Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

No Patient Should Ever Be Left Alone

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

by Kerry Dougherty

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week signed the Sunshine State’s “No Patient Left Alone Act,” guaranteeing that Floridians can have their loved ones with them when they are hospitalized, ill or in long-term care.

What’s truly unbelievable is that this needed to be legislated. The importance of family visits was always considered common sense. It was key to compassionate care.

Unfortunately, common sense was sacrificed on the altar of hysteria during the pandemic.

Panicked Democrats and morons at the CDC turned America’s nursing homes, hospitals and hospice centers into lonely outposts for the infirm. Eventually, these isolated hellholes became death chambers where authorities imprisoned elderly patients – alone – for more than a year.

Put a prisoner in solitary confinement and you’re committing a human rights atrocity. Yet “healthcare” providers happily locked nursing home residents in their rooms for a year or more. Many dementia patients died – alone – in the fetal position, without a visitor or a hug in months. Families watched their loved ones die over Zoom and then were forbidden by idiot governors to hold funerals.

Pandemic rules regarding the sick and elderly were the most heartless and inhumane of all of the Fauci-inspired torments visited upon Americans.

TV Meteorologist Janice Dean, who relentlessly pursued New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo after her in-laws died in New York nursing homes, said this week that her husband was allowed to see his parents in their dying days only through glass.

A storm of similar sickening stories quickly emerged.

Now Florida has legislated against it.

Every state should follow suit.

Shame on America and every coward who went along with this insanity. There needs to be a day of reckoning for the sadists who signed on to such cruel measures.

Let that day be November 8th. Don’t vote for anyone who supported the lockdowns. They deserve a couple of years in solitary, not public office.

This column has been republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.

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27 responses to “No Patient Should Ever Be Left Alone”

  1. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    I get what Kerry is saying — keeping old people in solitary confinement is cruel and unhuman — but any discussion must recognize the trade-offs. Restrictions on family visitations were put into place for a reason — to control the spread of the COVID virus in settings where the sick, old and infirm are especially vulnerable. I know of a case in Richmond where a nursing home succumbed to the ceaseless badgering of a relative to let a resident leave the facility for a special family event. The resident contracted COVID, brought it back to the facility, and several other residents died.

    I’d like to see a similar bill debated in Virginia. I’d be inclined to favor it, but I could be open to persuasion to allowing hospitals and nursing homes use their own discretion rather than issuing an across-the-board diktat.

    1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      Exactly, JAB. I know of several people who credit the strict quarantine policies of their parent’s nursing home for keeping their elderly parents safe during the worst of the pandemic. You will never see them referenced in a Kerry piece and they are likely the majority of cases not just a few success stories. Desantis is once again playing to the conspiracy-minded Trumpsters. I actually would not be surprised to see Youngkin follow suit. It seems to be his kind of thing.

      1. Stephen Haner Avatar
        Stephen Haner

        Lemme think. Who was president during this initial phase? Someone remind me. Who was standing there with Birx and Fauci?

        It is wrong for a state regulator or frazzled politician to dictate from on high that a nursing home must deny visitors. It is just as wrong to dictate that they must allow them. It’s a medical decision that needs to be made by the facility, which will be scared enough of lawsuits without adding in diktats from grandstanders.

        1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
          James Wyatt Whitehead

          Brace for contact Number One. Trump Force One has been refurbished and ready to taxi.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXfmvzsaTp0&t=258s

          1. Stephen Haner Avatar
            Stephen Haner

            Can he reach that steering wheel?

          2. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            Absolutely. He can’t wait to buzz the tower.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j67CW3AHEJ8&t=5s

          3. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Repo restoration.

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Standing there, fidgeting, and suggesting refreshing sips of disinfectants and UV ligths in the alimentary canal…

        3. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Standing there, fidgeting, and suggesting refreshing sips of disinfectants and UV ligths in the alimentary canal…

        4. Matt Adams Avatar
          Matt Adams

          It was equally as wrong for hospitals to direct their patients to Nursing homes without testing.

    2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      Exactly, JAB. I know of several people who credit the strict quarantine policies of their parent’s nursing home for keeping their elderly parents safe during the worst of the pandemic. You will never see them referenced in a Kerry piece and they are likely the majority of cases not just a few success stories. Desantis is once again playing to the conspiracy-minded Trumpsters. I actually would not be surprised to see Youngkin follow suit. It seems to be his kind of thing.

    3. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead

      Maybe there is a way to balance the needs of physical, emotional, and spiritual health. This is a tough one!

    4. Matt Adams Avatar
      Matt Adams

      If a loved one was in end stages of life are you really concerned about the spread of COVID?

      My mother got to say goodbye to her younger sister after she passed away (not from COVID) at the funeral home, luckily because she knew the director. Elsewise, she would’ve never seen her sister before she was cremated.

      There has to be a balance and merely denying visitation was never the answer, just like relegating “recovered” COVID patients to nursing homes was never the answer.

    5. CJBova Avatar
      CJBova

      To allow one or two family members to sit with a dying person is not the same as a patient leaving a facility, mingling with multiple people and returning to a facility.

  2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I believe Kerry railed against the large number of COVID deaths in nursing homes. Now, she criticizes nursing homes and hospitals for trying to protect their patients from people who might have been infected with COVID but not exhibiting symptoms, but who could transmit the disease.

    People like Kerry don’t even try to be consistent. Whatever opinion strikes her fancy is fine with her.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds… or something like that.

    2. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      Read my comment below to all of the commenters on this column. There are “protections of patients” specified in the law. It is at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2022/07/httpswww.flsenate.govSessionBill2022988BillTexterPDF.pdf

    3. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      Consistency with regard to COVID-19 regulations? Bill deBlasio, former leftist mayor of New York City, banned religious ceremonies and business openings but refused o enforce those same regulations against George Floyd protests.

      This is why authoritarian levels of control need to be very restricted. Asshats like deBlasio will pick and chose when the restrictions apply and when they don’t – based on his personal politics.

      There aren’t many politicians in America that I see as worse than Biden but deBlasio is one of them.

      https://nypost.com/2020/05/29/george-floyd-protests-okay-amid-coronavirus-gathering-ban-de-blasio/

      #DeSantis2024

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        funny you think DeBlasio is an asshat and DeSantis your man! geeze!

  3. John Harvie Avatar
    John Harvie

    Yeah. Y’all can go back to theNortham era thinking. Methinks DeSantis’ stance is the right one in the overwhelming number of cases.

    Betcha (hope anyway) Younkin would go down the same path were the same situation to arise back in the OD.

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Just ask – if the disease was something like ebola….

    would the DeSantis or Kerry visitation “rules” do something different?

    would it matter what the public health circumstances were ?

  5. Philip Shucet Avatar
    Philip Shucet

    I spent the better part of 2020 in Florida helping my wife care for her mother who was dying from natural causes and not covid. When she was admitted to a nursing facility in April, we understood the importance of adhering to reasonable and responsible rules for isolation. It would have been irresponsible to expose my wife’s father to infection. Had he become ill, we would have only exacerbated an already difficult situation.

    My mother-in-law died in May. She was not alone. Two days before she passed, the facility – without any push from us – phoned to say we could visit one-at-a-time provided we masked and wore gloves. The morning of her death, the facility allowed my wife, my father-in-law, a son and me to be with her until she passed. We followed the rules and we stayed in the room at her bedside. The staff at the facility provided food and drinks. When my mother-in-law died, nurses tended to my father-in-laws to calm him after the trauma of losing his wife.

    Was this law in Florida necessary? Not for us.

    Perhaps loosely tossing around the word “moron” serves no purpose other than to diminish the value of what could otherwise be useful dialogue.

  6. Teddy007 Avatar
    Teddy007

    How does one balance the criticism of people dying in nursing homes while banning nursing homes from doing anything that can limit the spread of infectious disease. Why do so many people want to take public health back to the 19th century.

  7. killerhertz Avatar
    killerhertz

    My wife’s 92 year old grandfather died in a hospital in NYC December 2020. Nobody was allowed in or allowed to issue medical directives. The family didn’t seek the consult of a lawyer, despite my protests to the family, although this was probably beyond financial means. They got very spotty information from doctors which included “he’s getting better and should be discharged tomorrow”, to a day later “he was dying of COVID and now on a vent”. What a travesty. The corporate medical establishment is NOT to be trusted.

    This seems like reasonable legislation to me.

    1. Teddy007 Avatar
      Teddy007

      How does filling an ICU with family members who refuse to take standard precautions for infection control going to help during a pandemic.

  8. James C. Sherlock Avatar
    James C. Sherlock

    It appears to be worth noting that Florida, as in the case of all states, is the regulator of the practice of medicine in that state.

    For those of you who have commented on Florida SB 988, the No Patient Left Alone Act, without reading it, which is clearly most of you, the new law will protect families and loved ones facing the most painful of enumerated circumstances:

    – End-of-life situations.

    – A resident, client, or patient who was living with family before being admitted to the provider’s care is struggling with the change in environment and lack of in-person family support.

    – A resident, client, or patient is making one or more major medical decisions.

    – A resident, client, or patient is experiencing emotional distress or grieving the loss of a friend or family member who recently died.

    – A resident, client, or patient needs cueing or encouragement to eat or drink which was previously provided by a family member or caregiver.

    – A resident, client, or patient who used to talk and interact with others is seldom speaking.

    – For hospitals, childbirth, including labor and delivery.

    – Pediatric patients

    Read the law at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2022/07/httpswww.flsenate.govSessionBill2022988BillTexterPDF.pdf

    Now comment.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      basically you got DeSantis and the legislature telling the medical establishment how do conduct itself.

      Govt is uniformly bad at this. We have a slew of laws on the books right now that clearly are out of touch with realities.

      Adding more to that pile seems less than smart and yep, most of those useless laws did indeed come from Conservative types. It’s the way they “think”.

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