And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of COVID, flu and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.
Do we simply not care about old people? • Oregon Capital Chronicle – March 29, 2024
This proves that we do not care about old people.
In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to COVID — a group that would fill more than 10 large airliners — according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the alarm that would attend plane crashes is notably absent. (During the same period, the flu killed an additional 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126.)
“It boggles my mind that there isn’t more outrage,” said Alice Bonner, 66, senior adviser for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “I’m at the point where I want to say, ‘What the heck? Why aren’t people responding and doing more for older adults?’”
The author assumes we have a magical tool that will stop deaths WITH Covid – if only we locked down harder, wore masks (properly) 24 x 7, closed schools longer, used greater social distancing measures – and gave out even more booster doses in 2024. Since people continue to die from a highly contagious respiratory virus that no one in the world has figured how to stop, this proves we want to abandon and kill old people?
The author further asserts we are in the midst of a “new wave of COVID, flu and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.”
But is there a new wave?
April 2, 2024 – Covid, influenza and RSV are in sharp decline and have been for some time.
The author of the above news article says we should be doing more – like masking, even though masking by the general public has not been shown to have prevented any deaths from Covid, flu or RSV.
The author has a BA in history and literature, and a Masters in Journalism, both from elite private universities. She is a freelance health reporter, but has no formal training listed in health or STEM.
In the fall of 2024, the unsubsidized cost of attending Harvard is about $83,000 per year, and the costs of a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University is estimated at about $120,000 – that’s $450,000 investment in education for a field whose average pay is reported by the US BLS to be just over $50,000 per year.
