Image: Wikipedia
The Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA is a place where warriors who find themselves in poor health should expect a life as comfortable and safe as the grateful nation can provide. In the past, these people put up with the hardship of military service and the hell of battlefield. They put their lives on the line, they were ready to give their all. So it would make sense that now that they are back home and need help, they would get the best help we can provide them, right?
But if you think their country shielded them from the ravages of COVID - well, you'd be wrong. The home - effectively, a joint venture between local aid agencies in Massachusetts and the US Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) the federal agency in charge of caring for military veterans - did pretty much nothing to keep them safe. Practically no steps where taken to keep the patients sick with COVID isolated from other patients. And so, given many of the Home's residents' poor health condition, 68 of them died - out of a population of 230. Many more residents and staff were infected. Most of that could likely be avoided by following basic common sense infection control guidelines.
This was the single worse death count of any care facility in the US during the pandemic. And let me reiterate it - out of some 18,000 victims of COVID in Massachusetts (population 7 million people) 76, or 0.4% died at this one facility housing some 200 people. And several agencies, federal and local, who had a right and a duty to intervene and massive resources to intervene with did little, if anything at all, to prevent that.
A few bureaucrats are on trial now. I don't know enough to tell to what degree they are guilty and what the appropriate penalty for them ought to be. But I see a glaring omission in the justice process. The omission is the fact that we don't have bureaucratic agencies involved on trial.
These are the same agencies that now claim to know exactly how to proceed, dictating various mandates to us, etc. And I just ask - what makes them feel anyone is obligated to listen to them, never mind grant them any privileges they would normally not even dream of having - such as a right to tell us where we can go, what businesses get to open their doors, etc?
Sources
Soldiers' Home in Holyoke(Wiki, archived 26 August 2021)
Holyoke Soldiers’ Home: Case of 76 veterans who died of COVID-19 lands in court
AP/Boston Globe, 25 August 2021