Perspective

1,000 People a day dying from COVID-19. One thousand. Why isn't this on the front page. Every day.  Perspective. When something becomes commonplace, people get used to it.  Older adults in nursing homes are dying every day from COVID-19. It's not on the front page. It's happening every day. Perspective. I woke up today worrying about the fact that I've been worrying about COVID-19 and it's impact on older adults for six months. Perspective.  From my perspective, this is still a big deal.  To a lot of people, it's become commonplace.

How do we change people's perspective? That may actually be the overriding question at this time.  If we're actually going to do something about this problem, if we're actually going to reduce the number of deaths, we first have to change the way the average person looks at the situation.  It's sad, but true.  It's also the same reason that journalists aren't writing about nursing home deaths anymore.  It's not a story.  Not only do the deaths need to be messaged, but they need to be messaged in a way that gets people's attention. That tugs at their heartstrings.  

It's unfortunate that our society is steeped in ageism  Nursing home residents don't really matter to anyone but their families.  Their families can't even visit their loved ones.  There's an "outcry" amongst a small group of people.  Are nursing home parking lots every overflowing with visitors? No. That's the irony. In normal times, nursing homes don't have a lot of visitors.  Neither do assisted living facilities.  We dealt with that when our neighbors were worried about the traffic from an assisted living facility being built near our last house.  I thought it was "funny." No one comes to visit.  Perspective.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that no one cares about people during COVID-19 whom no one cared about prior to COVID-19.  Even if they're dying.  It's all about perspective.