Old men and quarantine: comforting lessons and not so good ones

Frightened by the example of Italy, where the virus attacked the older generation, the Moscow authorities from the very beginning of the epidemic focused their efforts on the elderly. And what is the result?

Lyudmila Butuzova

In early March, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced the introduction of a three-week quarantine for citizens aged 65+. “The nature of the coronavirus is such that first of all it poses a danger to the life and health of the elderly and people with chronic diseases, with low immunity. Therefore, our task is to protect Muscovites of the older generation, ”the Moscow mayor emphasized. Young people still went to cafes and shops, and old people were already locked up in their homes. Most regions have followed suit.

However, as the epidemic developed, it became clear that in Moscow, and then throughout Russia, it took a different path. According to the daily reports of coronavirus control staff, only 15% of patients are over 65 years old. About half are people under 45 years old and even children.

The older generation “suddenly” turned out to be much better prepared for the epidemic than the youth.

“This is not the first epidemic in the country,” recalls Geragog, candidate of sociological sciences, member of the board of the All-Russian society “Knowledge” Tatyana Kononygina. - They remember these epidemics and quarantine measures quite a lot, therefore they took the warnings of epidemiologists and authorities more seriously than their children. If something is annoying, it’s a paternalistic attitude towards retirees, who are considered by officials to be unreasonable children. Deny, punish, chained to the battery (in our case - do not give a digital pass, deprive free travel in public transport), if they do not obey. This is a very big mistake. I speak as a specialist in geragogy with extensive experience in pedagogy for the elderly.

The initiators of “restrictive measures” claimed that they did this for the good and health of the older generation ... But the prohibitions were imposed by people young enough who had not yet experienced the “delights” of the elderly. And, frankly, they cared primarily about themselves. The official must take action, they will ask him ... But it’s important for the old man that he remained in society.

It is known that a man who is kicked out of work at the age of 65 quickly dies. Whereas at this age people, especially educated ones, have quite a high intellectual potential. This is experience, knowledge. According to the concepts of gerontology, the elderly are not a burden, but a resource. In the end, even if a person himself had previously dealt with everyday affairs and could go to the store, to the post office or to the bank, now he is not allowed to leave the house due to quarantine.

Think about it: what can be the schedules for an elderly person who has a lot of sores? He walks when he can, and not when he is allowed. The routine, lifestyle was violated, she simply attributed all to the detachment of the weak and incompetent, everyone was ordered to get a social worker or volunteer. This is just some kind of sanitary wildness: relatives they don’t have the right to bring food to their old people, so as not to infect them, and a stranger with the rank of volunteer, whose 10-15 wards are still unknown with what diagnosis, is considered “sterile”. In this case, the point social protection is completely lost if the person himself does not somehow remind himself. In Soviet times, this could not be imagined. Lonely citizens were socially protected more: they were paid pensions in cash, with home delivery and on receipt. People living in the same house knew each other, especially pensioners: they sat on benches, looked at neighbors for a visit. Actively worked veteran organizations. Now atomization dominates. Even people full of strength and health are often not needed by anyone. What can we say about lonely old people. Despite the massive informational campaign, many still have not heard about all these hotlines, and even more so about the Gosuslugi website and other services. The system simply does not see such. These people do not receive any help, no one even knows that they exist. The most helpless remain alone with isolation ...

In 2019, the state finally included in the national project "Demography" the foundations of a system of long-term care for older people, which was developed by the "Old Age in Joy" fund. It is based on the proactive identification of those who need help. Experimentally, this system was launched in about half of the country's regions, including Moscow. But of course, they did not manage to create any complete database before the epidemic. The quarantine tore even those delicate threads with which older people were connected with society, and around many of them loneliness closed into a solid wall.

- But isolation can be regularly repeated due to the emergence of new pandemics, ” Kononygina says . - How will this affect the older generation? Tragically. Suicides will go, family violence will intensify. Seniors will feel unnecessary. When they catch up, too many are missing. Now there is a slight respite, the state needs to use it, look at the experience of public organizations and foundations, which for the most part worked as psychological support services. They sat and listened to old people who just needed to talk. The fact that someone generally remembers about you that there is some kind of "big land" outside the apartment or room in a nursing home is very important for an elderly person.

It is important, I believe, for the state. There is a base, specific addresses and people who need support.

According to Elizabeth Oleskina, director of the Old Age in Joy fund , the total number of elderly people who need care and support may exceed two million people. The army of volunteers who are ready to provide this assistance is about the same in number. The most pleasant thing is that more than half of them are people of mature age 65+ - peers of trouble. In our Oryol society “Knowledge”, which I have been managing for many years, thanks to the “Telephone Circuits” project (special thanks to the Timchenko Foundation, who allocated 20,000 rubles for the project), we did not lose a single activist and pulled hundreds of people out of isolation, before who knew what existed for them People’s University, the program "Children of War", "In the places of my memory", dances, which now have turned into "waltzes in the distance." At the first opportunity, as soon as the restrictions on leaving the house have been lifted, you have no idea how many of our people rushed to catch up.

DEATH IN CONCLUSION

Miracles of creativity, which were shown by public organizations and foundations to brighten up the life of older people, they don’t completely cancel the fears and problems that the state has hung on them.

For an elderly person in isolation, the likelihood of dying from an unfortunate virus increases, but for another reason - for example, from kidney failure or pneumonia, which is caused by forced immobility. As a result, mortality in confinement in the elderly increases significantly. At the same time, against the backdrop of the fight against the pandemic, they did not receive planned medical care, including surgery. This is the opinion of the gerontologist, president of the Gerontological Society at the Russian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor Vladimir Anisimov , who was very skeptical about the possibilities of domestic health care for serving the older generation. Routine examinations and procedures rescheduled. As a result, many sick old people “may not live up to their coronavirus.” And you still do not know which is better. After all, how do you not get away from the sensitive topic and how not to justify it with the suddenness of the epidemic that has fallen on Russia and the overload of medical facilities, this topic arose from the first day and did not go anywhere: instead of saving some 70- three weeks in intensive care a summer citizen, it’s much easier and cheaper to lock him at home. So that an elderly person does not compete for a bed with young people. And it turns out that fighting for his life, no matter how cynical it sounds, makes no sense.

“They put us home, simply because health care was not ready to treat us,” was one of the first about this. said the media doctor of medical sciences, professor, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, specialist in the field of epidemiology and preventive medicine Igor Gundarov . - In many cities, even after the optimization of healthcare, there are no infection departments left. It's time to judge those who started optimization of domestic medicine. The result is a catastrophically destroyed primary health care unit. Science, thank God, has been preserved. We are not far behind world science. But scientists, not health officials, should deal with reform.

DEBRIEFING

Probably there will be a debriefing. Too many monstrous facts have accumulated that can no longer be silenced or interpreted as the success of the reform. In May, media workers analyzed the deaths of Russian doctors from coronavirus and compared these data with information from other countries. It turned out that mortality in the Russian Federation is 16 times higher than that in six countries with a similar epidemic scale. Is this the success of domestic reform? Or the fact that Moscow - the richest city - during the epidemic gathered medical personnel from all over Russia? Doctors and nurses from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad were brought here. But the story is different in the regions: there are not enough doctors, in central Russia, according to the Alliance of Doctors, there is one infectious disease specialist in three areas, gynecologists and ENTs have been retrained on the Internet for the epidemiologists. And they are treated just like in the capital, in a boorish way: they don’t pay many, they don’t do tests for coronavirus, just work and that's it. The Alliance has even the official response from the prosecutor's office: in one of the hospitals, most doctors became ill and continued to work, and of all the protective equipment they had only gloves.

There is no treatment, cold, almost complete absence of doctors - Petersburg residents complain about the conditions in the hospital, deployed in the Lenexpo exhibition pavilion on Vasilievsky Island. They do not understand why they were brought here and why healthy people are lying next to the sick, risking infection.

Vasileostrovsky municipal deputy Nelly Vavilina says that she is constantly phoned by people who have elderly parents, grandparents, without medicine, without clothes, without hygiene products in Lenexpo , and for many days no one approaches them.

Alexander Rudkovsky in Lenexpo had a mother - 78-year-old Galina Andreevna. She was brought from the district hospital, where she ended up with serious burns, doused with boiling milk.

- A positive test for cove came - and on May 6, instead of a skin grafting operation, she was taken to Lenexpo. For nine days the doctor did not approach her. I have asthma, my wife recently had an oncological disease, we have a three-year-old child, so we didn’t take my mother home, but if I knew what was going on at Lenexpo, I would have found another way to isolate her, ”says Alexander. - Mom complained about the cold, asked for a second blanket, they didn’t give, but where will the grandmother find the mistress-sister? I have no complaints about the personnel in these field conditions, it’s just that there are very few. For 400-450 patients, six doctors and six nurses, two treatment rooms and four guards, and one person at the reception. For two days she lay in one shirt under a thin bike blanket, the stamp is 1999. Only on the sixth day my mother received anesthetic injection and dressing, but they did not have ointment. That is, they bring patients with burns there - but they have no cure for burns! And there is no pressure either. Mom’s heel is burnt, and she has to walk to the toilet herself. She has 10 diapers, but she says - and who will bear them? That is, there is no general care for bedridden people. "Her neighbor says that mom is trying to eat less to go to the toilet less." Although there is no problem with food, they feed very well

The construction of temporary hospitals, and they, as you know, already at the end of May, during the recession of the epidemic, managed to pile up 10 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, raises questions from Natalia Aronova, a design engineer from Voronezh.

“Infectious hospitals do not.” I designed infectious diseases hospitals and laboratories and have a complete understanding of how this is done. I was struck by this stable system of cells where people are lying. Even if there is a division into zones, then why does everyone lie in one heap - do they have that, does everyone have a confirmed coronavirus? Even in such rooms there should be a very powerful ventilation system, moreover, separate and with mechanical motivation. Now many hospitals, turned into infectious ones, are not equipped with the necessary ventilation, where the air from the dirty zone goes to one place, from clean to another. There are many nuances; there must be very high requirements for such premises, both construction and sanitary. And here it seems that they took a gym or an ice arena, divided into cells. That's how people can be taken and folded only according to the laws of wartime, this is my opinion as a designer.

Staying one patient a day at the Lenexpo hospital costs a budget of 4,165 rubles a day, for the same amount, Fontanka writes, you can rent a room at Radisson. Wouldn't it be cheaper to rent empty hotel rooms and really isolate patients from each other, rather than build a temporary hospital for 416 million rubles? - users of social networks ask.

- The main lesson that, I hope, the country has learned, the medicine in which we now live and work, is simply terrible. And if there is still some serious infection, and the mistakes of the current epidemic will not be taken into account, everyone will fall - both doctors and patients, ”says Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Alliance of Doctors trade union.

HRC calls on the Ministry of Health to report on how many people did not receive timely assistance due to the fight against coronavirus. This is not about those who had a coronavirus, but about those who had other diseases. There is no accounting, there are only scary posts on social networks.

Leonid Veitkov : “My wife was very sick. I called the surgeon to the house, because she could not walk. He came in 2 weeks (5 days after the funeral), and apologized: ,, I am one in five clinics ... ,, His recommendations could save his wife. That's what the experiments in medicine have done. ”

There is a story with a resident of the Krasnodar Territory, who was sent from hospital to hospital for three months after the discovery of oncology. He traveled from city to city, collected the same certificates and analyzes several times, hospitals were not accepted because of quarantine. “Grandfather once again passed the COVID test. But while he was waiting for the result, other analyzes were overdue. I had to reassemble the certificates. While harvesting, the coronavirus test expired again. ” In the end, he said “I can no longer see the doctors” and committed suicide in the basement of his own house.

How many more have there been such men across the country in the past three months? You need to know this, the Human Rights Council insists.

YOU CAN SURVIVE

But where, interestingly, tens of thousands will be added to those who have been prescribed “social monitoring” as treatment? To the victims? To successfully cured?

Perhaps all sick Muscovites have already written about “social monitoring”. The stories of those who came across the bestial face of this platform are shocking. As well as the conclusions that Muscovites, frightened by this damn monitoring, will try not to ask the city for any help and not to see doctors.

“By mid-May, the scale of the moral disaster we are experiencing has become clear,” political analyst Kirill Martynov writes to the Federal Security Service. “It is formulated simply: the worst that can happen to a Russian citizen in an epidemic is to fall into the hands of the state.” To begin with, the state is lying, hiding the real extent of what is happening from people, himself and “foreign partners”. When the scale of the forgery becomes apparent, the state continues to lie, destroying the remnants of social trust. Doctors across the country are recording video messages from unknown to whom, talking about how they die and cannot provide for their families. People who are treated with pneumonia symptoms in hospitals are advised to be treated at home, be positive-minded - so as not to spoil the general statistics of the disease. These people then die without proper help, due to belated diagnoses, their relatives talk on the Internet about how they were treated. Doctors in this situation are hostages of their own reporting system, some of them literally commit suicide because of helplessness, lack of simple remedies, and the inability to help their patients.

On the other hand, people who honestly want to test themselves during an ARVI are put on the lists for monitoring the city’s video surveillance system, quarantined without a confirmed diagnosis, and fined for failures in the Social Monitoring application. No need to be surprised, this is what the guards can do in Russia; nobody explained the difference between the zone and quarantine.

You can survive if you are lucky with immunity, you have a place to live and you have a source of income, or enough connections and good luck to get to a good hospital. In all other cases, you are just an obstacle to state reporting on victories over the epidemic.