If I’m interpreting this correctly, only 13.7% of over-85s are in care homes.
This might in part be because in the UK we are (rightly or wrongly) very aggressive in keeping people in their own homes for as long as possible, so there are many, many people in the community who are having a lot of input from visiting carers but who don’t appear in the care home statistics.
Typically people don’t live all that long in care homes. If you need a care home at 90, you will probably only need it for a few years. If you need a care home at 80, you will probably only need it for a few years. If you need a care home at 100, you will probably only need it for a few years. So as a proportion of elderly people overall, those in care homes are fewer than you might anticipate.
Indeed, visiting carers are common (and are much cheaper than a care home which starts at £500/week) and you often have live-in carers for those who have more money. If it works, it works 
and it is a nice deal for the “resident”, although a care home offers a much bigger range of company… unless they are all gaga and then it doesn’t!
Average UK care home stay is 2.5 years, and I suspect this doesn’t vary much with age because you go into one when your condition has reached a certain level, and different people just reach that point at different ages.
As “old” people get better protection (of all types) the average age in hospitals will reduce, and this has been widely reported.
I’ve seen (and smelt) a few care homes and would rather die quickly while I am still fully functioning
Indeed; care homes are terrifying. My grandmother ended up in one (she had dementia). When she went in, she still had enough “marbles” left to observe that while she might have been gaga, the other residents were something else. It was full of people who were already effectively “dead” (lost their minds) but were still walking around.
I do get quite distraught, following some of the news reports when you hear of people losing their nearest and dearest.
We arent meant to make the political connection I know, but I am afraid I do. I do find myself thinking why the lockdowns in the UK werent earlier. I think I understand all the economic arguments, and even the arguments that many of those that die were elderly and had other diseases. However, I still cannot accept that the lock downs werent earlier, or this wouldnt have enabled a good few with many many healthy years to look forward to, to still be alive. These are tough decisions, I understand this, but I dont think I could have delayed in the way our political class thought it was right to do. It fills me with sadness that perhaps we didnt follow the old avaition adage, if there is doubt, there is no doubt.
As to rest homes and nursing homes, I am afriad they fill me with as much dread. There are a few good ones, but at least in the UK, they are few and far between. Not because they are bad, albeit there are some that are, but because so many are devoid of humanity. Yes, they care for the body, but not the mind, not the sole. I know one owner very well whose homes looked after the more challenging patients – almost all with pyschiatric problems of one type or another. He would say to me, show me a home were most of the patients are drugged up to the hilt. Nothing necessarily too bad, but various degrees of sedation and psychiatric drugs all designed to make the patients “easier to deal with”, and some are ineed incredibly challenging. Had he thought about using drugs, of course, it makes your life and the life of your staff so much easier. He felt fervetnly it wasnt the right solution however.
Sorry for the depressing post.
I am not sure about lockdowns saving lives overall. They just slow the spread of the epidemic so the health service remains within capacity. With CV19 being so infectious, it will eventually spread to practically everybody (in the “free” world, at least). The vaccine is the only way to end it; without it it will kill roughly 1% of the population, sooner or later, and – apart from some treatments coming on stream over time – it will kill the same people, sooner or later.
Nursing homes are horrid, and citalopram is handed out frequently. At one which my mum was in (for only 4 weeks, we got her out pretty quick) they were probably putting it in the food. In our wealthy society we don’t have the space, the weather, and the extended families within which senile people can live out their last days in better surroundings. And the “children” don’t want to / are unable to pay for it so the State has to, and the State likes the cheap homes.
FWIW, Here is an article on the re-admission of ex CV19 patients.
Readmission rate for Covid patients 3.5 times greater, and death rate seven times higher, than for other hospital patients
Care homes are terrifying. My mother spent the last four years of her life in one. It was pretty decent, as these things go, and the staff (practically all east European by the way, wonder how well THAT will work post Brexit) did their best. But the big problem is other other inmates. My mother was OK-ish at the start, she had mild post-operative cognitive dysfunction, i.e. she was too confused to continue to live on her own after two major operations and associated anaesthesia. But to live surrounded by people who are 90% totally gaga – how can anyone survive that?
At the same time she went in, there was a guy probably in his mid-70s who seemed pretty normal. By the time my mother died he was as gaga as the rest of them. I think any of us would be after four years of that.
Peter wrote:
I am not sure about lockdowns saving lives overall.
I am not sure on this one.
In Australia and NZ they certainly have. Clearly if they hadnt pretty much eliminated the virus in the early days the loss of life would have been much higher. New Zealand has had 25 deaths.
If deaths are a direct proportion of the number of people infected, then if more people are infected clearly the deaths are lower.
The argument would seem to be if you lockdown early, when you unlock, the numbers rise, so you end up in the same position.
Is this argument valid? If you lockdown early, allow the cases to rise to a specified level, and then lockdown again, can you maintain a lower case load, and therefore less deaths.Given the same length of lockdowns are you better locking early than later? Surely with exponential growth (of a modified type) the higher the starting number the greater the rate of acceleration, and therefore the more deaths?
it would be interesting to the see the modelling in the UK if we had locked earlier in the spring last year, and earlier in the autumn, also last year.
Doubtless these models will all be run in due course and we will have a more accurate “formula” on which to base them.
My intuition is lock early, and you will save lives. 
The early and extensive lockdown is an interesting idea. If you can control your borders and manage what you do with people coming in. Or if you’re China, lockdown wuhan but keep the flights out going.
Perhaps area specific would have been better, locking down London early might have been a way to help things. However at the time the big narrative from the WHO, etc was not to lock down not to stop travel, etc. It’s also very difficult for smaller (sized geographically) nations that do huge amounts of international business and trade.
I’m not convinced though that lockdowns really will be seen to have helped that much at the end of the day. I suspect suicides will be way up, there will be lots of missed diseases where early diagnosis and treatment can save lives. Cancer could be a massive issue. And as I understand poverty kills and destroying an economy is a good way to put more people into poverty.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
In Australia and NZ they certainly have.
I think there’s more to strong border control and island status than lockdown. I suspect you could get a very similar outcome closing the borders thoroughly (including to illegals) early. And encouraging the population to social distance, hygiene, reasonable steps etc without having to go to virtual house arrest.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
In Australia and NZ they certainly have. Clearly if they hadnt pretty much eliminated the virus in the early days the loss of life would have been much higher.
But was that because of a lockdown or a very early border closure? I’m pretty sure it is the latter. No other country has managed to eliminate the virus using lockdowns. (Except possibly China, using methods that would be impossible in an open society.)
