Coming Out of Lockdown -- What Will that Mean for Elder Care?

Unless you live in Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, or a few other states, you have been living in quarantine for what seems like forever.  But sooner or later a mix of improving infection statistics, economic necessity, and public frustration will lead to a relaxation of the shutdown orders.  What will that mean for people living in memory care, retirement, nursing, and other elder care facilities?  This is where the most vulnerable members of our communities live, and mortality rates are the highest.

In our city, there is one nursing home with fully 100 infections.  I've visited that facility many times, and I didn't believe there were 100 people there.  So it must be that about everyone there is infected. 

It's pretty clear that your state will not lift all restrictions simultaneously.  Restrictions will be lifted systematically to favor less hazardous activities as well as activities with economic imperatives.  Elder care facilities have the most hazard for their residents, and there is no economic imperative for opening them.  So they will likely be the last to get to wherever it is we're going with a re-opened society.

Before our shutdown order came, I was visiting elder care facilities pretty much every day, seven days per week.  I had seen one period of time when there was a scare about the flu or something, and all residents were confined to their rooms for a week or so.  What struck me about this was the terrible sense of loneliness that would pervade the living areas.  (I was told I could enter at my own risk, and I decided to risk it.)  Some of the residents receive periodic visits from family and friends, but many have no visitors at all.  They do have an opportunity to see others at meals or while traveling the halls and community areas.  But in quarantine, the only human contact residents have is when someone brings them their food, or someone comes in to bathe them or help them go to the bathroom. 

For prisons, some have tried to make the case that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment.  This doesn't seem to be much different from what many elder care facility residents experience during quarantine.

Recall that human contact -- or rather, lack of it -- is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and increased human contact is recommended for people who have AD.

I saw quarantines lasting a week or so, and marveled at what the residents suffered through.  And so I can't imagine what these people are going through now.  When restrictions are relaxed for the rest of us, how soon will it be safe for elder care residents to return to the level of human contact they had before?  How long will their suffering last?