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| If the Inn at Williamsburg were a nursing home, all the lights in the world wouldn't brighten the lives of the elderly residents imprisoned inside. |
My sister is in a nursing home in Frederick, MD, so I totally get what Eric Peters is talking about in his Letter to the Warden of the Prison for the Elderly. I've had only one outside visit with my sister since last March and even then we had to wear masks and stay six feet away from each other. No touching! A guard was stationed nearby to make sure we didn't break the prison rules.
Fortunately, I did manage to break her out once to take her to the eye doctor's and it was a beautiful day in late summer. We stopped at a drive-through for a snack and sat and just talked and visited for awhile before I took her back to incarceration.
I talk to my sister on the phone every day, sometimes two or three times, and we have a FaceTime visit every Monday. She's alert, aware, and tells me often that she feels like she's "in prison." The phone and virtual visits just don't cut it. She's hardly been out of her room for nine months. Good-bye to bingo or any other kind of entertainment...just non-stop solitary confinement.
Her nursing home is about an hour and half away from me, but I was visiting on average about once every three weeks before the lockdowns. l have no doubt at all that those visits were important to her physical and mental health. Last Christmas I took my daughter and two of my granddaughters to visit. They sing in the choir and serenaded us with beautiful hymns followed by us all singing Christmas carols. Several members of the staff came in smiling to say how much they enjoyed listening.
NOT THIS YEAR!
I'll suggest to my daughter that the girls call and sing over the phone, but that's not the same. What a Christmas for all those poor, elderly souls in Wuhan jail, especially those suffering from Alzheimers and dementia who don't understand why their families have abandoned them. Many of them will die, not from the virus, but from the forced isolation.
Meanwhile, my husband and I just spent the weekend in Williamsburg with our youngest daughter and her family. We went to an outside bazaar in Yorktown where most people were masking outside, even on the river beach and on the pier far away from any other family group.
CAN YOU SPELL RIDICULOUS?
Yes the virus is real and people catch it and get sick -- some die. Over 99.9 percent do not! People die every year from the seasonal flu, pneumonia, cancer, heart disease, etc. More are dying during this pan(ic)demic year because of delayed treatment!
None of us will get out of this life alive. It's time to stop acting like we can live forever if we just lock everyone in their homes, wear masks, isolate from our families, and destroy livelihoods. We don't even know yet how many lives have been lost to the draconian measures, not to mention the children damaged from increased child abuse and restrictions against schools and sporting events. My daughter just moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Thank God! Wolf just closed many businesses again.
We do know that the states that lock down and persecute (and even prosecute) their non-compliant residents, do no better than the states like Florida and South Dakota that refuse to join the panic. Check out these articles for more:
The Cost of Lockdowns in Human Lives
And from the Wall Street Journal: per-capita Covid fatalities in states that stayed open were on average about 75% lower than those that locked down. One reason is that deaths in most states, regardless of whether they locked down, have been concentrated in nursing home facilities and minority communities that have higher rates of underlying health conditions and multigenerational housing.
States that Stayed Open Fared Better
No doubt someone will chant the mantra, "but if we can save just one life...." My response? Turn in your driver's license! I'm keeping mine current in hopes that someday soon I can visit my sister again.
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