Pt.3. Ontario, Quebec and the UK's Uncanny Similarities in Killing their Elders in Long Term Care

  Necessary background:

 In part's one and two of this series we understand that the leadership of Ontario and Quebec intentionally moved the sick, including those with Covid, out of the hospitals and into Long Term Care or Retirement homes. Ostensibly so hospitals would not be "overwhelmed with Covid patients. Then hospital beds sat empty. As Covid spread through the LTC and retirement  homes.  Both provinces opted, intentionally chose, to leave the Covid infected in the LTC and retirement homes, rather then place them in the empty available hospital beds.  That's the briefest summarizing I can provide for the two previous parts. You need to read them both. All  of what happened comes off as incredibly nefarious (wicked or criminal). That's because it is incredibly nefarious.  The two most populous provinces in Canada had options, to save the lives of these seniors. Neither  province exercised their options.Part 2 ended with a promise to cross the Atlantic from Canada to the UK and have a look at what was going on there. Guess what? It's the exact same scenario. What are the odds?

The virus was pushed into care homes in anticipation of a hospital surge that never happened.

"Has government policy killed people? That has been the question on everyone’s mind since the outbreak of Covid-19. Most of the time, only one policy is considered – did we lock down early enough or hard enough to save lives? But the government’s policy on care homes is likely to be far more significant.

Health secretary Matt Hancock insists that protecting care homes has always been a top priority for the government. ‘Right from the start, we have tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes’, he said at one of last week’s press conferences. Prime minister Boris Johnson made a similar claim in parliament last week: ‘We brought in the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown.’

Geez in the UK they claimed the top priority was to throw a "protective ring" around care homes. Here Doug Ford claimed it was going to be an "iron ring" around the LTC homesInteresting that similar language, memes, were employed eh? Similar language? Similar policies? That's suspect.

"Worse still, as I reported on spiked last month, rather than protecting care homes from the virus, government policy unwittingly (unwittingly??? that's an assumption I cannot and will not make!)  promoted its spread.

One of the key justifications for the lockdown was to ‘Protect the NHS’. Officials feared that the NHS could have been so overrun during the pandemic that it would have collapsed. This would, of course, have been a catastrophe, causing needless deaths. To help prevent this, the NHS exhorted the care sector to play a role in shielding hospitals.

An NHS plan in early March called for the ‘timely discharge’ of patients to free up capacity. Guidance from the Department of Health, issued on 2 April, reiterated this: ‘Hospitals around the country need as many beds as possible to support and treat an increasing number of Covid-19 cases. This means the NHS will seek to discharge more patients into care homes for the recovery period.’

Hospitals were ordered to clear thousands of beds in anticipation of a surge in Covid cases. Many patients were sent into care homes."

It's the exact same scenario as in Quebec and Ontario in the exact same time frame. One couldn't plan that better... unless they did?

"And it is now clear that some of those patients had Covid-19. The 2 April guidance provides the smoking gun: ‘Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.’

On top of that, pressure on care homes to take in Covid-19 patients also came from local authorities. According to a Sky News investigation, several councils threatened to withhold funding to care homes if they refused"

"Several councils threatened to withhold funding to help care homes deal with the coronavirus outbreak if they didn't agree to take in COVID-19 patients, Sky News can reveal. 

It comes as dozens of care homes fear a government policy allowing the transfer of coronavirus-positive or untested patients is a "major factor" in why COVID-19 deaths are so high."

 There was no way the outcome of moving persons infected with a respiratory virus, of any sort, into a long term care home, anywhere, is not knowable. The outcome of this move would have, could have easily been predicted.  So, why were these moves done at all?Go back to this report: Post Mortem for Pinecrest LTC: How Systemic Flaws Led To Tragedy at a Bobcaygeon Nursing Home

“I hate to say it, but this happens all the time in long-term care. It is constant. Every year, we have [flu] outbreaks.”

“There is always a problem, when there is an illness in the homes,” said Jane Meadus, staff lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly in Toronto, who pointed out that seniors in care facilities are older, and more vulnerable, than ever."

Happens every year. Happens all the time in long term care. Knowable.

"Overall, according to a Sky News survey of 90 care homes, 70 per cent of care homes said they felt pressure from hospitals to accept coronavirus patients, 41 per cent said they took in patients with Covid symptoms, and 38 per cent said they believed a Covid-positive patient discharged from hospital caused an outbreak in their home.

 This is all despite the fact that care homes hosted the group of people who were by far the most vulnerable to Covid-19. To make matters worse, care homes were also far less prepared for the outbreak than hospitals. An owner of a care-home chain, writing anonymously in The Times, says that two of his or her care homes became infected with Covid-19 which can be traced back to hospital discharges.

Once patients were in care homes, the NHS was no longer interested in helping them. The owner received a letter on 13 March which said, ‘If any of our residents got significantly ill, they wouldn’t be allowed into hospital and would have to die in their home’.

That is EXACTLY what occurred in Ontario and Quebec! That is beyond coincidental. As I'd reported in my previous post

 Quebec: "Why didn't they stop the transfers AND instead move the infected persons out of LTC and back into the empty hospitals?  The hospitals that were set up for and anticipating Covid patients. The hospitals where the ill could have received more appropriate treatment? Why wasn't this done?"

Ontario "By May 01/20: There were 1691 confirmed Covid patients in LTC homes in Toronto. With just 95 of them being hospitalized. The numbers of Covid infected patients nearly doubled in less then a month. While acute hospital beds sat empty"

Exactly the same scenario!Now you tell me what is the chance of this all being happenstance?  That here in Canada, as well as in the UK, Covid patients were pushed onto LTC homes?   These LTC homes were  completely incapable of handling this influx of infected patients and/or the inevitable deadly outcome. Then in Canada as well as the UK the infected were left to die in LTC.

 Around the peak of hospital cases on 10 April, only 51 per cent of the NHS’s acute beds were occupied by a Covid patient. Around the same time, 41 per cent of acute beds were not occupied at all – more than four times the normal number. The emergency Nightingale hospitals have also been largely empty. The Nightingale in London’s Excel Centre, which had space for 4,000 beds, only treated 51 patients in its first three weeks of operation. It was closed at the beginning of May.

Again, exactly as occurred in Canada. Acute care beds sitting empty.   Seniors, some infected, some not, left in LTC homes to die as overworked staff buckled under the strain.  While hospital beds sat empty in both nations! Clearly the UK's high death rates was, just like Canada, in the LTC homes.

"Shockingly, the UK government was not alone in pushing the crisis into care" homes.

No it wasn't because Canada did exactly the same. As did Italy.

 " In Lombardy, the hardest-hit region of Italy, care homes were paid extra to take in Covid patients from hospitals"

 Below is a comment excerpt from Marie who resides in the UK

...May 29, 2020 at 12:18 PMHi PennyHere is the story in my part of the UK:Seniors are dying in high numbers - complaints from the management of the Homes are typical - they are: No PPE, No testing, No one coming to pick up tests when they were done, Elderly being discharged from hospitals untested straight back into the homes infecting the other residents, infected and non-tested care workers going into the homes etc etc...Boris made no attempt to 'shield' the elderly at all. Numbers of deaths very high and disproportionate in the BAME category (Black and Minority Ethnic) ... we've been asking why as it seems this virus is 'selective'.Tues. my home town declared an emergency and closed its HospitalThis made national news as being the only hospital to do this so far during the pandemic.I have personal info about this hospital and its surprising it didnt get closed down earlier - the point is missed though. The hospital tested its STAFF not its patients - the STAFF supposedly are Covid-19 positive but asymptomatic - now this is interesting for various reasons...the hospital is a newly formed Trust operated (for profit) hospital - it was previously but that authority bankrupted and it was sold off again.. I digress... On Wed. management issued statement to say they can give a statement! about why they closed the hospital or why they tested their staff and not sure if their 'outbreak' is throughout the hospital, just staff or staff caught it from a patient...they DON'T KNOW!

Finally, last sentence from the spiked article:

"The carnage in care homes ought to be the biggest scandal of the Covid crisis"

This is why I'm doing this series. This is definitely one of the biggest scandals. The killing of seniors in homes where they should have been safe. In homes, we were told, were going to shield them from infection, with iron rings and the like. Instead, judging by the decisions taken,  the leadership of multiple nation states all made choices that only served to endanger the inhabitants of the homes and sell the idea of a pandemic to a wider audience. In order to manipulate the masses and reshape society. This has nothing to do with a virus. And everything to do with spreading fear. Liberally and widely.In Part 4 we are leaving the UK, heading back to North America. and looking at what happened in the US. Might as well tell you all. It's the exact same scenario. 

Pt.4: Uncanny Similarities in LTC/Nursing Home Deaths That Span Both Sides of the Atlantic Ocean- Canada. UK. US