The loneliest pandemic deaths are in ‘care’ homes. Old people with dementia and people of all ages with severe mental disabilities do not understand why their families have stopped visiting them. The people they loved, often the only people they would allow to brush their teeth, dress and feed them, have vanished for no reason they can understand.
They stop eating, they self-harm, they withdraw into themselves, and they die in extraordinary numbers. Their final moments must include the thought that those they loved most have abandoned them.
Their families, meanwhile, suffer the sadness of never being able to say goodbye. The comments attached to a crowdfunder for a legal action – to order Matt Hancock to find a smidgeon of compassion in what passes for his soul and let people visit their loved ones in care homes – read like a modern Book of Lamentations.
‘My dad has Alzheimer’s and is profoundly deaf.
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