The phony story about the hospice patient who died of COVID-19

[Trumpster]

As I see it the fact that someone is in Hospice means that they already have a process which is likely to cause their death and that disease may be tjhe real cause of death even if COVID hastened that death. As one Epidemiologist put it " About half the COVID deaths would of died within a year without COVID ( paraphrased)
You make a good point which also applies regardless of age, these deaths are still tragedies. However, when accessing the risk for the average healthy person the death rate of nursing home residents, much less Hospice receipiants is not really relevent.
The Spansih Flu was more deadly among the young, which would be scarier to me even though I am older. One of the things that I am angriest about was the media's failure to put the risk to kids in perspective in order to market the fear. The unwarranted anxiety parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles , etc were put through was unforgiveable. think part of the

Let me mention just one possible exception: Some people with dementia may be considered terminal even though they don't have any other health issues like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes.

[Trumpster]

The point was that people get COVID only because of the facility they were put in, as they were at the end of their life.
It reminds me more of how they determine that you are automatically guilty in a car crash even if you were at a .005 blood alcohol level. You were stopped at a red light and got rammed from behind but they still list it a contributing factor of alcohol.

Nothing like another confusing explanation. What is .005? You assume I'm a drinker who understands such things.

About the facility they were put in: I believe hospice has standards like a doctor - Do No Harm. Just because someone has a terminal illness doesn't mean they can't be killed by COVID.

Suppose a man puts his wife in a facility like hospice. But he can't stand to see his wife suffer, so he goes to visit her and shoots her dead. Will the judge say, "No problem, she was going to die soon anyway."

[carolina73]

If they thought the person had some worth they might have taken the time to think about the many individual circumstances of those in hospice and the fact that COVID-19 can shorten a person't life even in hospice.

Sorry you missed my point.

People are put in Hospice when they are thought to be in their final days. It can be for many medical reasons that they ended up there. The fact that they contacted a worker or visitor with COVID inside the facility usually means very little.
Researchers say elderly people are in hospice care for an average of only 12 days. The Median time is only 24 hours (1 day). Some last longer than 6 months and that really skews the average.

If your view is that hospice is where people go to spend their last weeks/months/years then you are mistaken. It would take a few days before they even showed any symptoms and longer before it actually caused the death.

https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...tilize-hospice

https://www.verywellhealth.com/hospice-myths-1132617

[roadmaster]

Hospice is only called in when a person is near death. They do great work and I almost accepted a job with them years ago. I also called them in when I knew my husband had little time.

[countryboy]

My complaint was not against the whole world, just a couple of talk-show hosts who may have suspected a conspiracy to over-count COVID-19 deaths. So the effort was to use hospice patients to prove their point.

Which talk show hosts?

[countryboy]

Nothing like another confusing explanation. What is .005? You assume I'm a drinker who understands such things.

About the facility they were put in: I believe hospice has standards like a doctor - Do No Harm. Just because someone has a terminal illness doesn't mean they can't be killed by COVID.

Suppose a man puts his wife in a facility like hospice. But he can't stand to see his wife suffer, so he goes to visit her and shoots her dead. Will the judge say, "No problem, she was going to die soon anyway."

Libs make the worst analogies.

[Trumpster]

People are put in Hospice when they are thought to be in their final days. It can be for many medical reasons that they ended up there. The fact that they contacted a worker or visitor with COVID inside the facility usually means very little.


If your view is that hospice is where people go to spend their last weeks/months/years then you are mistaken. It would take a few days before they even showed any symptoms and longer before it actually caused the death.

https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...tilize-hospice

https://www.verywellhealth.com/hospice-myths-1132617

If what you say is true, why didn't these talk-show hosts give some details of the case they spoke of? Was it in the news that a hospice patient died of COVID-19? I've heard two different talk-show hosts tell the story almost in the exact same way but without a scrap of detail. Hmm!

My "view" is that a hospice patient may live as much as 1 to 5 months longer if not infected with COVID-19 (Perhaps even longer like the 6.4% who outlive hospice care.) But with no details coming from these talk-show hosts, the story is incomplete and misleading, at best. At worst, the story could be completely fabricated.

[carolina73]

Hospice is only called in when a person is near death. They do great work and I almost accepted a job with them years ago. I also called them in when I knew my husband had little time.

That job has to take a toll on people. You have to look hard for bright spots during the day.

[carolina73]

If what you say is true, why didn't these talk-show hosts give some details of the case they spoke of? Was it in the news that a hospice patient died of COVID-19? I've heard two different talk-show hosts tell the story almost in the exact same way but without a scrap of detail. Hmm!

My "view" is that a hospice patient may live as much as 1 to 5 months longer if not infected with COVID-19 (Perhaps even longer like the 6.4% who outlive hospice care.) But with no details coming from these talk-show hosts, the story is incomplete and misleading, at best. At worst, the story could be completely fabricated.

Don't forget that you can get "hospice care" in your own home, hospital, nursing home...that are not hospice facilities. Hospice facilities are usually non-profit comfort facilities for your last days. They are basically freeing up beds in the other facilities because you are beyond treatment. WE have thousand of nursing home and hospital beds in our area but only about 25 beds in a nearby hospice.

They had about 900 patients in those 25 beds last year. They charged about $450 a day per patient for everything. Since they are non-profit they post everything. If hospice patients were lasting more than a month then they would be in tents in the parking lot.


This is a major reason for medicare moving them out of hospitals that would be raking about $15,000 a day, when they are no longer going to treat a patient.


Dementia patients are not considered terminal and they are put in special units of assisted living and nursing homes. They go to hospice in their final days.

[Trumpster]

Don't forget that you can get "hospice care" in your own home, hospital, nursing home...that are not hospice facilities. Hospice facilities are usually non-profit comfort facilities for your last days. They are basically freeing up beds in the other facilities because you are beyond treatment. WE have thousand of nursing home and hospital beds in our area but only about 25 beds in a nearby hospice.

I know all about hospice care because my mother was in hospice care at home. Her diagnosis was hydrocephalus, otherwise known as fluid pressure on the brain, but other than that she was in good health. Her first symptom was difficulty walking and eventually she was confined to bed. She was always in good spirits and never complained. Whenever the nurses asked her how she was doing she would say, "good". Near the end she had no appetite and slept for longer periods of time. She died about a day or two before her hospice benefit would have expired.

What does it prove? It proves that everyone's situation is different. Her's was very different than the picture you painted above. My father died before my mother and would have qualified for hospice except there wasn't any hospice facility in our area at that time. He had Alzheimer's and we were taking care of him at home. His situation was also different than the picture you painted because he was not in a "special unit" and not in assisted living or a nursing home. And he could easily have lasted 5 or 6 months in hospice.

The fact still remains that the talk-show hosts didn't bother to give any details because they probably knew nothing about the person's situation, assuming it was a true story. Their goal was to promote the idea that there was a lot of cheating going on with the cause of death and death certificates.

It's a crime to falsify the cause of death on a death certificate. That being the case, if they were sure it was fraudulent, why didn't they report it to the appropriate authorities?