Michael Berry

Michael Berry

Michael Berry has drunk homemade moonshine from North Carolina with Robert Earl Keen, met two presidents with the same last name, been cussed at by...Full Bio

 

AP: Nursing Homes Now Seeing Deaths Due To Despair From Prolonged Isolation

The Associated Press reports on an incredibly heartbreaking aspect of this pandemic scare.

Nursing home residents have basically lost the will to live due to the prolonged loneliness and isolation. 

From the AP report:

“…interviews with dozens of people across the country reveal swelling numbers of less clear-cut deaths that doctors believe have been fueled not by neglect but by a mental state plunged into despair by prolonged isolation ̶ listed on some death certificates as “failure to thrive.
A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country’s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those “excess deaths” beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March."

Another disturbing aspect of the story is that if COVID or loneliness aren’t getting the residents then terrible care is. They detail how watchdog groups are receiving reports of residents allowed being force to wither in starvation or thirst, left in soiled diapers or with bedsores.

The AP piece details one horrible case about how a 75-year-old man from Alabama basically died of neglect.

From the article:

When COVID-19 tore through Donald Wallace’s nursing home, he was one of the lucky few to avoid infection.
He died a horrible death anyway.
Hale and happy before the pandemic, the 75-year-old retired Alabama truck driver became so malnourished and dehydrated that he dropped to 98 pounds and looked to his son like he’d been in a concentration camp. Septic shock suggested an untreated urinary infection, E. coli in his body from his own feces hinted at poor hygiene, and aspiration pneumonia indicated Wallace, who needed help with meals, had likely choked on his food.
“He couldn’t even hold his head up straight because he had gotten so weak,” said his son, Kevin Amerson. “They stopped taking care of him. They abandoned him.”

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