KFF Health News
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Advocates for the elderly predict the coronavirus pandemic will serve as a wake-up call for the United States, arguing that the country is not doing enough to care for vulnerable seniors. This is irresistible evidence.
The death toll was shocking, as were reports of elderly people suffering from nursing home chaos, isolation, depression, untreated illness and neglect. Approximately 900,000 older adults have died from COVID-19, accounting for three out of every four Americans who have died from the virus. pandemic.
But the decisive action that advocates had hoped for has not materialized. Most people and government officials now seem to have accepted the coronavirus as part of everyday life.Many high-risk older adults are not receiving antiviral drugs Treatment for new coronavirusAnd most elderly people in nursing homes latest vaccines. Efforts to improve the quality of care in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debates over costs and staff availability.And just few people People are wearing masks in public and taking other precautions even as new waves of coronavirus, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus infections are hospitalizations and deaths of older adults.
In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people over the age of 65 died from the coronavirus, according to data provided by the CDC. This is the equivalent of more than 10 large passenger planes. However, there is a significant lack of warning systems in place in the event of a plane crash. (During the same period, an additional 1,201 elderly people died from influenza and 126 from RSV.)
“It’s mind-boggling that there isn’t more outrage,” said Alice Bonner, 66, senior adviser on aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “It’s almost tempting to say, ‘What the heck?’ Why aren’t people responding to this and doing more for seniors?”
That’s a good question. Do we just not care?
I posed this big question, rarely asked in budget and policy debates, to health professionals, researchers, and policy makers who are older themselves and who have worked in the aging field for many years. Ta. Here are some of their answers.
The pandemic has made the situation even worse.
He said that while prejudice against older people is nothing new, it now “feels more intense and more hostile” than before. carl pillmer69, professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University.
“I think the pandemic has reinforced the image of older people as sick, frail, isolated and different,” he says. “As humans, we tend to prefer people who are similar to ourselves and to be less friendly towards ‘others’.”
“During the pandemic, many of us felt isolated and threatened. It made us sit there and think, ‘What I really value is myself, my wife, my brother, It’s about protecting the kids and messing with everyone else,’ W said. Andrew Achenbaum76 years old, author of 9 books Aging researcher and professor emeritus at the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
In an “us versus them” environment where everyone wants to blame someone, Achenbaum continued: Older people who are not considered productive and consume resources that are considered scarce. It’s really hard to give his old man his due when he’s scared of his own existence. ”
Although the coronavirus is still circulating and has particularly affected older people, “people now think the crisis is over and we have a strong desire to return to normality.” ” he said. edwin walker, 67, heads the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Aging. He spoke as an individual, not as a representative of the government.
The result, he said, was that “we didn’t learn the lessons we should have” and that the ageism that surfaced during the pandemic has not abated.
“Everyone loves their parents. But as a society, we don’t respect the elderly or the people who care for them.” robert kramer74 years old, co-founder and strategic advisor of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.
Kramer believes boomers are reaping what they sow. “We have pursued youth and glorified youth. Spending billions of dollars trying to stay young, look young, and act young automatically breeds fear and prejudice to the contrary. I’ll put it away.”
Fears of age-related decline, decline, and death, combined with the trauma and fear created during the pandemic, suggest that “the progress we have made in addressing the needs of a rapidly aging society will be challenged by new trends.” “I think it’s been set back by the coronavirus, which has further stigmatized aging,” said John Lowe, 79, a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“The message to seniors is: ‘The time is up, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources and get in line.'” Ann Montgomery, 65, is a health policy expert for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. However, she believes baby boomers “can rewrite and flip that script if we want to and if we work to change the systems that embody the values of an ageist society.” ing.
The best way to overcome prejudice, says Mr. G, is to “get to know the people you’re prejudiced against.” allen power, a 70-year-old geriatrician and professor of innovation in aging and dementia at Schlegel University Waterloo’s Institute on Aging in Canada. “But we separate ourselves from the elderly so we don’t have to think about our own aging and death.”
The solution “must be finding ways to better integrate older adults into the community, rather than moving them to campuses that are far away from everyone else,” Power said. “We need to stop and think about older adults only through the lens of the services they need, rather than all that they have to offer society.”
This is the core lesson of the National Academy of Medicine’s 2022 report. A global roadmap for healthy longevity. In presenting their findings, the report’s authors write that older adults are a “natural resource” who “make significant contributions to their families and communities.”
These contributions include financial support for families, care support, volunteer work, and continued participation in the workforce.
“When older people are healthy, everyone is healthy,” the report concludes.
That’s the message Kramer delivers in the classes he teaches at the University of Southern California, Cornell and other institutions. “You all have a far greater interest than I do in changing the way we approach aging,” he tells his students. “Your chances are much higher. Statistically, to live past 100 years old than me. Unless we change society’s attitudes towards aging, we will spend the last third of our lives in a state of social, economic and cultural irrelevance. ”
Kramer believes he and the baby boomer generation are “too slow” to make the meaningful changes he hopes for the future.
“I think the situation for people of my generation could get even worse in the coming years,” Pillmer said. “I think people are vastly underestimating how much it will cost to care for the elderly over the next 10 to 20 years, and I think that will cause an increase in conflict.”
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