Image Credit: The Canadian Press

By James Peters

Two & Out

PETERS: Will the pandemic cause us to rethink how we care for our seniors?

Jul 3, 2020 | 12:37 PM

AS WE GET OLDER, our worlds tend to get smaller.

By the time we are elderly and perhaps living in seniors apartments or a longterm care facility, our worlds can be infinitesimally small.

While we focus on maintaining the physical health of seniors, it’s often their social and emotional needs that can go unmet.

In that context, it must have been extremely difficult for Dr. Bonnie Henry and health officials across the country to cut off access to long-term care facilities when the pandemic set in.

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They had to do it, of course, because of how the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are susceptible to the ravages of COVID-19.

While the virus will give younger people an illness from which they can usually recover, it threatens the lives of the elderly – especially if they are grouped together in communal facilities.

And so, as of mid-March, seniors facilities were closed and their residents were almost completely isolated.

Add in the reluctance or difficulties many seniors have with embracing the technology the rest of us use every day to keep connected, and life became unbearably lonely.

On Tuesday, when Dr. Henry announced that visitation would be slowly opened up again, you could hear the emotion in her voice.

This move offered a much-needed lifeline of hope and positivity to so many seniors who have seen their worlds dwindle away to almost nothing during the past few months.

Even with efforts focused on seniors facilities, the majority of our province’s COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have happened within the older demographics.

In other provinces, it has been even worse, and that has resulted in calls for an inquiry and an entire rethink of the way we offer care to our seniors.

Quite frankly, that has been needed for a long time — pandemic or not.

If there is one silver lining to the dark cloud of COVID-19 in Canada, it may be that we are realizing the faults in our ways when it comes to seniors care.

This virus has disproportionately targeted our senior population and it’s not hard to see why.

If we care as much as we say we do about our elders, it’s time we show them.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.