LETTER: Elderly should have been protected
Gov. Tom Wolf and state Health Secretary Rachel Levine have been saying for weeks that their lockdown policy has been a great success in curbing the spread of COVID-19 and saved the state from a health catastrophe. Their grandstanding is pure political deceit and performative theater, with the corporate media playing its usual role in shoving this propaganda narrative down our throats.
On June 9, Levine effectively admitted that their lockdown policy has been an abject failure when she then issued an order requiring long-term care facilities to now test all residents and staff for the virus, months after it first appeared in the state. About 70% of deaths with this virus in our state have been in these facilities. In fact, Pennsylvania has the fourth worst proportion of deaths in these facilities of all states in the country, according to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization which has been monitoring the virus.
If Wolf and Levine had instead focused on protecting the mostly elderly people in these facilities, the great majority of whom have prior serious health conditions, rather than locking down everyone else in the state, then a lot fewer vulnerable people would have died and the state would not have been plunged into an economic and social depression. Let’s put this into perspective. The median age of death with COVID-19 in our state is 84, according to Dr. Steven Shapiro of UPMC. And, the statewide mortality rate for people with this virus, at least 95% of whom had severe comorbidities, with respect to the state’s population is currently 0.00048%. That’s five times less than the mortality rates for heart disease and cancer in the state.
Wolf and Levine are not only responsible for failing to protect the vulnerable in care facilities, but they must surely also be responsible for the collateral damage caused by their unnecessary lockdown outside these facilities. To wit: a devastated economy, countless bankrupt small businesses, lost livelihoods, unemployed workers, families in turmoil, people’s mental and physical health worsened by stress and denial of medical care, skyrocketing debt, lost employer health insurance, disrupted education, municipal tax bases and services cut, and the creation of a sense of fear, panic, social mistrust and malaise throughout the state. Quite a legacy.
Robert Hanham
Carmichaels