‘We’re Literally Killing Elders Now’
My grandmother’s grandmother, as family lore has it, died in the flu pandemic of 1918. This month, my own grandmother was killed by another disease for the history books.
My Meemaw, a 94-year-old former nurse who could name every player on the Minnesota Twins, sewed dresses for my American Girl doll, and kept careful count of the juncos at her bird feeder, died on April 18 of complications related to the novel coronavirus. She lived alone in an assisted-living facility in Minnesota, alongside dozens of other elderly midwesterners with Scandinavian-sounding surnames. When the coronavirus hit, it hit hard. By mid-April, more than half the facility’s staff and nearly half of its residents were infected. Meemaw was only the second person from her facility to die of COVID-19, but she might not be the last.
An estimated 70 percent of coronavirus deaths in Minnesota to long-term-care facilities. In , these fatalities account for half of all COVID-19 deaths, and according to the World Health Organization, half of all coronavirus fatalities in Europe have been traced to too. Some of this mortality is linked to. But most of them are doing the best they can with what they have. And they don’t have much.
