Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you need a ventilator, you already seriously ill and not mobile. Even if you could walk, doctors wouldn't risk you leaving and infecting other people. I think they keep you comfortable in the hospital with pain meds.
Yeah... you're fatal & very contagious, you die in the ICU.
I think it sucks, that's what I think. Nobody is an acceptable loss. I saw this coming a while ago though, with all the 'right to die' crap & I don't care what anybody says; my mind is made up.
It normalized acceptable losses. And that is f***ed up.
Society accepts loss (death) all the time, every day, and always has. If a certain amount of deaths from car accidents were not accepted, cars would have been banned decades ago. If a certain amount of deaths from flu were not accepted, society would have been locked down every flu season decades ago.
We're not going to be able to eliminate death by lockdowns, bans, or anything else. If people start starving, committing suicide, and/or committing homicide to obtain supplies, because society and the economy has been cast back to the Middle Ages from the CV lockdown, how do we balance those deaths against the ones "saved" by the quarantine?
My MIL will be ninety years old in May. She'll been lonely since her husband died four years ago. She still has friends in her building, but she probably watches too much TV. She is still a mother to her three children. She has three grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She still is loved.
Two years ago, my mother died at 86 in a nursing home. She had most of her marbles. However, she had a stroke so she couldn't write or understand numbers. I became her account. It became important for my sister and I to talk to her about the past to preserve memories for our children. She still had value and was loved.
People do not have to do anything or produce anything to have value.
Italian family are multigenerational. Many of the older Italians live with their family and were an integral member of society. Some helped with childcare. Some only played checkers with friends. They were out in society which how they caught the coronavirus.
Note: my little town in Westchester has 30 cases of coronavirus. Thankfully, not everyone with coronavirus needs a ventilator as I doubt my local hospital has 30 ventilators. If it gets worse and with my proximity to NYC, I can't imagine there will not be difficult decisions.
My point (and my doctor's point) is not to 'put down' old people just because they are old. The point is that we (older ones) should have a choice.
I'm not ready to die -- as I've said before, I'm still literally enthralled by life and living -- but if I can't read and/or drive and/or can't take of myself, I want to be able to choose.
My mother was 97 when she died about 5 years ago. She still had almost all of her marbles -- she was just beginning to get 'dodgy'. But when she was 50 (she rarely worked outside the home), she sat down and never got up. My poor father cared for her like the invalid she pretended to be, and she watched TV 24/7. I don't want to live like that -- ever. And all of her friends and relatives were already gone by the time she reached 90.
And I have never considered the topic of death 'dark'. As I've said before somewhere on the Retirement topic, if we've reached 60-65 and haven't made friends with death, it's certainly time to start doing so.
The sense of life’s preciousness, which I inhale from the streets on my way home from work, is how I survive the daily spectra of disease and death. It is how I maintain my emotional perspective day in and day out.
Not only do I never fear the daily reminders of my own frail mortality, but I am grateful for this exposure, the realization that we are all ultimately HIV-positive, in that we are all going to die sooner or later. I acutely realize that someday, regardless of my own final disease or injury, I, too, will join my many patients on their sickbeds.
The poignant stories transpiring everyday on my AIDS ward, my crucible of hope and despair, have taught me that having a life that denies the relevancy and immanency of death actually robs that life of the wonder it should have.
I have come to believe that a contented life is one that gracefully carries death on its shoulder as a friend and not as a feared enemy.
Daniel L. Baxter, MD, The Least of These My Brethren (I had a nice long talk with him some years back, and he gave me permission to use this whenever I wanted to.)
Society accepts loss (death) all the time, every day, and always has. If a certain amount of deaths from car accidents were not accepted, cars would have been banned decades ago. If a certain amount of deaths from flu were not accepted, society would have been locked down every flu season decades ago.
We're not going to be able to eliminate death by lockdowns, bans, or anything else. If people start starving, committing suicide, and/or committing homicide to obtain supplies, because society and the economy has been cast back to the Middle Ages from the CV lockdown, how do we balance those deaths against the ones "saved" by the quarantine?
Tried to give you reps ^^. Anyway, I am in total agreement. We are crippling our economy; plus it's taking a toll on our mental and physical health. And what happens in the case of other disasters like wildfires, floods, hurricanes? I know my opinion will be in the minority here, but at this point I am thinking we might as well go back to at least SOME type of normal pretty soon, and let nature takes its course.
I think it sucks, that's what I think. Nobody is an acceptable loss. I saw this coming a while ago though, with all the 'right to die' crap & I don't care what anybody says; my mind is made up.
It normalized acceptable losses. And that is f***ed up.
Try to calm down. We Americans think we're so 'independent' and so 'in control' of our lives -- and that has always been BS. And now that reality -- that we have so little control -- is hitting on in the eyes, it's a little unnerving -- I understand. But it's always been this way. We have simply pretended otherwise.
As for 'right to die' -- I just want to say that I was a Hospice volunteer, off and on, for 17 years, and if you had seen when I saw, you'd be a big supporter of P-A Suicide, as I am. We treat our pets better when they are terminally ill -- we put them down so that they don't suffer. I see no reason for any of us to suffer in agony if we don't want to. //// Will there be abuses? You bet. THAT is Reality -- and you're not wrong. However, human beings abuse everything other the sun from children to food to each other. But we'll do what we always do about abuse in this world: we'll do everything we possibly can to keep the abuses to a bare minimum -- again, no one can control everything -- ever. (Btw, this is one reason why MDs don't HAVE to accept DNIs/DNRs. They don't want relatives/loved ones letting us die too soon because there is some inheritance waiting. I KNOW. I've worked both in hospitals and in Probate Court.)
Saying that we "need to go back to normal now" is pretty much blithely also saying "Hey, all those healthcare workers who ALREADY don't have enough masks or equipment, they can just deal with being completely overwhelmed. It's their own fault for choosing to work in health care."
There are a number of "risk factors" for serious Covid-19 infections and one of them is exposure to high viral loads, which pretty much applies to any medical worker, healthy or otherwise.
There is a hospital in my state that was asking people to sew masks for their non-ER people from their stockpile of what looked to me like HEPA vacuum bags.
__________________
Moderator posts are in RED.
Moderator for: Oregon (and subforums), Auto Racing.
When you signed up for an account, you agreed to abide by the site's TOS and rules. You really should look through them.
City-Data Terms of Service: https://www.city-data.com/terms.html
City-Data FAQ: https://www.city-data.com/forum/faq/
Almost 78, have had a lot of experiences in my life, some good, some not so good. If I died tomorrow, the only ones who would notice would be the people I make payments to.
I have two grown, older (both in late 50s) with who I do not have a relationship. My daughter hopes I go before her father. He and I have been divorced for 37 years. She is very close with her father and for reasons I am not sure about she hates me. She never said why.
Son is mostly staying away (he lives in OK), but I only hear via text message with many months (years?) in between. Don't think he hates me. But he has a difficult life to live (prison time among other reasons).
So if I died, it wouldn't really affect anyone.
This is the saddest post I've read on CD in a long time.
Society accepts loss (death) all the time, every day, and always has. If a certain amount of deaths from car accidents were not accepted, cars would have been banned decades ago. If a certain amount of deaths from flu were not accepted, society would have been locked down every flu season decades ago.
We're not going to be able to eliminate death by lockdowns, bans, or anything else. If people start starving, committing suicide, and/or committing homicide to obtain supplies, because society and the economy has been cast back to the Middle Ages from the CV lockdown, how do we balance those deaths against the ones "saved" by the quarantine?
You are saying what I think everyday. Worldwide we have a rate of .00006% of people infected, much less for those dying. Today with 24 hour news people are freaking out over the few deaths. Think about if people were seeing live footage of the D-Day Invasion, what did the USA have 6000 dead in a day?Probably double that that were wounded some would never be the same. But hey we've had 1000 die in a country of 330 million. My state of NH has had one death, with 100 infected out of a 1.356 million population, that works out to .0006% same average as the rest of the world. Our unemployment rate soared from 500 last week to 41K this. The number of people losing everything will be high along with domestic assaults, suicides, robberies as people get desperate. The virus deaths are nothing compared to all the other collateral damage it will cause. Cheers!
This is the saddest post I've read on CD in a long time.
I agree. And this is another topic for another thread: this is no longer an unusual story at all.
Wait a minute -- there was a thread -- I know because I started it some years ago -- I think it was entitled "Retirees who are estranged from their adult children". The thread ran for about 2.5 years, if I remember correctly. Was VERY active in the beginning. And I received many PMs from people who didn't want to post publicly, saying that they were SO glad to know that they were not alone.
I don't want to hijak this thread because I'll get kicked off.
Saying that we "need to go back to normal now" is pretty much blithely also saying "Hey, all those healthcare workers who ALREADY don't have enough masks or equipment, they can just deal with being completely overwhelmed. It's their own fault for choosing to work in health care."
There are a number of "risk factors" for serious Covid-19 infections and one of them is exposure to high viral loads, which pretty much applies to any medical worker, healthy or otherwise.
There is a hospital in my state that was asking people to sew masks for their non-ER people from their stockpile of what looked to me like HEPA vacuum bags.
Exactly. Unless healthcare workers and police and fire and every first responder front-line workers refuses to do their job and just let people die wherever, it is critical that the illness load be stabilized and decreased. All we can do is stay home/stay apart socially. That really isn't that damn hard.
(Disclaimer- I am a retired healthcare workers and have many friends on the front lines. Have been stay-homed for weeks now in my progressive town in SW Colorado, and now the whole state is same. The area has barely been tested but there are confirmed cases in adjoining counties and there is minimal medical care on the whole Western Slope and lots of seniors and aging veterans and and. )
Actually, for homemade masks, vacuum bags are a very good material for protection.
In my area, Ralph Lauren and his company are donating $10 million for relief efforts and his manufacturing is turning to gowns and masks. A very good citizen and neighbor.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
