Journal of aging & social policy
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, we face an exacerbation of ageism as well as a flourish of intergenerational solidarity. The use of chronological age is an unjustified threshold for the creation of public policies to control the spreading of the virus; doing so reinforces intrapersonal and interpersonal negative age stereotypes and violates older persons' human rights to autonomy, proper care treatment, work, and equality. ⋯ Concurrently, several initiatives are trying to overcome ageist practices by providing different types of assistance to older adults on the basis of need rather than chronological age. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network EuroAgeism calls on policymakers to refrain from ageist practices and language, as they exacerbate our ability to meet the COVID-19 crisis and future emergencies.
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As of May 2020, nursing home residents account for a staggering one-third of the more than 80,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the U. S. ⋯ This perspective offers a framework, designed with the input of nursing home leaders, to facilitate internal and external decision-making and collective action to address these threats. Policy options focus on assuring a shared understanding among nursing home leaders and government agencies of changes in the operational status of nursing homes throughout the crisis, improving access to additional essential resources needed to mitigate the crisis' impact, and promoting shared accountability for consistently achieving accepted standards in core quality domains.
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Hong Kong is a major international travel hub and a densely populated city geographically adjacent to Mainland China. Despite these risk factors, it has managed to contain the COVID-19 epidemic without a total lockdown of the city. ⋯ Hong Kong's public health intervention was developed from the lessons learned during the SARS epidemic in 2003 that killed 299 people, including 57 residential care residents. This perspective summarizes Hong Kong's responses to the COVID-19 virus, with a specific focus on how the long-term care system contained the spread of COVID-19 into residential care homes and home and community-based services.
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COVID-19 fatalities exemplify "bad deaths" and are distinguished by physical discomfort, difficulty breathing, social isolation, psychological distress, and care that may be discordant with the patient's preferences. Each of these death attributes is a well-documented correlate of bereaved survivors' symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger. ⋯ National efforts to enhance advance care planning may help dying patients to receive care that is concordant with the preferences of them and their families. Virtual funeral services, pairing bereaved elders with a telephone companion, remote counseling, and encouraging "continuing bonds" may help older adults adapt to loss in the time of pandemic.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, justification for orders to shelter in place have emphasized the vulnerability of older people. Although other at-risk groups were sometimes mentioned, the emphasis on older people could have effects on attitudes about aging and older people for decades to come. This essay provides a comprehensive biopsychosocial description of ageism and discusses the pandemic as a "focusing event" that exemplifies the extreme social consequence of ageism for the entire older population. It suggests revisions to the Elder Justice Act and utilization of programs such as the Reframing Aging, Age-Friendly University, and Ageism First Aid initiatives to reduce ageism in the wake of the pandemic.