by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m always wrong. Always. I come up with these scenarios — usually the worst case — and I’m wrong. This happens all the time. But when it comes to my rather dire warnings about The Gray Plague striking the nation’s 1.4 million seniors in the 15,600 rest homes across the country, I struggle understand what I’m missing.
All the conditions are there for a horrific event in our nation’s history, and, yet no one is listening to me and I get the sense that no one else thinks this is a big enough risk to do what should be done — locking down all such facilities until further notice.
This must be one of those things where Maggie Haberman can just talk to Dr. Trump and he’ll tell her some reveled truth. I’m just a hayseed rube in a remote portion of a fly over state, what do I know? But here are the datapoints that are alarming me right now.
15,600 nursing homes in the United States
1.4 million patients.
The elderly 65+ are most at risk of succumbing to COVID19.
People in close proximity to each other (like a cruise ship or…a rest home) can be all infected quite quickly. (A mental institution in South Korea saw something like 90% infection rate).
We’re totally luzling this in the United States.
About 47 million Americans are 65+.
A rest home isn’t like a prison. You actually want to go there. People from all over the country visit them to see older relatives. It makes sense that, as such, we could see rather abrupt spike in infections across the country as the contagion uses each of the rest homes as an “signal amplifier.” The contagion will be far, far stronger than it might be otherwise because people will unknowingly visit these facilities during the incubation period, get infected and spread it even farther into the general population.
And, yet, I must be missing something. I’m always wrong. Something about the Kirkland County facility must be unique, the conditions different than everywhere else the nation.
That’s all I got right now.
