The Kirkland Washington nursing home where its COVID deaths first got heavy media coverage said that: “Our normal prior death rate was 7 per month” on 104 beds.
While your first thought would be that “patients are very sick going into a nursing home” if you talk to staff who have worked at nursing homes on the 3rd shift you will become aware that nursing home residents get very poor sleep because 10% of the patients keep the other 90% from getting restful sleep night after night.
Sleep deprivation speeds the deaths of these defenseless elderly people.
If you took healthy 18 to 22 year olds and mildly sleep deprived them for six months because 20% kept the other 80% from getting good sleep cycles, their health and mental function declines. I have witnessed this in college dorms.
Years ago I thought: Medicaid pays $84,000 a year keeping the elderly poor in nursing homes for years and years.
I did not realize then that half died in six months and two thirds died in less than a year.
Sleep deprivation at the less than average care facilities that house mostly Medicaid patients “is a money saving feature” that saves Billions of $ per year.
