The age problem
“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.” ―
Question: When will elderly people, say over the age of 70, dare to venture out of their present tightly-wrapped cocoons and back into general society?
Answer: I will go out on a very fat limb and suggest not anytime soon.
Today marks the 118th day since 31 December 2019, the day the World Health Organization (WHO) reported the first case of a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in Wuhan, China. It’s the 47th day since 11 March 2020, the day the WHO officially declared the newly named COVID 19 a pandemic. And it’s the 53rd day since 5 March 2020, the day the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) convened its annual conference in Boston.
John Ruser, WCRI’s President and CEO opened the conference by advising everyone to avoid shaking hands; elbow bumps were the order of the day, but social distancing was non-existent, about two feet was typical.
I mention the WCRI’s just-before-the-deluge conference because of one chart shown during it. This chart:
WCRI’s injury database shows about 40% of injured workers over the age of 60 have two or more comorbidities, which increase inexorably with age. Sort of like the way those of us who still have it have been watching the steady growth of the stuff on top of our heads over the last five or six weeks. My hair hasn’t been this long since 1980.
I thought of that chart this morning as I was beginning my new daily routine: studying various COVID 19 dashboards (more about that below). I was struck by two charts from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that put the problem the elderly now face into stark relief. Here they are:
Massachusetts is not unique; COVID 19 does not respect state boundaries. One realizes this as one attempts to quantify the disease’s impact in the nation’s 15,600 nursing homes housing 1.4 million elderly and disabled people. A difficult task, as USA Today discovered when its journalists tried to investigated the issue (article dated 13 April):
At least 2,300 long-term care facilities in 37 states have reported positive cases of COVID-19, according to data USA TODAY obtained from state agencies. More than 3,000 residents have died.
The numbers eclipse those previously disclosed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which in late March estimated that 400 facilities had reported cases of the virus. But the new totals still represent an incomplete accounting due to the ongoing lack of widespread testing for the virus and inconsistent record-keeping from state to state. On the federal level, neither the CDC nor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is tracking the number of U.S. nursing homes with COVID-19 cases, or the number of total cases and fatalities in those facilities.
In Massachusetts, 56% of COVID 19 deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities. One would think this cries out for federal data tracking conducted in a consistent manner across the nation. One would think.
About those dashboards
Where are you getting your information on the daily spread of COVID 19? Where do you think most Americans are getting theirs? Could the answer be Twitter? Or Facebook? How about the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings (Randy Rainbow beautifully summed up last Thursday’s, which was highly controversial and chock full of more than ordinary mediocrity)?
If you’re thinking of the CDC’s dashboard, you’ll find the data in a few places, not all in one, easy to navigate spot. For example, go here; or here; or here. You get the point. A lot of information, but you really have to dig.
There are national dashboards, which are organized well and highly informative. Two that I recommend are the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University and the New York Times’s Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count. Updated frequently, at least daily, each is excellent. The Johns Hopkins dashboard is global in scope; the Time’s focuses on the U.S.
The Massachusetts dashboard is the best state-maintained dashboard I’ve found. Disclosure: I live in Massachusetts. However, the dashboard is truly exceptional. Take a look. Scroll through it. I think you’ll agree this should be a model for all others.
Where one gets information about COVID 19 matters, because of all the disinformation and outright lies being thrown up against the wall every day. Some of it will always stick, and this is too serious for that. The more we know about this disease, the more we ought to realize how much we really don’t know. Ignorance is not bliss. Benjamin Franklin said, “It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
Tags: health policy
