> state-approved cruelty of effectively euthanizing elderly
Unless I got the discussion completely backwards, the point here was that these homes are not run by the state. They are either private or by small municipalities, and are not really intended to provide medical care in the same way as hospitals do.
There are probably a lot of details here that's not at all obvious to an outsider of the system, exactly how the care is organized, paid for, and what medical facilities they can access, but I hope that they can learn and improve from this so the next pandemic do not hit the elderly quite this bad.
That some other countries may or may not have been hit worse does not make it any better. This is not a competition.