Cruelty still unchecked in the care-home gulag – The Conservative Woman

SATURDAYS edition ofLockdown Scepticsreminded us that care-home cruelty is continuingunder the Governments callous coronavirus policy.

Relaying a heartbreaking email hed received from a reader, Toby Young asked: when will this needless cruelty end?

The letter read:

I am desperate and beside myself having received some information from my fathers care home today. It is only allowing one member of his family to visit him for 30 minutes once a fortnight. Full PPE,outdoors and at two metre distance.

What is most upsetting is that it is a reduction in what we have been managing to do to try to support him since March. We have been allowed by the care home to see him through double glazed patio doors for 30 minutes, twice a week. So down from four visits a fortnight to one.

I cannot see an end to these restrictions in care homes and I am now, more than ever, certain I will never see my father in person again before his natural death. There must be more to the end of a persons life than this loneliness and being deprived of family support and love.

Please do print any aspects of this on the website as you feel fit.

A very very sad day for my family today.

Another reader in touch withLockdown Scepticsrelates how hedbeen told by his friends care home that hes not even able to send flowers. The guidance issued by the home includes the following gem: We are unable, unfortunately, to accept any flowers, due to the inability to sanitise them.

Were there any evidencethat the Governmentspolicy had protectedcare home residents or had saved their lives, there might have been an excuse for temporarily locking them away from their families. But not only is therenone, the evidence is that the governments policy succeeded in doing the reverse far from curbing the death rate, theirofficious and tin-eared edicts exacerbated it.

It is over five months now since TCW first warned of the fatal flaws in their policyand that a crisis was about to unfold with rotating shifts of unprotected and untested staff.It is four months since we (and other media) reportedOffice for National Statistics (ONS) data which showed that the number of deaths in care homes haddoubled since pre-crisis, from 2,471 in week 11to 4,927 in week 15, but that only 826 of those deaths a third of them were actually Covid-19 related.

So what was happening? We asked (but the Government did not) whether patients were dying of neglect and understaffing as had been reported in Spain; whether also from sheer misery at their apparentabandonment by their locked-out families?

Two months later, in mid-June, the shocking news broke that to clear beds hospitals had discharged 25,000 Covid-infected geriatric patients back to their care homes in the first weeks, which we reported here,putting an impossible strain on institutions already ill-equipped to manage the virus.

By this stage, also in the public domain was thatat least 15,000 care-home residents had died from Covid-19. Analysts LaingBuisson predicted that care homes would account for half of Englands coronavirus-related deaths. Despite this,the Department of Health and Social Care continued to maintain that it took the right decisions at the right time.

As if it couldnt get any worse, moreONSdata on Britains care-home gulag was released in early July.

The headlineswerebrutal.Forty per centof Covid-19 deaths to date were care-home residents and of 54,430excess deaths(above average) in England and Walesover half (54 per cent) were care-home residents, confirming the deadly impact of the isolation caused by blanketlockdown policies.

Here we are coming towards the end of August and letters like those received by Toby Young reveal that littlehas changed and that the Government has learnt nothing. It remains deaf to the dreadful consequencesof its lockdown and social distancing policies on care homes, and blind to its continuing inhumanity.

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Cruelty still unchecked in the care-home gulag - The Conservative Woman