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An article in Nowhere Magazine several years ago explored the ways ancient cultures dispatched the elderly, a practice known as senicide. Author Justin Nobel recounted several gruesome rites that made the Inuit habit of putting Granny on an Arctic ice floe seem humane.
DR. NICOLE SAPHIER: IN BATTLING CORONAVIRUS, WE MUST DO MORE TO PROTECT NURSING HOME RESIDENTS
At one point, Nobel mentioned that his own grandparents had moved “to a fancy nursing home in the suburbs of New York City.”
That made me shudder.
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If they are honest, historians judging the American experience during the coronavirus pandemic will excoriate our barbaric failure to protect the elderly. We think of ourselves as civilized, but mindless policies and bureaucratic indifference turned many nursing homes and rehabilitation centers into killing fields.
At least 28,000 residents and workers in long-term care facilities already have died from the virus, according to a New York Times analysis done more than a week ago. That represented one out of every three COVID-19 deaths recorded in the United States at the time and was likely an undercount because of reporting lags and varying state methods.
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This massacre of a helpless population shames America and Washington must find out why it happened and who is responsible. Elderly people in these institutions could not protect themselves, and because most states banned visitors early in the outbreak, the institutions, their regulators and elected officials were fully obligated to shield them against infection.
They failed miserably.
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING MICHAEL GOODWIN'S COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK POST