The elderly have been among the most vulnerable and at risk populations during the pandemic. In Massachusetts, 60 percent of all COVID-19 deaths have been at senior citizen long term care facilities.
Despite these alarming numbers, Dr. Louise Aronson, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and author of "Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life," told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston Wednesday that officials are still not doing enough to protect older citizens.
Aronson said that nursing homes and other long term care facilities continue to struggle to find adequate testing and PPE.
“Other countries have responded and have protected citizens, and we have failed to do so,” Aronson said. “If you distributed resources proportional to need, [senior-citizens] are not remotely getting what they need or deserve.”
“This is because of bad management and a lack of national leadership,” she continued.
Aronson is concerned that some leaders in the country attribute the high number COVID-19 related elderly deaths to their fragility, and not the actual virus.
“If you are a healthy 85 year-old.. your life expectancy is ten more years. So, the fact that you died, it’s not just that you were dying any way, it’s that you were killed by an epidemic,” Aronson said.
Aronson warned that this type of disregard for an entire group of people will have consequences.
“If we diminish people in any category and write them off, that is the beginning of a slippery slope that in which most of us will be written off, if not now, then in the future.”
