"God Doesn’t Want Us to Sacrifice the Old-Christianity teaches that every single human life is valuable, even during a pandemic," By Russell Moore, New York Times, March 26, 2020
"That means we must listen to medical experts, and do everything possible to avoid the catastrophe we see right now in Italy and elsewhere. We must get back to work, get the economy back on its feet, but we can only do that when doing so will not kill the vulnerable and overwhelm our hospitals, our doctors, our nurses, and our communities.

And along the way we must guard our consciences. We cannot pass by on the side of the road when the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and the vulnerable are in peril before our eyes. We want to hear the sound of cash registers again, but we cannot afford to hear them over the cries of those made in the image of God."


"Coronavirus Diaries: I Live in a Retirement Home. My World Is Shrinking," Elaine Yaffe, Slate, March 30, 2020
Repost on request.
"Last week, they locked the doors and sealed them with yellow tape, giving this residence for 100 old people the appearance of a crime scene. Then they posted the signs announcing that no one from the outside—not family, not friends, not vendors, not anyone—could enter.

The visitors used to give shape and focus to our otherwise formless days. Yesterday, I had to check the dateline on my New York Times to remind myself of the day of the week. How could we know it was Monday without water aerobics and posture class? Wednesday was always tai chi with Eric, who told anecdotes about his time in China. Thursday there were lectures, often given by the former music critic of the Rocky Mountain News. Friday I could always count on a visit from one of my husband’s former students, who picked me up for lunch and an afternoon running errands—essential help, since these days I have trouble reading the labels on boxes and cans at the supermarket. Her stories about her week’s activities gave me welcome views of the outside world."
Go here -> https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-diaries-retirement-home-elderly.html


"Nursing home infections, deaths surge amid lockdown measures," Jim Mustian, Bernard Condon, and Candice Choi, AP, April 2, 2020
"Nursing homes across the country have been in lockdown for weeks under federal orders to protect their frail, elderly residents from coronavirus, but a wave of deadly outbreaks nearly every day since suggests that the measures including a ban on visits and daily health screenings of staffers either came too late or were not rigorous enough.

Recent outbreaks in Tennessee, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland have pushed the death toll at the nation’s nursing homes to at least 450 and highlight the biggest gap: Screenings of doctors, nurses, aides, and other workers do not involve actual testing but the taking of temperatures or asking health questions that still allow infected, asymptomatic people to slip through."
Go here -> https://apnews.com/78e495c299d67e60d45729352f2c0d44


"Number of long-term care facilities with COVID-19 cases tops 400 nationwide-Signs from multiple states point to a rapid increase in cases in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities," Laura Strickler, NBC News, March 30, 2020
Repost on request.
"More than 400 long-term care facilities nationwide now have residents who are infected with the coronavirus, an increase of 172 percent from 146 on March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Signs from multiple states point to a rapid increase in cases in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

On Friday, a Washington state official told NBC News that 53 facilities had reported cases. New Jersey health officials announced Monday that 70 homes had cases. In New York, it's 155, according to the state Health Department. Los Angeles County's public health director announced Monday that the county had cases in 11 nursing homes."
Go here -> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/number-long-term-care-facilities-covid-19-cases-tops-400-n1172516


"The Devastating Clarity of a Pandemic," Nick Martin, The New Republic, April 2, 2020
"The coronavirus has finally made the daily realities of poverty real to callous politicians and the mainstream press. There's no going back."
Go here -> https://newrepublic.com/article/157116/devastating-clarity-pandemic


"Partisanship is the strongest predictor of coronavirus response-Among Americans, partisanship has been a stronger predictor than age, gender, geography, even personal experience, a new study shows," By David Roberts, Vox, March 31, 2020
"The US is a land divided. Americans have sorted themselves into opposing factions, with different values, sources of authority, and shared understandings. In some ways, there is no longer any meaningful US “public,” but rather two publics that want and believe different things.

The current state of deep polarization in the US is the subject of a great deal of discussion and research right now, including in an excellent new book by my colleague Ezra Klein. One aspect of it that I have highlighted in a number of posts (start here) is what I call America’s epistemic crisis. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy having to do with knowledge and how we come to know things; the crisis is that, as a polity, we have become incapable of learning or knowing the same things, and thus, incapable of acting together in a coherent fashion."
Go here -> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/31/21199271/coronavirus-in-us-trump-republicans-democrats-survey-epistemic-crisis
And here -> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/what-covid-19-debate-has-common-aca-fight/608797/


"Public Health First," Robert Reich, March 30, 2020
"It may seem logical to weigh the threat to public health against the accumulating losses to the economy, and then at some point decide economic losses outweigh health risks. As Stephen Moore, who is advising the White House, warns: “You can’t have a policy that says we’re going to save every human life at any cost, no matter how many trillions of dollars you’re talking about.”

But whose “trillions of dollars” of costs are we talking about?

Workers typically bear the biggest burdens during economic downturns, especially if they lose their jobs and don’t have enough money to pay the bills. Eighty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck."
Go here -> https://robertreich.org/post/614042606348943360


"The Virus That Tells Us Who We Are-The new coronavirus presents a test of public health and other essential services. Right now the United States is failing that test," Richard Cooper, Issues in Science and Technology, March 10, 2020
"Virtually every country in the world has been forced to take a difficult standardized exam over the past two months. Although the exam question—what would happen if you faced the emergence of pandemic from a new virus?—was not new, and in fact experts had assumed it would be a coronavirus, every virus has unique biology, so this exam was also a pop quiz. At the risk of overusing the metaphor, China took the exam first, and was struck by a fit of anxiety, tried to cheat by hiding from reality, and bombed the first section. But they staged a recovery at warp speed and by the accounts of expert observers have accomplished something of a modern miracle. How? By taking necessary dramatic action to control the activity and daily lives of tens of millions of people, building huge hospitals in two days, setting up diagnostic assays that deliver results in four hours, shifting an army of medical care workers to affected regions, and rapidly acquiring an understanding of the disease—all the key elements of containment and treatment—and so it looks now like China has stopped the epidemic in its tracks."
Go here -> https://issues.org/the-virus-that-tells-us-who-we-are/


"Trump Refuses to Reopen Federal Health Insurance Exchanges During the Coronavirus Pandemic," Elliot Hannon, Slate, April 1, 2020
Why, because it's a legacy of Obama.
 "The Trump administration did not give any reason for refusing to reopen the health insurance marketplace during the pandemic, but President Donald Trump has publicly supported the umpteenth GOP legal effort, this one led by Republican governors, to destroy the Affordable Care Act once and for all. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, which could put the 10-year-old law, and the 20 million Americans who get health coverage from it, in jeopardy."
Go here -> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/trump-refuses-reopen-federal-obamacare-health-exchanges-coronavirus.html
And here -> https://upnorthnewswi.com/2020/04/01/trump-refuses-to-reopen-healthcare-enrollment-even-as-millions-lose-jobs/


"Defeating the Pandemic Means Confronting Ageism and Ableism," Ashton Applewhite, March 26, 2020
Despite the irritating jargon, the thrust of the article is spot on.
"Why is coronavirus spreading across the US? Not because a virulent virus jumped from an animal into a human. Not because of China, or selfish youngers and clueless olders. COVID is spreading because the virus is new and contagious and because we live under a system that picks profit over people at every turn. The pandemic has exposed our shredded social safety net as never before, and a hospital system crippled by decades of cost-cutting, underfunding, and chronic understaffing by underpaid workers to benefit profiteering corporations.

This is playing out nakedly on Twitter at the moment. The hashtag #NotDying4WallStreet is trending as people recognize the implications of President Trump’s calls to end the lockdown soon, which infectious disease experts strongly recommend against. #GrandparentsShould is trending too, in response to the suggestion that grandparents should sacrifice themselves for the good of the economy. (Sample tweet: #GrandparentsShould stop voting for Nazis who want to kill them off to give the stock market a boost.)

Never have ageism and ableism been so glaringly exposed."


"Despite profound changes to the age structure of our society, ageism is still rife. This report looks at the role and impact of language and stereotypes in framing old age and ageing in the UK," Centre for Ageing Better, 2020
From the UK. Mind the spelling.
"Ageism is a combination of how we think about age (stereotypes), how we feel about age (prejudice) and how we behave in relation to age (discrimination). Not only can it affect how we think and feel about others we perceive as ‘old’ or ‘young’, it can also affect how we feel about our own ageing process. These attitudes are often reflected in and created by the language we use about age and ageing."

 
"Covid-19 causes more harm to seniors than just death," Dr. Alexander Sasha Rackman, The Hill, March 30 2020
"As a geriatric medicine physician specializing in care for older adults, I am witnessing the COVID-19 pandemic cause more problems for older adults than just sickness and death. The implications of widespread social distancing and cancellation of routine home-based medical care will be profound and potentially devastating for elders.
It’s getting harder for seniors to get care at home at a time when they need it most. The COVID-19 pandemic is majorly disrupting critical home care services. Home health agencies hesitate to continue skilled nursing or therapy services for homebound seniors at the risk of potentially infecting them. "
 

"What explains Covid-19’s lethality for the elderly? Scientists look to ‘twilight’ of the immune system," Sharon Begley, STAT, March 30, 2020
"Researchers on Monday announced the most comprehensive estimates to date of elderly people’s elevated risk of serious illness and death from the new coronavirus: Covid-19 kills an estimated 13.4% of patients 80 and older, compared to 1.25% of those in their 50s and 0.3% of those in their 40s.

The sharpest divide came at age 70. Although 4% of patients in their 60s died, more than twice that, or 8.6%, of those in their 70s did, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London and his colleagues estimated in their paper, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The new estimates come as scientists have been scrambling to figure out the underlying reasons for older people’s greater susceptibility to the virus — and, in particular, why some mount a stronger immune response than others."


"Geriatricians’ advice on what older adults need to do in coronavirus pandemic," Judith Graham, Washington Post, March 28, 2020
"She knew it wasn’t a good idea and her daughter would disapprove. Nonetheless, Barbara Figge Fox, 79, recently went to four stores in Princeton, N.J., to shop for canned goods, paper towels, fresh fruit, yogurt, and other items.

“I was in panic mode,” said Fox, who admitted she has been feeling both agonizing fear and irrational impulsivity because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Susannah Fox, Barbara’s daughter, had been warning her exceptionally healthy mother for weeks of the need to stay inside as much as possible and limit contact with other people. Everyone 65 and older is at high risk of complications from covid-19 and should adopt these measures, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

“At one point, when I was pushing her to limit her activities, my mother said defiantly, ‘Well, I’m going to die of something,’ ” said Susannah, an adviser to health-care and technology companies. “And I said, ‘Well, that’s true, but let’s not rush it.’ ”


"How Can Long-Term Care Providers Navigate COVID-19? 5 Ideas." Kathleen Graham, March 30, 2020
"The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of news and information. What began as a seemingly minor report of a new coronavirus in China’s Wuhan city and Hubei province has escalated into an international health crisis. Now we are living in a pandemic and the United States, like many other countries, is facing a potential crisis in its health care system, with many states, hospitals, and other care providers fearing collapse under the number of new cases.

As key members of the health care system, direct care workers are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic response, struggling—often with limited information, supplies, and support—to maintain services and keep their clients and themselves safe. For this article, we consulted COVID-19 guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization to distill five immediate steps that long-term care providers can take to support direct care workers during this unprecedented crisis."


"Low Pay, High Risk: Nursing Home Workers Confront Coronavirus Dilemma," By Emma Cott, Ben Laffin and Elie Khadra, New York Times, March 31, 2020
Video.
“Who else is going to take care of them?” We spoke with nursing home workers about their fear of catching and spreading coronavirus."


"Should You Bring Mom Home From Assisted Living During The Pandemic?" Judith Graham, Kaiser Health News, March 31, 2020
Dr. Alison Webb took her 81-year-old father out of assisted living, to live.
Coleen Hubbard took her 85-year-old mother out of independent living, to die.

With the coronavirus moving through facilities that house older adults, families across the country are wondering “Should I bring Mom or Dad home?”
It’s a reasonable question. Most retirement complexes and long-term care facilities are excluding visitors. Older adults are asked to stay in their rooms and are alone for most of the day. Family members might call, but that doesn’t fill the time. Their friends in the facility are also sequestered.

In a matter of weeks, conditions have deteriorated in many of these centers."


"She’s Alone, 105 and in a Nursing Home Threatened by the Virus-With visitors banned, family members are in a panic: Who will feed their parents? Who will change the sheets?" John Leland, New York Times, March 31, 2020
"For five years, twin sisters in Brooklyn have visited their 105-year-old mother every night in her nursing home, bringing dinner and feeding her, overseeing her medications. That stopped two weeks ago, when nursing homes barred visitors to keep out the coronavirus. Now the sisters have no idea what condition their mother is in or whether anyone is taking care of her.

“We don’t know how she’s going to survive this,” said Gerry Baker, one of the sisters. “When we couldn’t see her, it felt as if my mom had transitioned and we were waiting to have the funeral.”

"Why suspending the Social Security payroll tax is a terrible idea," Alicia H. Munnell, Market Watch, March 29, 2020
"I know that the president’s proposal for a Social Security payroll tax cut has met with little enthusiasm in Congress. But let’s put it to rest for good. It’s not the appropriate response to the COVID-19 crisis, and it’s best not to fool around with the nation’s most valuable program.

As I understand it, the initial notion was to suspend until the end of the year both the employee and employer portions of the payroll tax. That is, the government would stop collecting the 6.2% Social Security tax on the first $137,700 of earnings paid by the employer and the employee. It would also eliminate the 1.45% Medicare tax paid by both parties. Self-employed workers would be entirely relieved of the 15.3% they pay."

"Social Security Spotlight," National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, 2020
"Social Security Spotlight was created to provide a one-stop information source detailing the impact Social Security has for millions of American families living in all 50 states, their communities and throughout the economy. By providing data on Social Security’s economic impact as well as detailed data on beneficiaries by state, county and congressional district, race/ethnicity, age and gender, this research offers a clear and compelling description of the vital role Social Security plays throughout America."


"The Thief Who Knows You: The Cost of Elder Exploitation Examined," Jilenne Gunther, AARP, Spring, 2020
"By the time my grandfather had reached his 90s, he was physically incapacitated; my grandmother, meanwhile, had dementia. They had agreed they
wanted to age in place in the home in which they raised their family, so instead of entering an assisted living facility my grandfather hired
in-home aides. He and the rest of the family grew close to the aides.
Unfortunately, all was not smooth sailing from there. My family soon noticed things were missing from the home. Worse, cash was disappearing from my grandfather’s wallet. My family was primed to see these developments as a red flag of financial exploitation and thus was able to stop it. The culprit, it turned out, proved to be one of my grandfather’s in-home aides. My grandfather was lucky that his family was paying attention and that he lost only a minimal amount. "


"Scams are taking a heavy emotional toll on senior citizens-It maybe even worse than the financial cost, a new survey says," Brett Arends, MarketWatch, March 5, 2020
"Elder Americans are cheated and defrauded out of billions of dollars every year by family, friends, unscrupulous advisers, and independent con artists.
The average victim loses $34,200. In 7% of cases the losses were more than $100,000.

And the emotional toll of being cheated in your golden years usually swamps the financial cost, says a new report.
Senior clients who’ve been defrauded suffer a “substantial” psychological cost more than twice as often as they suffer a substantial financial cost, chartered accountants told a survey conducted by the American Institute of CPAs."


"More economic victims of COVID-19 as milk prices slide again," Jake's Wisconsin Funhouse, March 30, 2020
On Wisconsin
" Just when you thought maybe the worst of the dairy farm crisis was behind us, it turns out milk prices are falling again, especially as eating places close and the rest of the economy dries up."


A voter reacts to state guidelines for absentee ballots," By Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner, March 31, 2020
On Wisconsin.  The author raises good points.  Talk to some older folks you know to get their take on this.
"The barriers, they just keep getting crazier. They must be written by people who don’t have any grandmas.”


"Coronavirus crashes the Wisconsin primary-The pandemic has led to a shortage of poll workers, a potential turnout dip and several lawsuits, but the April 7 vote is still going ahead," Zach Montellaro, Politico, March 31, 2020
On Wisconsin.
"The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on Wisconsin’s upcoming statewide election, one of the only presidential primaries still scheduled in April.

The state is facing a huge shortage in poll workers ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Local elections officials may have to close and consolidate precincts to manage the situation, and some are warning of steep drops in turnout. State officials are urging voters to request absentee ballots so they don’t have to vote in person, but there isn’t the time or resources, or the appetite among state legislators, to just send ballots or even ballot request forms to all voters, the plan adopted by some states postponing their elections."


'You've Been Served': Wisconsin Hospitals Sue Patients Over Debt — Even During Pandemic-," 104 Lawsuits Filed By Wisconsin Hospitals Since Evers Declared A Public Health Emergency," By Bram Sable-Smith, Wisconsin Watch, Thursday, April 2, 2020
On Wisconsin. Compassion in the world of corporate healthcare.
"Blanche Jordan is taking social distancing seriously during the coronavirus pandemic. The 39-year-old is a breast cancer survivor with a compromised immune system.

So when she is not working as a caregiver at Elizabeth Residence, an assisted living facility outside of Milwaukee, she is staying inside the Milwaukee duplex she shares with her boyfriend and daughter, where she is stocked up on games to pass the time.

When her doorbell rang Sunday night, Jordan was beginning a new 1,000-piece "Game of Thrones" puzzle on her living room floor.

Jordan recalled standing up, putting on a mask and opening the door to find a woman standing on the other side. The woman, who identified herself as Veronica, handed Jordan a paper and relayed a message: "You’ve been served."


Granny Tweet
Charming.