Chaos in nursing homes. Vaccination rates, and standards of care, all over the place. And the horrifying outcome: over 900,000 deaths among people 65 years old and older, accounting for over 75% of deaths in total.
That was the COVID story. We’re all familiar with, and aware of the disproportionate impact on older people. So disproportionate, in fact, that the COVID nightmare was supposed to be an urgent wake-up call for the entire healthcare system and its approach to the older segments of the population.
But, as this disturbing CNN report makes clear, “decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized.”
The report lays out the situation clearly: “Today, most people—and government officials—appear to accept COVID as a part of ordinary life. Many seniors at high risk aren’t getting antiviral therapies for COVID, and most older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting updated vaccines. Efforts to strengthen care quality in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debate over costs and the availability of staff. And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of COVID, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.”
According to Alice Bonner, 66, a senior adviser for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, “It boggles my mind that there isn’t more outrage. I’m at the point where I want to say, ‘What the heck? Why aren’t people responding and doing more for older adults?”
Why indeed? There are several reasons, but according to experts consulted for the article, they all weave back to a single cause: ageism.
Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University: “I think the pandemic helped reinforce images of older people as sick, frail and isolated — as people who aren’t like the rest of us. And human nature being what it is, we tend to like people who are similar to us and be less well disposed to ‘the others.'”
John Rowe, 79, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health: “I think COVID has pushed us back in whatever progress we were making in addressing the needs of our rapidly aging society. It has further stigmatized aging.”
Robert Kramer, 74, co-founder and strategic adviser as the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care: “Everyone loves their own parents. But as a society, we don’t value older adults or the people who care for them. We have chased youth and glorified youth.”
Anne Montgomery, 65, a health policy expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare: “The message to older adults is: ‘Your time has passed, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources, fall in line.'”
The solution? “We have to find ways to better integrate older adults in the community as opposed to moving them to campuses where they are apart from the rest of us,” says G. Allen Power, 70, a geriatrician and the chair in aging and dementia innovation at the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging. “We need to stop seeing older people only through the lens of what services they might need and think instead of all they have to offer society.”
This is precisely what the SuperAging revolution is doing. “Older adults” are no longer a helpless cluster waiting for benign social policies; they are increasingly visible, active, dynamic and demonstrably positive contributors to society. What’s more, they — we — are increasingly taking matters into our own hands, taking more control of our own health and wellness, staying in the workforce, and contributing massive sums of money to the consumer economy.
All that said, ageism is a formidable barrier, and it can and does hamper even the most healthy, active and engaged SuperAger. That’s why we will continue to publish stories like these, and to urge our readers to be aware of this problem and to fight it as aggressively as possible.