and Community Initiatives during the Bush administration, and served as the legal counsel for Mother Teresa for 12 years.
“In many cases,” he said, there was “negligence” demonstrated by nursing home operators that led to the “premature death of many people.” Proper safeguards were not in place to protect patients from the virus.
Yet when considering future policies to protect the elderly, Towey emphasized that they cannot be isolated indefinitely and “can’t live in a world without hugs.” Any policy must “address this disease of loneliness that’s pervasive.”
“I’m worried more about where we’re headed with long-term care, and how we do this in a humane way, because the elderly need most of all to love and be loved,” Towey said.
“That was the lesson Mother Teresa taught. And you just can’t wrap them up in bubble wrap to protect them from illness.”
And even after the pandemic subsides, the cultural trend of families “warehousing” their elderly members will still need to be addressed.
In some cases, Camosy acknowledged, there is no other choice than for an elderly person to be admitted to a nursing home, due to their family’s financial situation or the lack of a family caregiver.
“But in a large number of cases the social expectation is that ‘the place for mom’ is somewhere outside the home,” he said.
Camosy has written about Pope Francis’ condemnation of the “throwaway culture.” He pointed to a cultural trend of families pushing elderly members into nursing homes and forgetting about them, helping to explain why states failed to protect nursing homes from the pandemic.
“We push those whose dignity is difficult to acknowledge and respect to the margins where we don’t have to think about it. We like the consumerist lifestyles and autonomy we’ve achieved and don’t want to mess it up,” Camosy said.
Smith said that the churches need to be at the forefront of fighting the epidemic of loneliness in nursing homes.
“I think that our churches need to step up,” he said.
“There are an awful lot of lonely and semi-abandoned people living in such facilities. And I think that the Christian community, based on their faith, should up its game in reaching out to helping people know they are not alone.”
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
.
Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?