A Covid-Related Death?

In September 2019, we posted regarding two friends living in elder care facilities.  For reasons of privacy, I called them "Bill" and "Mike."  In January 2020, I wrote that Bill had died.  He was a WWII veteran who was usually quite lucid but occasionally hallucinated.  He was almost 100.

Mike, on the other hand, was in a memory care facility where he lived largely in isolation.  I visited him daily in the afternoon, and he was always happy to see me.  But I know he didn't get out of his room much, and I believe he thought I was a different person each visit.  His wife also visited him often, usually late in the morning.  When I spoke with him, he could always tell me his first name but often could not recall his last name.

In January of this year we posted some observations (well, speculation) about people with neurodegenerative diseases living there in isolation.  In the time that I had been visiting Mike he had not seemed to decline, although others around him did -- at least to my eye.  I wondered if this wasn't a result of frequent visits and social interactions with his wife and me.  In Beating the Dementia Monster we discussed the role of social interactions in slowing the progress of Alzheimer's disease.

Then came the Covid-19 lockdown, and I have not seen him since.  On April 26, we posted about my concerns with respect to the impact of the lockdown's loneliness and isolation on people with Alzheimer's disease.  I didn't say as much, but I worried that the lockdown might accelerate Mike's disease.  I don't know if it did or not, but he died a few days ago.