Posted on 11/25/2020 8:25:06 AM PST by Kaslin
In a tragic irony, the prospect of another 'life-saving' lockdown has drained some senior citizens of their will to live. Assisted suicides and depression are up.
An elderly woman who had experienced strict confinement and isolation in a Toronto nursing home under a previous COVID lockdown has narrowly avoided reliving that experience, although at a horrible cost. Toronto went into Ontario’s most restrictive “grey” tier on Monday, including a near-complete ban on social gatherings. Unlike many others in North America who have packed up their belongings and relocated to less restrictive areas during the COVID-19 outbreak, however, her “escape” from lockdown came tragically at the cost of her own life.
Canada’s “Medical Aid in Dying,” or MAiD, law allows people without a terminal illness to achieve assisted suicide, provided they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” which includes being in “an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed.” Ninety-year-old Nancy Russell had already been planning to use the MAiD law “at some point,” according to her daughter, Tory. But having experienced full lockdown of her nursing home, including a two-week confinement of residents to their rooms, followed by bans or tight restrictions on visitors that made socialization impersonal, she knew what was coming with this second round of lockdowns and didn’t want to live through it.
Russell’s family told CTV News that even though she was communicating with them by phone and quickly got up to speed on how to use Zoom, they saw the otherwise “sharp” woman begin to “droop.”
“Contact with people … was like food to her, it was like oxygen,” Tory told the outlet, saying her mother was tired around the clock due to a lack of stimulation. According to the family, Russell had predicted these harsh restrictions would “continue into 2021.” She didn’t want “to endure winter and lockdowns,” particularly an additional “two-week confinement into her room.” So she had a state-authorized technician help her kill herself instead.
Russell’s death comes at a time of increased loneliness and isolation for residents of senior care homes amid repeated lockdowns and isolation in the name of protecting them. As Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatric specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital, told CTV News, social restrictions can be “an incredibly isolating, lonely, depressing experience.”
Sinha went on to explain what everybody knows instinctively yet many government officials have been complicit in allowing:
When you can’t look forward to getting out of your room, to having meals or doing activities with others, to even seeing your own families and loved ones, you can imagine for a person in the last few years of their life where these are the basic things that actually bring them joy and really defined what they would call their own quality of life, when you actually deprive a human being of these things … that can have significant psychological consequences that can really give people no real will to live anymore.
The first doctor Russell applied to under the MAiD law turned down her request, saying, Tory reports, that she had “too much to live for.” Her condition continued to worsen, however, even as she braced herself for the winter. The second doctor granted her request for suicide after “more concrete medical health” issues developed.
Russell isn’t the first elderly person to choose to end her own life in the shadow of loneliness and despondence, nor, in all likelihood, will she be the last. Several weeks ago, a 95-year-old woman in Florida decided to stop eating and die because she didn’t want “to live this way anymore.”
As this woman’s daughter, Nan Thomas, told the Miami Herald, “Sometimes she’d say something like: ‘I just don’t understand. Why are they doing this to us?’” Thomas said the family kept hoping “they were going to open the doors and I would be able to bring her to my house again, and we’d go out to eat, get her strong.”
Thomas blames Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for her mother’s “quick decline” and death, since he let nursing homes continue to isolate their residents even as the rest of the state began opening up. “My mother died from long-term isolation,” she wrote in a letter to the Herald.
Shirley Turton, a 78-year-old Canadian woman in a similar situation, asked to have an assisted suicide in August. Turton’s daughter, Jennifer Turton-Molgat, said her wheelchair-bound mother used to be “so confident about her life. But that’s gone now. That has been snuffed. She’s lost all hope. She’s going downhill.”
Turton-Molgat said visiting her care home felt like visiting a prison, as visitation occurred through a window or wrought iron fence and 20 feet away. Video calls with an iPad were difficult because her mother couldn’t hold it up. Turton-Molgat didn’t feel these kinds of visits were “appropriate or helpful,” she told InfoNews.ca. Residents like her mother “just need to be close to people and have the proximity of their family members.”
Dr. Susan Woolhouse, a member of the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers, told CTV News that the lockdowns are “accelerating” requests for assisted suicide. Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Alex Schadenberg reports that more than 6,000 assisted deaths were reported in Ontario from mid-June 2016 through October 2020, and nearly a third of those deaths (1,948) were in 2020 alone, “representing 1,127 in the first six months of 2020 and 821 in the last four months.” That puts the average at more than 200 assisted suicide deaths a month in Ontario alone.
It is, of course, undeniable that the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths are among the elderly. In Ontario, 2,234 long-term care residents have died of COVID-19 to date, almost two-thirds of their total coronavirus deaths (3,519). While Toronto and other parts of North America go into lockdown this holiday season, however, we would do well to reflect on the toll isolation takes on the elderly.
For those who are old and frail, socialization with friends and family is one of the few joys that remain. They often can’t lead an active lifestyle, they usually don’t have a job, and there’s only so much TV and reading that can fill the hours in a relatively satisfying way. Even those who don’t consider assisted suicide are acutely suffering.
FaceTime and Zoom calls are far better than no communication at all, but they cannot replace rocking grandbabies, playing peekaboo with toddlers, or showing a son or daughter how to move a pie crust without breaking it. While COVID-19 can be dangerous to the old and frail, those who are so concerned about protecting the elderly shouldn’t reduce “protection” to a negative COVID-19 test and a pulse, lest they quash what makes life worth living.
Instead of viewing assisted suicide as a tragic but inevitable consequence of “protection” from a virus, we should heed the voices of those most deeply affected by lockdowns and restore their right to decide how they want to spend their few remaining years, despite the risk.
The lockup, no visitors and room confinement are taking its toll on nursing home residents, their families and those employed there! Oregon is requiring all facilities to PAY FOR WEEKLY testing of their employees! The state is making a shitload of money off these tests which are all considered positive until proven otherwise only the count is never adjusted. Facilities are paying an average of 10,000/month! All nurses. Caregivers and ancillary workers included. And NO ONE can visit unless their family member is dying! This is insane! Workers must try to do their jobs wearing masks, googles, gloves body coverings which is also costing a fortune. This includes non-profit facilities having to foot the bills also. I spoke with a family member who hasn’t seen her mother and father for almost a year! I called several facilities and it’s all mandatory based on mandates from our psycho governor Brown. It’s no wonder the elderly in these facilities are all on antidepressant medications.
This over reach by blue state governors MUST STOP.
“Don’t let the bastards wear you down!”
As we wheeled out the deceased, everybody else would line the hallway, wondering who would be next.
Demonrats are killing people due to isolation and confinement.
This is while they do whatever they please.
And WHAT SCIENCE is this based on????
There are ZERO studies proving that this is effective.
You confine and isolate people, close stores, kill businesses and FOR WHAT?
Covid is real. These lockdowns affect the mentally unstable. Friends bro just killed himself with a shotgun. Some Thanksgiving.
It’s time to fight back and quit letting these people run our lives into the ground.
Period.
You are exactly right.
Anyone with two brain cells ought to understand it, but it’s taboo to think it.
Fight back!
Send Cuomo and Newsom photos of you enjoying an ice cream cone.
Send them photos of you smiling while you watch a tv show.
Send them photos of you smiling while looking through a scrapbook.
Believe me, Cuomo and Newsom are a couple of miserable sons of bitches who can’t stand to see other people being happy.
Drive them crazy with your happiness!
OMG, thank you for sharing that with me.
The lockdown is keeping families apart and it’s really hard on all of us.
God bless you and your husband.
I appreciate the articles you post. They are always relevant and spark interest.
Stay safe and keep being an amazing you and Freeper!!
Best,
Eddie
ENDO office asked if I wanted a test, I proceeded to inform her of the above facts. After the Swine flu fiasco I don't take Vaccines.
AstraZeneca 70% vaccine has FETAL CELLS in it.
.
You may not believe they can do it, and they hope you don't believe it, but they do.
.
If I recall correctly, she did not kill herself, she was starved to death.
“Covid is real. These lockdowns affect the mentally unstable.”
Sure the china virus is real but unlike other viruses we know exactly who is in danger and those under 65 yrs of age have almost a zero chance of catching it and if they do there chance of recovery is almost 100%.
Older people and those having existing medical conditions ought to be given all necessary info needed so they may protect themselves. The rest of the population ought to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.
This flu is probably the easiest of all of them to manage since we know exactly who is in danger plus we have now a host of therapeutics to help get those infected thru it all.
AS for the deaths allegedly caused by this flu, I for one am not buying into the hysteria and hand wringing. We have all been played and it was 100% political.
I can understand the despair, but not wanting to take your life.
I’ve lost 2 sons, 1 at 33 days old died of Cytomegalic Inclusion Disease his dad brought back from Nam, flu like in adults. 2nd son was VICIOUSLY MURDERED BY A SOCIOPATH FOR HIS JOLLIES. Plea Bargained a M-1 to a M-2, served 8.5 yrs out of 20 yrs, 6 parole hearings. First 10 months after the Plea Deal. Grief doesn’t stop. I’m 72 now, many health issues. I want everyday God gives me.
I now CCW. You can’t cure a Sociopath.
This is the rarely publicized tragedy of the lockdowns.
People in nursing homes with no family or ability to leave are suffering terribly.
Just kinder, Terri was starved and dehydrated to death.
Growing non-compliance with everything politicians and — especially anything and everything unelected bureaucrats and the “experts” — say, do, command or think is good start, but force is the only way to wrest the self-anointed power and celebrity from these tyrants. I mean, they’re all just abnormal people obsessed with controlling other people ... something most normal people just don’t understand the motivation to do so.
I thought Cuomo killed 25,000 seniors with his policy...
That's a little hard for seniors...
Thank you,
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.