Has Covid Doomed our Seniors?

For the elderly, there's no rainbow in the offing, just death

It's a bit hard to stand back and take stock of the situation in the middle of an epidemic, especially with so much misinformation and fake news being bandied about, most of which comes not from Facebook or the internet, but rather from our government and established media.

They keep telling us that the virus affects all of society, not just the elderly. Our televisions are flooded with images of young people dying or battling the virus.
Recovered teens are recruited to remind other young people that they too are imperilled.

It's a horrifically distorted view, perhaps meant to frighten young people into blindly following confinement orders based on fear.
Or it could just be the media looking for the 'man-bites-dog' story because seeing old people die of the virus is just not as interesting to a strapping young teen in the flower of youth.
It's about as honest as showing a teen-age car accident fatality as proof kids should not drive.
It's gratuitous and dishonest.

All that fake news belies the fact that Covid-19 is a deadly menace to the nursing home set and not much of a threat to others.

In fact, emerging evidence is showing that up to one-third of society has already been infected with the virus with nary a symptom, giving us hope that herd immunity is achievable.
Our mainstream media and government overstate the threat to the majority and understate the threat to the elderly.
In fact, Covid-19 is so deadly to the elderly that I wonder if they can survive the future without sheltering in place forever.

Let's examine our Covid-19 reality
These numbers were taken a few days ago and so the death rate you're probably reading about today is higher, but that doesn't change the awful reality of how and who Covid-19 affects.

Hmmm....
Of the 887 Quebec deaths resulting from Covid-19, only 20 occurred in those under 60 years old and in about half of those deaths, prior underlying health problems were a major contributor.

Before we go on to the second chart let us consider that for fully half our Quebec population, those under the mean average of 42 years old, there were just 6 Covid deaths for 4.25 million Quebecers.
And of those six deaths, at least three had compromised health issues.

When I crunched those numbers, I re-checked and re-checked, shocked to see a reality that our media and government hide in order to frighten us into submission.

I'm starting to believe that the idiot spring breakers in Florida who scoffed at the concept of social distancing were actually right about getting the virus. It's clearly no big deal when getting the virus at a young and virile age, preferable to waiting it out and taking your chance later on in life.
Most of those healthy young beach goers will never know that they were positive, some will have a headache for a day or two and a tiny minority will have symptoms and be laid up, but almost none will die.
In fact, if every healthy citizen under 60 got the virus in a slow and controlled manner, keeping hospitalizations at a tolerable rate, we'd be better off as a society.
There would certainly be some deaths, but if we isolated the health-compromised during this burn-off, that rate would be minuscule and represent a risk to reward ratio that is more than acceptable on a societal level.
If as the emerging studies indicate that one-third of people have the virus and don't even feel any symptoms, then pushing the other healthy two-thirds of society who are under sixty years old won't even stretch the health system very far.

Now the argument is offered that young people who are not affected will serve as vectors to the elderly and immuno-compromised also doesn't hold water because the covid virus is already out of the bottle and trying to smother it through isolation and quarantine is a case of a day late and a dollar short, in other words, a futile effort.

When the Ebola virus struck Africa, it did so in a relatively small and remote geographic area and was contained through quarantine and isolation of entire villages. But these areas were relatively small and affected relatively few people. Nobody was travelling from these remote African villages to the four corners of the Earth as in the case of Covid-19.
In our case, isolation and quarantine may help slow down the spread and flatten the curve, but it won't stop the virus dead in its tracks. Even if we are successful to any extent, scientists tell us it is likely that the virus is to become seasonal, another frightening scenario for the elderly.

Given that grim reality, let us consider the utter and complete disaster that Covid-19 represents to the elderly, especially those in communal homes.
Of all the Covid deaths in Quebec so far, 75% occurred in nursing homes or senior residences, not really a surprise because of the close living conditions in these establishments, coupled with staff interaction between residents and indeed homes, a perfect recipe for transmission.

In Quebec being a member of the 1% doesn't denote privileged wealth, it is a frightening demographic of those over 90 years old who suffer 30% of the covid fatalities.
It's a hard number to get our head around.
Yes, 1% of our society, that is those over 90 years old, continues to bear the brunt of the disease, suffering  30% of the covid deaths.
Consider that grim statistic for a while....

The second part of the chart above shows just how deadly Covid-19 is to the elderly who make up 26% of the general population and who suffer 97% of the covid fatalities.

Even if our self-isolation flattens the curve and the numbers come down, the evil genie that covid-19 represents is out of the bottle and will haunt and hunt seniors for the rest of their lives.

Presently hundreds of our senior residences and nursing homes have the virus burning through the ranks with reckless abandon. Some 4,000 residents are already infected and more are being stricken each day with some homes registering 75% infection rates.
It's only going to get worse and with a fatality rate up to 50% and higher, the body bags will pile up.

The big question that I consider here is that for other senior homes that did lockdown in time (commendably so) and who have kept the virus out, what will the future bring?

I'm sadly afraid that they will never, ever, ever be able to unlock the doors and return to normal, or at least what we considered normal two months ago.
While society will get over the virus, because the vast majority of us can and will beat the virus, not so for the elderly. ...they are doomed.

Covid-19 isn't going to be eliminated or contained as Ebola is in Africa. We are being told that this virus looks to be seasonal, just like the flu.
Given the lethality, the elderly and health-compromised will never, ever be able to resume a normal life, doomed to hide and shelter.

The only hope is a vaccine, but I'm not holding my breath, after forty-five there's still none for Ebola haemorrhagic fever.

Quebec's Colossal Covid-19 Disaster

The Quebec government has been steadfast in its promise to provide open, accurate and timely statistics and information in regards to the coronavirus epidemic in Quebec.
In fact, so much information and statistics are being provided that it's becoming a bit of overkill, with few media or press organizations able to sift through the vast amounts of data provided.

It makes me think of those legal dramas on TV or the movies where EVIL CORP provides hundreds and hundreds of boxes of discovery material, hoping to overwhelm the modest team of opposing lawyers, in an effort, to stop them from discovering the 'smoking gun' buried within.

And so, because of my confinement and with nothing but time on my hands, I decided to sift through the data and see what perhaps the government does not want us to see.

Now I'm not condemning the Quebec government for the circumstances of the unfolding disaster.

The early March school break in Quebec is a traditional family getaway where many week-long vacations overseas take place. Many schools organize educational trips to Europe during this break.  The returning virus-laden travellers coupled with the onslaught of returning retiree snowbirds (quick to visit mom and dad in the nursing homes upon their return), Quebec faced a perfect storm of circumstances.

The real fault lies in the utter failure of Health Canada to understand, predict and advise Canadians to avoid travel and to quarantine upon return.
In fact, Quebec's Premier Legault was so alarmed that Prime Minister Trudeau refused to follow America's closure of the border to Europe, that he raised holy hell, prompting the PM to reluctantly follow suit, but too late to stave off the coming disaster.

At any rate, for the first two or three weeks, it seemed that Quebec had the virus matter well in hand, but that all when to shit recently when cases in senior residences and nursing homes blew up.
While the Quebec government concentrated on building up capacity in the hospitals, it totally ignored the danger in senior residences and nursing homes, a decision that led us to the present disaster.

So much for good planning and as the great poet Robert Burns told us...

"The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

And so the explosion of cases in these senior residences has caught everyone by surprise,  the reaction of the government has been anemic, but understandable because pivoting and reacting quickly to a changing situation is not what governments do well.

While we are told a lot about the situation, we are not told how bad we are really doing in comparison to the rest of the world. In fact, Quebec is right up there with the worst.

I've taken the liberty of presenting Quebec virus statistics separately as if Quebec was its own country, divorced from Canada.
Suddenly Canada looks to have a minor epidemic while Quebec looks like a disaster,

The table on the left below of selected major countries (plus Quebec alone and Canada minus Quebec) describes the number of cases per million population and as you can see, Quebec is right up there with the USA in the number of cases, while Canada is way down the list.
In fact, Quebec alone has relatively four times the cases reported in the rest of Canada (ROC.)

The same goes for deaths (the below right chart) where Quebec has reported relatively four times the numbers than the ROC.

What is worse is that the situation is pretty much out of control in Quebec's nursing homes and residences.
Staff is either out sick themselves or have abandoned their posts, understandable because facing a deadly virus for $15 an hour without appropriate personal safety equipment isn't the dream job and nobility only goes so far.

The bewildered Quebec government's desperate reaction is to demand that these senior residence health workers stay on the job even if they are symptomatic, a travesty considering everyone else in society is told to isolate themselves on the slightest chance they are positive, even without symptoms.
One Verdun home was so short of staff that it locked the doors at shift-change, imprisoning workers, something that in normal times would be considered criminal.

A desperate Premier Legault is begging anyone he can for help, calling for the army to jump into homes that are bereft of employees. He chastised idle Quebec specialist doctors for not helping as well, demanding that they go into the homes to change diapers and serve meals.
Panic is certainly the keyword and certainly justified.
Read a chilling account of the situation;

"50% increase in all CHSLD Covid victims in three days manifests an institutional failure of the system."   Link The Suburban

How bad the situation is and how badly the Quebec government is reacting is underplayed by the continuous Quebec media exposure of what President Trump is doing and how bad the situation is in the USA, a brilliant effort of sleight-of-hand.

Yesterday 1,900 people died of the virus in the USA and 117 deaths were reported in Quebec.
Because Quebec's population is 40 times smaller than the USA (335 million versus 8.5 million) the effective overnight death rate in Quebec is double that of the US.
I bet nobody in the media is pointing that out!

While Quebecers are told to shelter in place, a measure that is no longer necessary because of the few cases outside the senior residences and hospitals, the virus is ripping through these homes with reckless abandon.

As we move forward we can expect that deaths will continue to skyrocket in Quebec as our seniors are decimated and be prepared, because the worst is yet to come.

Coronavirus Disaster Exposes Quebec's Dirty Little Secret

In the years preceding World War II, France, fearful of the rising and aggressive German military power built a massive line of fortifications along the German/French border, with a secondary and weaker defensive line along the Belgium border. The formidable concrete bunkers with its large protected cannons were seen as the ultimate deterrent to the German invasion. The Maginot Line was seen in France as a model of good planning and strategy, its massive cost justified if the wall could keep France safe.

Unfortunately, it did not.

The Germans simply went around the line, exploiting a weakness through the Ardennes forest in Belgium, completely outflanking the French, leading to a lightning-quick German victory.

And so it seems that the Quebec government's thorough and seemingly well-thought preparations in the face of the coming Wuhan coronavirus suffered from the same faulty logic employed by the French which is and was essentially barring the front door effectively, but leaving the back door open.

Perhaps it's understandable that with the lessons of the disastrous Italian response to the virus, where hospitals were suddenly overloaded, leading to massive numbers of deaths, Quebec decided to empty its hospitals by postponing elective surgeries and sending any long term senior patients to government-run nursing homes.
When the virus struck the government ordered everybody to shelter in place but failed utterly to seal off the nursing homes, with personnel transferring between institutions and snowbirds, fresh from Florida and family just off school break, where many travelled to Europe bringing the virus into the nursing homes with deadly effect.
And so our hospitals were ready and indeed are performing well, but the virus, like the German army, struck through the back door in these nursing facilities with deadly consequence, an attack the Quebec government never contemplated or even fathomed.

So much for the experts. 
And so it seems that all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put our nursing homes together again!
Such is the result of a massive catastrophic planning failure.

I hate to say I told you so, but this lowly and lonely blogger warned of just this catastrophe in a post entitled The Government is Handling Covid-19 All Wrong...

How big is the disaster?
70% of all virus-related deaths in Quebec have occurred in the nursing homes, where the virus ripped through the vulnerable at an astonishing rate.
In fact, those healthy citizens under 60 years old who do catch the virus have a 99.%+ chance of recovering, while those over 60 years with health problems who get infected have an alarming fatality rate of between 20% and who knows what.
The government's policy of locking down the young and healthy seems overkill and is not necessary.
All the government had to do was tell seniors to lock down and to force senior residences to lock-down completely

But the virus has already spread to many of these homes and where it has, the consequences are and will be deadly.
Underpaid staff have also been struck by the illness, with other employees abandoning ship in the face of the onslaught. The remaining $15 an hour employees are expected to work 90 hours a week with no protective equipment. The current policy that those possibly exposed to the virus be self-isolated has to be thrown out the windows for these unfortunate workers. They are forced to work despite being exposed because their services are deemed crucial considering that there's nobody to replace them.
I am reminded of those emergency workers sent into the fray after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, deliberately exposed to deadly radiation because there was no other option. Those who fought the disaster without protection had their lives consciously sacrificed by the government.
Sound familiar?
One nursing home in Verdun actually locked the doors (twice) so that staff could not escape after their shift.

Premier Legault, channelling Donald Trump, complained that the nursing home situation is so bad because the previous government was to blame for the chronic under-funding.

At any rate, Quebec's disastrous nursing home situation is exacerbated by the high numbers of seniors populating these homes.

The dirty little secret is that Quebecers institutionalize the elderly at a rate three times that of Ontario. It seems that in Quebec bothersome mothers and fathers are shuffled off to be warehoused in these homes at an alarming rate.
It is a shameful dereliction of filial responsibility, a practice incited because of Quebec's cradle to grave government welfare state, where responsibility is shifted away from the individual.

I'll end with a story I watched on a French TV news channel, where a lady (somewhere in her fifties) was raging against the government about her mother.
It seems that her mother who lives alone in an apartment has cancer and is being treated on an outpatient basis. Because of the pandemic, those treatments have been postponed and worse, a government social worker who visits her and provides in-home care, several times a week has not been coming recently for reasons you can imagine.
The woman was distraught that her mother wasn't receiving the care she was due and that she and her five sisters are deathly afraid that mom will die alone in her lonely apartment.

REALLY????
Does anyone out there see a problem where six sisters cannot provide a modicum of care and support?
Not one in six or all six combined are prepared to financially support a private care worker to provide extra care.
Not one in six or all six combined are prepared to take her in or visit daily?
All this dereliction of family responsibility while haranguing the government for failing their mom. It's nothing short of disgusting.

Is this the Quebec reality that seniors are consigned to the trash heap by a society that abdicates all personal responsibility in favour of a government that is too incompetent to do the job anyway?

After the virus lays waste and empties our senior homes, perhaps we should consider what is right before filling them up again.

Montreal Island Coronavirus Report - Sun. Apr.12

I am tracking the coronavirus as pertains to the 14 cities and boroughs with significant Anglo and Allophone elements.
Each day I'll chart the number of cases where you can compare the progression in your town/borough.
I'll also track the weekly progression. Please note that the week resets each Sunday.


I'll also comment on the numbers, under the chart.
Today is the start of a new week .

You might be shocked, yet pleasantly surprised that the virus is spreading ever so slowly amidst thees towns and boroughs.

The 31 new cases is a remarkably low number considering that the combined number of inhabitants in the 14 jurisdictions above is 634,000.

Half of the above had a total increase of less than 2% with many registering no new cases.

Cote Saint-Luc and Hampstead, which started so poorly, now seem to have gained the upper hand with very, very few new cases appearing.

It's Soon Time to Re-Open Schools and Phase Out Social-Distancing

Dealing with the Wuhan virus long-term seems to be where we are going as health officials tell us that it isn't going away and that it probably will become a seasonal thing.

I wrote a piece a while back, describing the danger that the virus poses to the elderly and that prediction seems to have been borne out.
Read:

The Government is Handling Covid-19 All Wrong...

Premier Legault mentioned that 89% of the Wuhan virus deaths so far in Quebec are in the demographic age group of 70 and over. Most of the other deaths occur in victims with underlying ailments.
That means that just 17 deaths so far are in those younger than 70 years old and almost none in the under 40 years old demographic.

Quebecers have largely hunkered down and stayed home and it's reported in that regard we have done better than any other jurisdiction in North America.

And so today the propagation of the virus is largely restricted to senior residences where people are packed in like sardines and where tragically the virus propagated before the lockdown occurred.
The virus was brought into the homes by the children of these residents who visited after travelling abroad, mostly to Europe.

The cross-contamination occurred when employees worked in different residences and brought the virus from one infected residence to another. A perfect storm of contamination.

This sad state of affairs is what I warned about when I said that seniors and those vulnerable should be isolated completely. Alas, it was too late and the damage is now done.
Sadly many seniors will die and paradoxically while we've managed to insulate and protect the large part of society and the least vulnerable, seniors will bear the brunt of the deaths and there's not much we can do about it.
The die is cast.

But these deaths are misleading because they taint the numbers and lead us to believe that we are all in mortal danger which we are not.

The famous curve has been flattened, assuring that hospitals aren't overwhelmed because those seniors who die from the virus do so generally quickly and without burning up precious ER resources.

And so it's time to reopen society, bit by bit, all the time making sure our hospitals can cope.

In this respect, it's time to re-open up daycare and primary schools in order that children become harmlessly exposed thus creating a new generation of the immune. Unlike the famous measles parties of my generation, children suffer almost no symptoms and most don't even know they have the virus.
In just two or three weeks, 15% of our population will become immune.
The parents and teachers of these younger children are in a demographic age-group that should do well when they become infected from their children and will survive, although some will need hospitalization.

The next phase is to open high schools and universities where a slight less positive outcome will occur, but an outcome that our hospitals can deal with and with some inevitable deaths, but still very, very few.
A caveat to all this is that those in this demographic who have underlying health issues must still be isolated.

This phased re-opening of society is the necessary step to insure that the virus burns through society at a controllable rate, like a preventative fire lit to control a forest fire.

I don't think it is reasonable to close down society for the time it takes to find a cure or treatment, we cannot afford it both mentally and economically.

Within a month stores and restaurants should reopen with distancing rules still in place.
Factories and businesses should start up cautiously and life needs to return to a semblance of normalcy.

The only criterion that counts is whether our hospitals can keep up and so a staged re-opening of society should start, probably within two weeks.

We are going to have to face the reality that the virus is here to stay and getting those under 40 (which represents half the population and the most productive) exposed over a controllable period is preferable to hiding at home and delaying the inevitable.

Under this plan, half the population would be free of the virus within two or three months.

By the way, many of the health workers and front line workers are already coming back to work after having defeated the virus. Hospitals are now at a point where patients are being discharged to the point where the influx of new patients is manageable.

The virus spreading through the general population, excluding the elderly and those with underlying health conditions must continue in order for society to get back on its feet.

Only when the rest of society acquires herd immunity can the seniors be protected, so it's important to get on with it.

Once the elderly and the compromised are safely isolated as best we can, it's time for the rest of us to go out and mix and yes, get the virus.
Some will die, but some will die even if we delay.
It's counter-intuitive to re-open society, but necessary so that we can get over the hump.

Bold decisions need to be made and they need to be made soon.
Like a general sending his troops into battle full well understanding that some will die, our leaders must forge ahead bravely and face down the virus for the greater good.
Now is the time for fearless leadership.