When I wrote my first post on this pandemic back in early February, I said that WHO studies based on Chinese data showed that SARS-CoV-2 had a CFR of 22+ in 80+ year old populations, and that "Nursing homes are going to be a horrorshow - WHO reporting seems to indicate a CFR of 22+ in 80+ yo populations (that's *more* than 1 out of 5 who get it in Nathaniell Witherell & Parsonage Cottage)?!! ... FWIW - I'd urge leaders to cut off all visits to nursing homes/convalescent centers until a vaccine is developed ... CoVID-19 is going to kill many more than Influenza and is likely to become a endemic seasonal disease - sorry ... Mother Earth (and Pangolins) have had enough"
I have not uttered truer more fateful words about this pandemic ... recent data shows that Nursing homes are effectively disease spreading factories ... why is this?
For starters, in our capitalist, for-profit healthcare economy, Nursing homes are *operated* on the thinnest of margins ... owners make their profit by reducing supplies, eliminating "waste", hiring the least expensive staff, taking informed risk and not funding any surge capacity ... an owner makes $$$ by running a lean operation
Flash forward into our current state of affairs ... Low skilled nursing home staff (mostly foreign and working in glorified indentured servitude), who usually take public transport to work, don't have PPE, or, if they do, have to invent/make do with one set per day if they're lucky ... they're tracking Virus into and out of each room ... Skilled staff are not in much better shape, but they may have the training to reduce the likelihood of transmission ... each room is populated with one or more old folk, most with underlying disease, depressed immune systems and a panel of daily drugs that would make you shocked ... SARS-CoV-2 couldn't ask for a more delightful environment to spread, pickup some new infective tricks & get more virulent ... not only are these operations killing their clients, they are inevitably gestating a more dangerous strain of SARS-CoV-2!
As I wrote originally, and emphasize now - get your loved ones out of these death traps for them and for us!! Greenwich Times on CT Nursing Home crisis https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/coronavirus/article/Health-care-group-CT-nursing-homes-with-15204742.php?src=gthpbrk
STAT on Immunosenesence
NYT on Local impact
CDC Guidelines