So now we care about the elderly. Now, we are prepared to take whatever drastic action is required to prevent a virus that is primarily killing older Australians.
Despite some on the right complaining, most people support the fact we are willing to pay such a high price to protect the vulnerable at the end of their lives.
It took a pandemic — and putting the economy into a coma — to get there, but it’s not like we didn’t have chances to look after their welfare before this.
Have we so quickly forgotten the horrifying evidence reported only last year at the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety?
You remember: the litany of stories of abuse, neglect and even malnutrition in homes where the providers couldn’t even feed the residents properly.
Was it only last November that the interim report from the royal commission said the evidence thus far had been a “shocking tale of neglect”?
It was only thanks to the focus on the royal commission that we learnt, for example, the sorry statistics behind Bupa, the biggest single private aged care provider in Australia.
Of its 72 homes, 45 failed to meet basic health and safety standards, 22 put residents at “serious risk”, 13 had been sanctioned and lost government funding and five had lost their accreditation totally.
The royal commission hasn’t concluded. It is on hold because of the current health crisis. What difference will the pandemic on the final report when it eventually comes out?
Meanwhile, the most immediate concern for the residents is not just the health threat from COVID-19, but the same threats to their well being that were there beforehand.
In many cases it was only diligent family members and visitors who uncovered wrongdoing and with visits now curtailed, and in some cases totally banned, one can only imagine what is happening behind closed doors.
The commission’s interim report led to the federal government injecting half a billion dollars into the sector but that is looking as puny as the first stimulus package, with the industry this week seeking a billion-dollar lifeline.
Take a number, get in line.
However this is a sector that should be at the front of the queue — for all the reasons that made their customers the most vulnerable now and before this disease hit.
The government was quick to bail out the child care sector early in the crisis. That the very young and very old need protecting in this crisis is obvious.
It’s also clear that both sectors have been woeful examples of the dangers of privatisation — attracting an array of spivs and chancers who have ripped off vulnerable customers.
We’ve seen everything from the collapse of ABC Learning during the last economic recession, to owners who have literally walked away when things got too tough — as happened at the Earle Haven retirement village.
Increasingly the option of nationalising the child- and aged-care sectors looks more likely. Given the billions in assistance they already receive, it’s right that the government should take back control. (Not that government ministers have had a great track record on protecting the elderly in nursing homes, as former speaker and aged care minister Bronwyn Bishop can attest)
Just like with the banks, an ideologically driven Government is learning the hard way that slashing oversight and regulation only backfires in the end.
Covid19 has got into several residential care facilities in Ontario and Québec, resulting in a dozen or so deaths in each facility so far, and dozens more residents and carers infected.
One of the problems in Canada has been aged care staff working in several locations, a day or two here, a few shifts there in a week. Once it gets started in one place this causes it to spread to other locations very quickly. Authorities there have now moved to prohibit this practice.
The attentive might notice that the cluster of virus cases in NW Tasmania began with a medical staffer( unknown precise job) working across 3 aged care and 2 hospitals.
The curious might wonder why aged care staff are working casually over so many sites. Private aged care and hospitals keep costs down by using ‘just in time’ rosters- staff given short days to cover early and am meal times- sub standard care by minimal staff who have to rush to do basics. Dump the slop on the tray- no time for more than a few spoons- no time to give drinks to keep the resident hydrated and therefore lucid!
Aged care and child care great money makers for the “chancers and spivs”.
Any wonder the virus is rampaging through aged care!
Question will the Royal Commission make meaningful recommendations and make politicians implement them- I doubt it!
“Increasingly the option of nationalising the child- and aged-care sectors looks more likely. Given the billions in assistance they already receive, it’s right that the government should take back control.” Yes indeed. But the government we have is still ideologically tied to the myth that the market gets it right, even when that means the market lets people starve. Or, if the word “ideology” is out of place here you might say they like to look after their mates.
The elderly rich, while championing the herd method for the peasants are all bunkered down in their sterile luxurious safe houses with top medical facilities on call, crying out for the rest of us to sacrifice our lives for their dirty dollars and pressuring Morrison to throw his parents to the wolves of wall street, Alan Jones and Bolt are classic examples, safe in the luxury bunkers they screech Murdochs message of stop the isolation, let the fools mingle is the cry so his tills start ringing out and a few more billions can be transferred for stacking in his Cayman account, and guess what, the peasants will probably agree thinking the virus only hits the old, well bad luck suckers, its hits everybody and will probably mutate like the Spanish flu that killed millions of the young and fit.
Don’t think that caring about the elderly is the motivation (more of an excuse). I think it’s about not overwhelming the Health system.
Not for nothing was/is pneumonia/”flu” called “The Old Man’s Friend”, for reasonably quickly and painlessly carrying the old off.
Many older people (circa 80 +), if they trust you (and you are the right age) will admit they are simply waiting to die. It is extraordinary that such widely destructive efforts have been made to keep alive such people, who if given the choice, would more than likely rather die quietly and peacefully than see countless others suffer on their behalf, to keep them alive for a few more months to years of gradual, often unhappy decline.
It is difficult to grandstand if medical services have adopted a policy to Triage people. For certain none of our current politicians could really carry it off. IT is easier to make political capital even as the health workers are being exposed to heavy virus burdens as they look after those who might survive to die in short time.
And what of the other “costs”?
The destruction of jobs, job prospects and plans? The embryonic businesses that have toppled off the edge, taking assets and dreams with them, the homes that may be lost, the ill health, the depression, suicides, the other people with other ailments and conditions who may put off going to hospital out of media magnified paranoia and panic.
And all this for what?
For a virus that has added 1% (150,000) to the total number of people who have died around the world in the same time (15,000,000).
And have not even begun to comment on the malign interests that are working under cover of this Pandemic Panic to push their agendas. Such as filthy fossil fuels interests by our own Angus Taylor, who will, without a doubt, be one of many.
Richard ….sincerely… why don’t you just altruistically drop off the/your perch, in the interests of the abstract people you somehow supposedly speak for, in your instrumentally rationalized imagination ..Nothing personal ..Go on now …you can do it ..can’t you ?…please !