Opinion
COVID lessons from the survivors of other horrors
Journalist
Long before coronavirus, even before John Howard’s government introduced the Aged Care Act of 1997 which pretty much privatised and deregulated the industry, no one wanted to be in residential aged care. They are not places most residents, families or people who work there generally aspire to end up.
The coronavirus is killing many in aged care. Credit:Andrew Dyson
Like many who have had to make the unfortunate and difficult decision to put elderly loved ones into care, I am grateful these care options exist.
For an industry estimated to be worth $20 billion-plus – and which employs and homes more than a quarter of a million Australians – we rightly have some expectations when it come to the care administered in these facilities.
With the COVID-19 death toll mounting daily, and an estimated one in four nursing homes in Victoria infected by the disease, clearly those expectations are not being met. As the aged care royal commission heard this week, this sector remains “not properly prepared” to deal with the virus that is ravaging residents and staff. How can this be? My son’s school, my employer, even our local childcare centres had corona plans. Why were adequate plans not in place to care for our elderly?
Some hard questions need to be asked of operators – many of them for-profit operators, foreign investors, private equity firms and superannuation and real estate investment trusts – when national cabinet considers a national aged care preparedness plan this week. Hopefully it will involve auditing residential facilities to check they are meeting standards.
Both my parents died in residential care, and not a day goes by when I don’t regret that. I wish I could have cared for them at home, but it was beyond me. I remain deeply grateful, however, for the care they did get. So I empathise with families in the same position, and assure you every coronavirus death in aged care is a stab in the heart for us all.
But let’s put the politics aside for a moment. Imagine what it must be like to be a resident of an aged care facility, where the bulk of our coronavirus deaths – 60 per cent – are occurring. If you are such a resident reading this now, I hope you can remain not only healthy but optimistic. I know this is hard, as many of us are feeling the mental toll of this pandemic.
I understand the deep reservoirs of resilience you need just to face each day, from when my husband was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour at the age of 31. I remember when the September 11 attacks occurred and the shocked and panicked phone calls people made to us in the America of 2001. “Welcome to my world,” he would say.
People who have some experience of that other C word – cancer – know what it is to have the foundations of your life shattered, and your vision of the future disappear like the World Trade Centre Towers. That’s what a life-threatening diagnosis delivers, which in many aged care quarters is what a coronavirus diagnosis means.
It’s hard to be hopeful sometimes. Hope is different to “staying positive” – which sounds patronising when the world as we knew it is collapsing, and people are dying or getting sick from this untamed virus. What does hope look like in this age anyway?
I saw a glimmer of it at a residential aged care facility that is home to several concentration camp survivors. I went there on July 1, the day visitors were allowed back in after a long lockdown.
As I was leaving, one of the women who worked there joked that waiting for the elevator was like watching a Seinfeld episode. She was right. And as I waited for the lift, several of the residents laughed and joked with each other – having meaningful exchanges – despite not having seen their families in months. One of the ladies pushing her walker and making jokes had a concentration camp number tattooed on her arm.
So many survivors of the camps had lived through the loss of family and friends who had died at the gas chambers or by “running to the wire”, as it was called, those who opted for suicide against the electronic perimeter fences. Yet now these survivors were the ones trying to lift others' spirits in an aged care facility.
The world has endured worse than this virus. Most elderly residents of aged care facilities are wise enough to know this, to have seen horrors inflicted by humans rather than an airborne virus. I hope they have the courage to face every day with hope, and the grace to realise the gift of it. Meanwhile, facility owners and the government owe it to them and us all to urgently work out a coronavirus preparedness plan.