This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
…a staffer said that “they were told by corporate not to start the roommate on isolation, and continue with surveillance to conserve PPE [Personal Protective Equipment],”
Back in the day we had words for knobgobblers like this.
I believe it was Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
I guess they’re rampant in this day and age.
Sadly this happened in many many other countries…
My elderly Mother was cared for in her home by home health aides. When Covid-19 hit and the CDC broadcast their instructions for proper care and hygiene, I began to ask the staff (2 12 hr shifts/day) what their company had instructed them. Two companies provided assistance and employees from both companies said, “they were not told anything about Covid-19” or what best practices to employ.
Sadly, my Mother passed away 2 weeks later, it is suspected, from Covid-19. Then I got it, and two of my brothers got it.
When I asked one of the home health aides about washing hands before the start of the shift, she said, “Yeah, I know, it’s not a big deal…it isn’t even widespread” On the day my Mother died, she was caring for her, sneezing, coughing, blowing her nose. I was stunned that she’d even come to work in that state.
I asked her when I heard the sneeze, Did you just sneeze? “I got a cloth over my mouth”
I relate this to illustrate a sensibility that I’ve witnessed firsthand, and saw when my Mom was in a nursing home as well.
My condolences on your loss and I wish you and your family the best in the coming weeks.
I should have been clearer: the one sneezing and coughing and blowing her nose was the home aide.
God I’m so sorry. I’m glad you’re ok and I assume your brothers are as well now.
I’m just so sorry about your mother.
Thank you. Very hard to adequately process the loss as wake, funeral and burial services were not open to more than 10 persons…and as I contracted Covid, I was under isolation / quarantine when the burial took place, so I couldn’t attend.
My heart goes out to you - that has to have been so very difficult.
I wept when I read this last month:
I fear this may yet happen here in America.
Upon her own death from COVID, I discovered the nursing home in which my cousin died was the same in which the mother-in-law of the city’s mayor resided. If the mayor couldn’t even keep his own family safe…
Thankfully, it didn’t hit us as hard as some I’ve read about. I did have a swirling headache, exhausion and extreme chills…and when i lost my sense of smell, that triggered my teleconference with my Ear Nose and Throat doctor, who, in turn, set up a test…which came back positive. I have regained my sense of smell by now. But losing that was really upsetting. Couldn’t smell anything. at all.
I’m glad it returned. That would upset me too so I get why it upset you.
I’m glad you’re better and didn’t need a ventilator. So very glad.
Very sorry to hear that. Don’t like it touching the TPM family.
thank you. I appreciate your sentiments.
thank you.
In countries where they have tested the nursing home populations, the wildfire spread of COVID-19 has astonished even the epidemiologists. From the Hubei data, it was already clear that the elderly were among the most susceptible, so again, just as the US failed to stand up a Testing Czar, it failed to stand up a Nursing Home Czar. In Europe, about half of all COVID-19 related deaths have occurred in care facilities. One looks at why Trump, never very empathetic, nevertheless didn’t lift a finger for a major component of his Fox News audience. It may go back to the very weird relationship he had with his father, Fred Trump, in the last decade of his life, (Fred died in 1999 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s).
This appears to be a worldwide scandal, and my guess is that it accounts for the majority of elderly deaths in countries like Italy, Spain and France, which have had a lot of them. My father’s in a nursing home in Israel, and when the pandemic first began to spread globally and there were already cases in Israel, perhaps even some deaths, when I spoke to him about it he told me that he hadn’t heard of or seen any changes in the home’s procedures and rules to protect against the virus. No one wore masks, visitors and residents were allowed to come and go and move about freely. I was shocked. I’m talking early to mid-March, not January or February when it was still mostly a Chinese epidemic.
Then several weeks later, a number of residents in his home and at least one worker came down with the virus, and three died, at which point everything went on lockdown and PPE began to be used. “Luckily” for him, shortly before this happened he came down with a bad kidney infection unrelated to the virus and had to be hospitalized for several weeks, where he recovered in isolation, so he avoided being infected in his home. He’s back there now, in isolation, and I’m hoping he doesn’t catch it. He’s bored out of his mind, depressed and irritable, but at least he’s alive and relatively healthy.
Nursing homes and government officials in charge of supervising them dropped the ball, as is so often the case. It seems like most bureaucrats are only good at holding onto their jobs and doing only what they’re told to do, and are incapable of adapting to emerging situations and dealing with them. In fact they’re trained and conditioned to not do this, and if they try, they’re probably reprimanded for going outside the four corners of their job description. That has to change. We need to be in a place where we’re ready for whatever comes next, and after that, even though we can’t predict what it will be or when it’ll hit. We have to become an adaptable society. Whatever might have worked in the past no longer does. The post-WWII era is over and we have to think in terms of 21st century problems and solutions. Obviously, the GOP is neither able nor willing to do that, and has to go.
My mother had a stroke in December and was in rehab for a month or so. (She’s better now) When I went to visit she told me that two of the caretakers were having sex in her bathroom at 3 in the morning! I wanted to rant and scream to their superiors but my sister said to wait until mom was released. The woman was fired and the man wasn’t.
I guess what I’m saying is they will hire anyone who will work for 10 bucks an hour, and usually they get what they pay for.
I am so sorry, that is pretty shocking to hear.
So sorry to hear that. Read down, and I am glad you are feeling better. Jesus that has to be hard!