Patients died from neglect, not Covid-19, in Ontario LTC homes – military report | Hacker News Reader

Patients died from neglect, not Covid-19, in Ontario LTC homes – military report

theglobeandmail.com

41 pointsbusymom026 comments

During this pandemic there was a brief realization of how messed up old age is being taken care of in my country - suddenly there was a huge amount of illegal care centers (which were "discovered" due to covid outbreaks).

But I don't think the problem were the illegal care centers, they exist because people can't afford regular care centers, or there aren't enough of them, and I'll even go through the length of saying that maybe most of those illegal places do their best with the conditions they have - of course, that's not enough.

I do blame social services though.

It's not like the existence of such facilities wasn't known, despite social services displaying a show of shock about the realization that there were HUNDREDS of illegal homes. They just never cared about it, it was a non-issue. Instead of proactively fix the problem, either by making those illegal homes compliant, or using them as a reference that there were gaps in the market... no they served it's purpose and they were fine with that.

Worst, apparently in a lot legal care centers there were a lot of messed up things going around (dehydration, old people under stress with, etc).

No standards, no regulators, it's old people after all - those were the cracks in our services and in our society. The cracks were already there, covid just brought them to the light.

The military report last year on the audits they did of 5 nursing homes were pretty horrible. Everything from not giving meals to using expired medicine, letting covid positive people into elder homes and so on.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/long-term-care-pandemic-cov...

I thought socialized healthcare was supposed to be great? And much better at dealing with Covid than the free market.

This is free market, it's the regulators that are failing to regulate the free market.

Basically if there are no standards being enforced it looks like free market rolls in the direction of the minimum effort.

That can't happen when the people that use your service can't complain.

A friend of mine is a nurse in Nova Scotia and was telling us how the staff felt so sad last summer when they were directed to put elderly/at-risk in isolation. If you work in that profession you don't need to see the research to know that you're starting a countdown to their passing. In this case it was just as true. They may as well have broken their hips.

The lockdowns, and media promoted fear and hysteria are the pandemic, not the virus.

Very poetic, but there is also an actual viral pandemic that has actually killed somewhere just short of 10 million people, so... there's that.

> just short of 10 million people

Sort of happens when you categories heart attacks and a lot of other mortality causes, as COVID deaths.

No, that figure is independent of (and approximately double) the officially recorded count. It's calculated by how many more people have died than usual. The official count is an underestimate.

Some convincing citations would be nice, if you can provide them..

His number is based on a naive death count year over year. When the death rate is normalized for population age distribution his "excess" shrinks to near 0.

Could you expand on what you mean by "normalized for population age distribution"? Setting aside the fact that the study I'm citing is far from naive, I'm not sure how you can math away the simple fact that an extraordinary number of people have died over the past year, well in excess of prior years.

The graph on this page, for example, is quite stark (US only): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Simply put, there's an extraordinary number of people becoming old at this exact time. The baby boomers.

Any "excess" death calculation which doesn't account for this natural spike in death is not comprehensive whatsoever.

It's a naive calculation because it doesn't include projections we can accurately make from understanding the current state of the population. It treats the population characteristics as a black box and only uses an extrapolation of past death events as a projection. We can also accurately predict death from birth.

You can't be serious. You're saying that the abrupt, almost overnight spike of all-cause mortality by 40% (!!) in April 2020 in the USA was... old age?

Did you look at the CDC graph? Do you see the very obvious wave of extra mortality, and how far it deviates from previous years? Do you see how the excess death comes in several huge waves, waves that perfectly line up with Covid-19 waves? Hell of a coincidence, don't you think?

I'd love to see this demographic analysis you cite. It must be a very sophisticated model, to perfectly predict a regular annual pattern (deviation <1%) for the past several years, abruptly followed by the wild 50% swings and chaos of the pandemic period, so accurately that you can confidently say that no one's died of Covid.

No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying your number is bad for a specific reason. I also never said no one’s died of covid.

If you wanted to see that data I’m sure you’d find it. Actuaries do this kind of work.

You said "When the death rate is normalized for population age distribution his "excess" shrinks to near 0". Then you said that baby boomers were getting old and the "excess death calculation... doesn't account for this natural spike in death". I cannot possibly read this in any other way than a claim that nearly all Covid-19 deaths are old age deaths.

I doubt I'll find this actuarial data, since it doesn't exist. Your proposition is ridiculous on its face - a cursory glance at the CDC graph is enough to see that. The swing in death rate is enormous and lines up perfectly with the Covid-19 waves. Actuarial data, no matter how comprehensive, doesn't say things like "40% more deaths in April". Look at the CDC graph. Look at it.

Actually, it's so ridiculous I have a hard time believing that you really believe it. Between the way you deny claiming things we can all see you claimed, and the way you've created that account just for this thread, I really think you must be trolling here.

Yes, thank you :)

Certainly. Here's the most comprehensive global analysis I could find:

http://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess...

The discrepancy is of course smaller in more developed countries with better testing.

No it's not: provide proof and citations or STFU.

n of 1, my grandmother begged for her old life back every single day for months before she passed.

Really sorry to hear about your loss.

I know someone whose both grandparents passed away during COVID and they suspect it was because of loneliness and mental health as they weren't being allowed to visit.

There's also this:

> General manager of Ontario retirement home charged after residents' door handles removed

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/general-manager-charg...

That's really sad, I'm sorry she had to go through that.

i’d imagine there are gonna be some lawsuits in the future dealing with situations like this

They got immunity from the government:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-defends-bill-that-critics-sa...

The miracle of socialized healthcare it seems.

This seems to be a theme of the pandemic.

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