COVID-19 and the Future of Nursing Homes

This is why I removed some of my photos in my articles. https://medium.com/illumination/people-are-being-sued-for-using-creative-commons-images-adc5c8ba1491

COVID-19. The Virus. You all might now be exhausted from reading about this virus by now.

The virus is a game-changer for sure. Here are some of my thoughts about the future of nursing homes after Virus!

I read just now that someone suggested that we all soon open up everything but keep the nursing homes locked down for keeps.

Ahem!

I live in a senior facility that is treated as if it were a nursing home. I cannot leave the second floor, since about the middle of March; let alone leave the building. At least there is a second-floor outdoor patio that I can go out to walk around in. Before the Virus, I could walk all over the large Campus of this wonderful facility, and also attend many concerts, lectures, and special events. No more! Every day is “groundhogs day” here; every day has the same routine.

I did not want to hear or read about a permanent lockdown. As it is, I suspect that I cannot leave the building until they make the vaccine, have it tested, then everyone takes it. It might be the summer of 2022 before I can go outside!

Here, in this article, I can sense and feel the “outcome” of this idea that they should lock all nursing and assisted living facilities down with no visitors or outside activities. I do not “agree” with my own assumptions here and I assume this assumption might be a worse case of possibility.

Ok.

The facilities are closed to outside visitors; they do this.

If they lock all senior resident campuses down for many, many years, there will be consequences. This means that if you put mom or dad, or other close relatives, into a Home, you might never, ever, see them again! Many people will not put their loved ones into a nursing home or assisted living facility. The homes will then see a vast decline in entering new residents. Who wants to more or less say goodbye to their mothers? Many homes will then go out of business. Maybe from 30 to 90 percent of all senior homes could close. All the remaining residents and patients will then have to go to live with relatives as probably now many of them cannot live on their own.

[let's not talk, here, about the huge number of workers, the CNAs, nurses, and other staff members, who will not now have a job!]

Suddenly, now, your average two-child couple, living in a small suburban house, will have to face having Mother, or Father, or maybe even both, living with them. The mother might need 24/7 care. She has Dementia. Maybe a day nurse can help. A couple might have *four* old relatives if both parents are still alive, thus the chances of at least one of them living with this young couple will be great.

I belong to a caregiver’s support group for Dementia and Alzheimer's caregivers.

Over SIXTY PERCENT of the caregivers will die before their charges; the stress of caregiving is so great.

Thus here is yet *another* culture upheaval in the making!

This Virus sure has upended so much about what “living” is supposed to be!

“Socialization is important to seniors”, now is “utter isolation”!

“Too much screen time is bad, not only for kids but for all of us”, now is “screen time is nearly the only way to live, to max screen time for all”!

“Reusable grocery bags and coffee cups are good for the environment and save resources”, now is “we now see these bags and cups are the viruses and bacteria collectors that they really are so that now they are banned. Use paper bags and plastic bags instead; that is what landfills are for”!

[some states and many supermarkets now outright ban reusable bags! Throw them away, *now*!]

I will add yet *another* upheaval to this list, an upheaval that might come soon! If I assume that most elderly people will now live with relatives, I see something a-coming. One couple has to have a job. The other person will be the full-time caregiver. Usually, this caregiver will be the wife.

Thus this new Upheaval might be, as that old saying goes, “He goes out to get the Bacon and then he brings it home for her to cook it for him and the children”!

— — women should never go outside of the house to hold a job! They stay home, cook and clean, raise the kids, and caregiver their relatives, relatives that once upon a time would live in an assisted living or nursing home facility.

[my father and mother *never* worked outside of their home as father owned a car repair shop was in his barn and my mother operated an African violet greenhouse in her front porch. She sold violets to customers. Plus, she had a large professional cat kennel set up behind the house. The pens and runs held Grand Champion show Persian cats.]

Back to the 1950s, in other words, for women!

Women will now live in a kinder “Sharia law” where women are seen to be nurturers, caregivers, and child raisers.

Yet another suspicion, from me, that our United States' proper future, economically, is to become a Service economy. Today, the lowest-paying jobs are the service to others, jobs like nurses, teachers, librarians, and other jobs where service-to-other-people are the job description. We need now to fix everything!

I do not agree with this future, but I can sense a milder form of this future coming! Yet another Overturning, because of Virus!