My bed infirmed 96 year old Mom moved in with me last August. This lock down period has been like living with a canary in a coal mine. At my brother's place, where she had been prior to coming to my place, she had subsidised caregivers (morning and night) from a corporation. It always appeared sub par to me. Their staff were underpaid and overworked. It was common on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to get a call saying that there was no one to fill a particular shift. When she came to my place my mind was set on hiring our own caregivers. This ended up being a 5 month battle with the government agency which subsidised the caregiving. In that time we paid for her care out of our own pocket and set up a business registration and paid our two ladies salaries with full deductions at $25/hour instead of the $16/hour that the corporation was paying their staff. That same corporation was then billing the government $36/hour!
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise to go the route which we did. Allow me to explain...
About a month ago there had been 51 covid related deaths in my provence with a population of approximately 1 million. The numbers have increased though not drastically since then and things are starting to open up again.
Our Premier would have daily updates and each time that a death was announce the local journalists would ask where in the Provence the death had occured. They would invariably answer, "For privacy reasons and for respect for the family we cannot answer that." Well the journalists kept digging and finally it was disclosed that 45 of those 51 deaths had happened at one old age home run by the very same corporation that had provided care to my Mother at my brother's place.
Other Provences have ended up having wild fire epidemics in their old aged homes as well. My guess is that the lion's share of covid related deaths in other Provences has been in such facilities.
The home in my city was the jewel in the crown of retirement homes in the 1970's when it was constructed. Yet now being profit run by a corporation occupants where crowded 2 and 3 to a room designed for 1 in its hay day. It has been reported that covid infected occupants where left in the same room as those not yet having the flu.
Bottom line is that this disaster, at least in my area, was caused by the profit driven corporation left to care for our elderly. You can bet you sweet fanny that my Mom would be dead if those same careworkers would have been coming to my place and bringing with them covid from the old aged home where they also worked.
In any crime it is said one way to solve it is to follow the money. In that regard you may be interested to have a look at a 4 part series put together by @corbettreport. You will find them in one convenient location in a post of mine here on the HIVE chain.
There are many weaves and bobs to covid-19, yet one thing seems clear to me at least, that it has been blown out of all proportion for many different agendas along the way.
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