This is a really gentle and tender picture of an elderly man with his cat. His daughter posted it on Twitter with the sad news that he caught the coronavirus at his nursing home on Wednesday and died five days later. He was 90-years-of age.
My father tested positive for CV-19 on Wednesday. (Which he contracted at the nursing home) Today [April 26] at 11:30 he died. He was 90. This stinking virus killed him in 5 days.
The story reminds us that there are lot of elderly people dying of the virus at nursing homes and often their deaths are not being recorded as due to the virus. Often they are a forgotten group. There was a bit of a ruckus about this in the UK as the government presented coronavirus deaths in hospitals but made no mention of deaths in care homes. That’s changed now.
There is a disparity of statistic reporting internationally. We can’t trust the statistics. For instance, Belgium has a high death rate per country’s population but they count deaths in care homes as well as hospitals while many countries do not. And we can’t trust China’s statistics can we? They just raised their Wuhan figures by a rounded 50%.
Care homes are incubators of Covid-19 and therefore very dangerous for the vulnerable residents. One care home in the UK keeps all the staff on site permanently. They have housed them in tents to confine everyone to stop the virus being brought onto the facility. I am told that doctors (GPs) no longer come out to care homes to certify cause of death in the UK. Managers of the homes certify death but not the cause. This hides the number of deaths by the virus distorting the statistics.
It has been calculated that the high financial cost of the lockdown is worth it because it extends the lives of the elderly who are chronically ill by an average of ten years. There is a big argument that the huge financial burden and economic cost of the lockdown is not worth it because all it does is extend the lives of ill elderly by a small amount. It is said that each life can be costed at 1.4 million dollars or pounds. During the coronavirus lockdown they are work far, far more.
We are not told if the cat belonged to the man. If so I hope they are okay.
