Ageism Is Making the Coronavirus Pandemic Worse - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Envision, for a moment, a world in which the rapidly spreading coronavirus is mostly infecting people under the age of 50
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Imagine that the death toll is highest among children and that, as of today, the United States had reported more than 104,000 confirmed cases and at least 1,700 deaths, mostly among middle schoolers
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If your imagined reaction differs from your current one, then we must ask some hard questions. Most crucial: Is the reality that elders are most likely to get ill and die from COVID-19 affecting the way countries—particularly the U.S.—are responding to the pandemic?
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I’m a geriatrician at UC San Francisco, whose medical center consistently ranks in the top 10 nationally and as the best on the West Coast
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During my nearly 30-year medical career here, I’ve never witnessed anything like the system-wide mobilization I’ve seen in recent weeks. And yet some of what I’m seeing is also disturbing, especially because my geriatrics colleagues around the country say that elder-specific needs and medical science aren’t being adequately addressed at their centers either.
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health-screening procedures for visitors were put into place at our children’s hospital at the start of March, while similar procedures weren’t implemented for our adult hospital until two weeks later.
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On the contrary, UCSF leadership has been heroic and selfless, working around the clock to provide the best care possible to those with COVID-19 while protecting other patients and staff
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Medical schools devote months to teaching students about child physiology and disease, and years to adults, but just weeks to elders; geriatrics doesn’t even appear on the menu of required training
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Public responses to the coronavirus pandemic on social media have laid bare the not-so-subtle interplay between medical culture and American culture at large