A leading charity in the UK has claimed the coronavirus is “running wild” in care homes for older people. Caroline Abrahams, the charity director for Age UK said the figures being released by the authorities in the country were “airbrushing older people out like they don’t matter”. She says the official death toll for Britain is not […]
While the ongoing global shutdown of business is highly damaging to the economy and jobs, most world leaders have made the calculation that stopping the coronavirus is worth the economic turmoil and disruption to daily life. The risk of letting covid-19 spread through the population is simply too great, and they seem to be taking […]
Two days ago the number of nursing homes with clusters of coronavirus infections in Ireland was 50. Within 24 hours that figure had doubled to 99 homes. This is very worrying news. A cluster is defined as “three or more COVID-19 cases in a single institution for a 72-hour period”. There are about 560 nursing […]
Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, palliative care specialist Dr Kathryn Mannix urges people to talk about dying; from her experience, most ‘very sick people’ – ‘[f]rom teenagers to pensioners’ – although mostly ‘afraid that their illness and death will cast a shadow over the people they love’ find themselves ‘utterly unable to discuss this worry with […]
A GP surgery in South Wales is apologising for asking some patients ‘to complete a “do not resuscitate” form in case their conditions deteriorated due to coronavirus’; the letter from Llynfi Surgery in Maesteg ‘said that indicating they would not want to be resuscitated had “several benefits”’, informing them that ‘people with life-limiting illnesses who […]
A coalition of nine charities for older people has warned that ‘[d]enying the elderly access to intensive care units’ in the current Coronavirus pandemic is ‘“discriminatory, ageist and morally wrong”’; following Telegraph reports of ‘a major London NHS trust’ saying that ‘“very poorly patients with coronavirus may need to be on a ventilator for extended […]
Twenty years ago, the Catholic bioethicists of Australia came together to write the first ever Code of Ethical Standards for Catholic Health and Aged Care Services in Australia. Two years of robust discussion, informed by wide consultation, followed by even more robust discussion resulted in a set of guidelines which have stood the test of time. […]
Spiked is an online blog whose writers regard themselves as proudly anti-establishment, but when it comes to abortion, they are all staunch supporters, from Ella Whelan declaring that abortion on the grounds of disability is not discrimination to Anne Furedi’s sycophantic praise for Andrew Cuomo’s New York law for abortion to birth for any reason. However, Spiked author Kevin Yuillis concerned about […]
Families who lose a loved one during the Coronavirus crisis should be offered the opportunity of a church funeral under strict conditions, a senior church figure has said. Bishop of Derry, Dónal McKeown, also told the Irish News that churches should be allowed to open for places of private prayer during the coronavirus crisis, saying […]
A senior Republican politician from Texas sparked a media firestorm this week after suggesting that older people should consider sacrificing their lives for the economy in the face of the coronavirus crisis. Dan Patrick, a former radio talk show host who is now Lieutenant Governor of Texas, made the comments on Monday night while talking to […]
People over 60 are more affected by the coronavirus and most deaths have been of people over 70. With this background, a new study on perceptions of the elderly in the UK makes interesting reading. Attitudes to ageing are overwhelmingly negative, according to a new study by the Centre for Ageing Better, with older people subject to […]
If you’ve glanced at social media at any point in the last few weeks, there’s a high chance you’ve seen words to the effect of: “Don’t worry about covid-19 – it only affects old people.” Aside from the fact that this is medically untrue (there are plenty of young people with pre-existing conditions at risk […]