Tragic deaths of elderly isolated in assisted living facilities becomes campaign fodder

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In an election year, rational Americans understand it’s wise to be leery of agendas being pursued by the media.

If a Republican is in the White House, a heavy dose of gloom and doom is assured, with whatever prevailing event at the time being twisted and manipulated to reflect poorly on the GOP. The elderly are frequently a part of this narrative.

In a full-length feature this week, the Miami Herald reported that 95-year-old Rita Thomas “was a victim of COVID-19, but she never had the disease.”

According to the article, Thomas died because of “pandemic-imposed isolation.”

More from the Herald:

The vivacious and outgoing 95-year-old, who lived independently until last year and celebrated her most recent birthday in February with friends at a Pasco County diner, willed herself to die two weeks ago because she could no longer handle the pandemic-imposed isolation.

“She said to me: ‘Linda. I’ve had a good life. I am ready to die. I don’t want to live this way anymore. I stopped eating,’’’ her daughter Linda Gardner said, recalling the conversation she had with her mother in August. Weeks later, her mother was hospitalized for complications from malnutrition.

 

To their credit, the paper waited until the fifth paragraph to reported that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, along with the Agency for Health Care Administration, “ordered that visits be banned from nursing homes and assisted living facilities in an attempt to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

(This is the group with the highest risk factor of dying from the virus gifted upon the world by China.)

Nan Thomas, Rita’s younger daughter, told the Herald that the family hoped that as the state opened up, Florida’s elder-care homes would also relax restrictions.

“We kept hoping they were going to open the doors and I would be able to bring her to my house again, and we’d go out to eat, get her strong,” Thomas said.

And the daughter blamed Gov. DeSantis for her mother’s death, as the article pointed out.

“I truly hold the governor and his medical advisers responsible for my mother’s quick decline and her pending death,’’ Thomas said.

(Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)

Florida is a critical battleground state and many look to the state to decide the 2020 presidential election. For months now, the media has been on a relentless campaign to disparage Gov. DeSantis for his handling of the coronavirus.

The Sunshine State has had 14,443 deaths attributed to COVID-19. To put that into perspective, New York, which has two million fewer people, has seen 32,768 deaths.

There’s no question the ensuing isolation has had a negative impact on many of the residents in these facilities, but authorities are damned if they do and damned if they don’t because an outbreak of coronavirus would kill thousands of elderly people — just look to the state of New York.

The World Health Organization has said that malnutrition is “often common” among elderly people.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there are a host of reasons behind this, such as lack of appetite and loss of taste and smell.

There may be physical reasons beyond disease, such as difficulty in swallowing and digestive troubles. Dementia and cognitive decline can play a factor here, as well as isolation, loneliness, depression and other psychological factors.

Political motivations aside, there are plenty of Americans dealing with elderly family members being isolated in assisted living facilities and its heartbreaking. Trouble is, opening up these homes amid a pandemic could have even worse consequences.

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Tom Tillison

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