#life is worse for older people now

[quotesfrommyreading]

Long before the pandemic, the threat of illness was already very real for older people.  Where America has landed is hardly a new way of life but rather one that is simply more onerous. “One way to think about it is that this is a new risk that’s out there” alongside other natural causes of death, such as diabetes and heart failure, Black said. But it’s a risk older Americans can’t ignore, especially as the country has dropped all COVID precautions. Since Christmas Eve, I have felt uneasy about how readily I normalized putting so little effort into protecting my nonagenarian loved ones, despite knowing what might happen if they got sick. For older people, who must contend with the peril of attending similar gatherings, “there’s sort of no good choice,” Black said. “The world has changed.”

But this new post-pandemic reality also includes insidious effects on older people that aren’t directly related to COVID itself. Those who put off nonemergency visits to the doctor earlier in the pandemic, for example, risked worsening their existing health conditions. The first year of the pandemic plunged nearly everyone into isolation, but being alone created problems for older adults that still persist. Before the pandemic, the association between loneliness and higher mortality rates, increased cardiovascular risks, and dementia among older adults was already well established. Increased isolation during COVID amplified this association.

The consequences of isolation were especially profound for older adults with physical limitations, Naoko Muramatsu, a community-health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me. When caregivers or family members were unable to visit, people who required assistance for even the smallest tasks, such as fetching the mail and getting dressed, had no options. “If you don’t walk around and if you don’t do anything, we can expect that cognitive function will decline,” Muramatsu said; she has observed this firsthand in her research. One Chinese American woman, interviewed in a survey of older adults living alone with cognitive impairment during the pandemic, described the debilitating effect of sitting at home all day.“I am so useless now,” she told the interviewer. “I am confused so often. I forget things.”

Even older adults who have weathered the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic still face other challenges that COVID has exacerbated. Many have long relied on personal caregivers or the staff at nursing facilities. These workers, already scarce before the pandemic, are even more so now because many quit or were affected by COVID themselves. “Long-term care has been in a crisis situation for a long time, but it’s even worse now,” Muramatsu said, noting that many home care workers are older adults themselves. Nursing homes nationwide now have nearly 200,000 fewer employees compared with March 2020, which is especially concerning as the proportion of Americans over age 65 explodes.

Older people won’t have one single approach to contending with this sad reality. “Everybody is trying to figure out what is the best way to function, to try to have some level of everyday life and activity, but also keep your risk of getting sick as low as possible,” Brangman said. Some of her patients are still opting to be cautious, while others consider this moment their “only chance to see grandchildren or concerts or go to family gatherings.” Either way, older Americans will have to wrestle with these decisions without so many of their peers who have died from COVID.

Again, many of these people did not have it great before the pandemic, even if the rest of the country wasn’t paying attention. “We often don’t provide the basic social support that older people need,” Kenneth Covinsky, a clinician-researcher at the UCSF Division of Geriatrics, said. Rather, ageism, the willful ignorance or indifference to the needs of older people, is baked into American life. It is perhaps the main reason older adults were so badly affected by the pandemic in the first place, as illustrated by the delayed introduction of safety precautions in nursing homes and the blithe acceptance of COVID deaths among older adults. If Americans couldn’t bring themselves to care at any point over the past three years, will they ever?

  —  Life Is Worse for Older People Now

[bitchfitch]

I've started playing Potion Permit, and so far it's one of my favorite games I've messed around with, but the most big brained move the devs made was giving you a dog on day 1, and then making that dog able to track NPCs and lead you directly to them no matter where they are in the town.

[swagging-back-to]

not sorry. i extend very little sympathy and patience towards tras who are underage, and the only ones who do get said sympathy are TIFs. but again. it's MICROSCOPIC levels of sympathy.

[steviescrystals]

i seriously need to get a new job and start making money again asap bc i cannot keep living at home much longer it’s driving me insane

(wrote an entire essay in the tags without meaning to oops)

[blipblorpsnork]

my grandmother went and signed me up to over ten "job search sites" without my consent and all of them were scams. i am so fucking upset right now. i explained to her that you seriously cant go doing that and that all of it was information stealing scammy bullshit, and she hasn't texted back yet but im so. fucking. upset.

[daz4i]

i am so angry about being alive it's not even funny anymore

[skimmeh]

Okay so ... I have so much uni work I gotta do, and the only way I've managed it is to sneak my interests into them...and- my interest is silly Minecraft men.

Teacher: who's these characters from?

Me: oh just a show

Teacher: which show?

Me: .... I lied

[foxgloveinspace]

lmao i sent a photo of iii to my cousin being all like “i need him” and my cousins response-

“exie… he’s scary. you did not need to jump scare me on christmas eve” 😂😂 she doesn’t get it, which i suppose is nice because it means we’ll never fight over a guy ever. polar opposite tastes lmao

but i can’t stop laughing at the jump scare comment like he’s not even scary (i say as i was literally terrified of him in person)

Literally my sister has a phobia of masks, and I have a mask kink🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 so I get this, haha.

Also, like. Irl I know I would scared so bad of them? I would be SO freaked out😭 but on screen that’s just them ya know? I just know it’d be different irl, haha.

[rimouskis]

okay I've decided against pursuing any sort of diagnosis re: my growing suspicions I have ADHD/something of that ilk for a variety of reasons, but it will NEVER stop galling me how I lack object permanence. like a baby. I need to have clear storage containers because if I cannot see something I forget it exists. it's both a relief to know that there is a potential "explanation" for such behavior but also realizing that most other people can do convenient things (like: remembering the existence of stuff) is also FRUSTRATINGGGG because I wish that was me! imagine being able to remember things not only casually but well! imagine that! god!

[waywardsalt]

hiiii i snapped again long rant abt totk's shit story under the cut

i hate totk's story so fucking much this was going to be a much longer post but i do not care i hate how it relies so much on the player already giving a damn and hardly does any work to make you care any more, i hate how link's sheer lack of any indication of how he feels about anything beyond basic reactions to his environment just makes him feel like a nothing character in the story, i hate how zelda was sanded down to be just perfect and inoffensive and dutiful, i hate how sonia literally existed to motivate rauru and zelda, i hate how ganondorf, despite having the most interesting animations and being the most entertaining character, had such nebulous motivations and lackluster connection to the actual world he's in, i hate how any character arc that existed was so vapid and shallow, i hate how it seemed so afraid to do literally anything complicated with its themes or characters, i hate how nothing important changed in any meaningful way, i hate how fucking insulting it feels when it's come after stories like ocarina of time, majora's mask, twilight princess, skyward sword, wind waker, pretty much any of the other fucking zelda games and is fucking $70 and yet its story and characters just feel worse than anything that came before it. i watched the scene of link and zelda meeting back up for the first time in skyward sword and the emotion from both link and zelda and the sense of history between them the dialogue manages to communicate and how it relates back to the rest of the story and while i loved it it also just made me so mad how this game's hd version came out before totk and totk just was so much fucking worse despite all of this proof that they could do otherwise

[quotesfrommyreading]

The pandemic was destined to come after older Americans. Their immune systems tend to be weaker, making it harder for them to fight off an infection, and they are more likely to have comorbidities, which further increases their risk of severe illness. The precarity that many of them already faced going into 2020—poverty, social isolation and loneliness, inadequate personal care—left them poorly equipped for the arrival of the novel coronavirus. More than 1 million people lived in nursing homes, many of which were densely packed and short on staff when COVID tore through them.

A major reason older people are still at risk is that vaccines can’t entirely compensate for their immune systems. A study recently published in the journal Vaccines showed that for vaccinated adults ages 60 and over, the risk of dying from COVID versus other natural causes jumped from 11 percent to 34 percent within a year of completing their primary shot series. A booster dose brings the risk back down, but other research shows that it wears off too. A booster is a basic precaution, but “not one that everyone is taking,” Black, a co-author of the study, told me. Booster uptake among older Americans for the reengineered “bivalent” shots is the highest of all age groups, but still, nearly 60 percent have not gotten one.

For every COVID death, many more older people develop serious illness. Risk increases with age, and people older than 70 “have a substantially higher rate of hospitalizations” than those ages 60 to 69, Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me. Unlike younger people, most of whom fully recover from a bout with COVID, a return to baseline health is less guaranteed for older adults. In one study, 32 percent of adults over 65 were diagnosed with symptoms that lasted well beyond their COVID infection. Persistent coughs, aches, and joint pain can linger long after serious illness, together with indirect impacts such as loss of muscle strength and flexibility, which can affect older people’s ability to be independent, Rivers said. Older COVID survivors may also have a higher risk of cognitive decline. In some cases, these ailments could be part of long COVID, which may be more prevalent in older people.

Certainly, some older adults are able to make a full recovery. Brangman said she has “old and frail” geriatric patients who bounced back after flu-like symptoms, and younger ones who still experience weakness and fatigue. Still, these are not promising odds. The antiviral Paxlovid was supposed to help blunt the wave of old people falling sick and ending up in the hospital—and it can reduce severe disease by 50 to 90 percent. But unfortunately, it is not widely used; as of July, just a third of Americans 80 or older took Paxlovid.

The reality is that as long as the virus continues to be prevalent, older Americans will face these potential outcomes every time they leave their home. That doesn’t mean they will barricade themselves indoors, or that they even should. Still, “every decision that we make now is weighing that balance between risk and socialization,” Brangman said.

  —  Life Is Worse for Older People Now

[blueflyingturtleontheway]

Don't you think it's a bit sad how socially if you're bad at something or something doesn't go your way you can talk about it freely and everyone is sympathetic and when something finally goes right everyone cheers

But if things usually go well for you you're supposed to shut up about it lest it sounds like you're bragging or trying to make others feel miserable and when something finally goes wrong everyone calls that "karma", is happy about your misfortune or tells you to suck it up because "everything else goes great for you why do you care"

I don't know I suppose I'm just a privileged whiny child that is upset that something isn't as good as she wanted it to be

[apathyfairy]

my whole life ive been thinking im an old soul bc everyone would tell me i was bc i was “serious” and quiet and shy as a kid and riddled with social anxiety so i was like ok. i must be then. and now im realizing im not lmao like honestly as stupid as it sounds i think that was putting pressure on me to know how to live my life and what to do all the time but now im like oh im new no wonder im afraid of absolutely everything and i cant function and everything disappoints me it’s bc i dont know whats going on. im new in town. and im incorporating that into my belief system now

[techmomma]

Facts about your body after you turn 25, AKA things I wish someone had told me:

you will get hair in fun new places. this is normal and fine.

these places include (but are not limited to) if you don't already have them: your asscrack, your back, your ears, and moles. it's fine.

some of you, dick or not, will also lose hair. this is normal, but also if you have ovaries maybe get this checked out for PCOS.

your acne will probably change. some people get better. some people get worse. it's fine.

your nails will probably get an infection or a fungus at least once in your life. this is fine. (but also let your doc know).

how you gain and lose fat and where you do so will change. this is fine.

how you smell will change. this is fine. (fishy or rotten smells mean doctor time though)

if you have a prostate: it gets harder to pee. prostates enlarge as you age (get this checked regularly). this is fine.

if you do not have a prostate: it gets easier to pee but not in a good way. as in as you get older, your pelvic floor muscles tend to lose some of their strength. this makes it harder to keep pee in. this is fine.

all breasts and pectorals eventually sag, with the rest of your body. this is fine.

a decent percent of the population will experience a cyst at least once. some of you will make up for the rest with multiple. this is fine, but keep them checked out by a doctor. (sometimes this is a condition! get checked for that too!)

almost half of everyone gets hemorrhoids. it's a good idea to just expect them since your chances of getting them get higher the older you are. your toilet will look like a murder scene. definitely get your booty checked out BUT this is almost always perfectly normal. just eat more fiber. "but I already-" eat more fiber. and maybe suck it up and buy some hemorrhoid cream, you'll thank me later.

yes, this means you will probably need to make an appointment for a doctor to see your butthole. it's okay. not only do they really not care but 1. they've seen weirder that day and 2. they'd far rather you see them now than later when it's been going on for forty years and now it might be colon cancer. it's okay. consider it a rite of passage.

adults need more sleep than children. don't believe the myth that you need less than they do. that is capitalist propaganda to make you give up more of your life to the work grind, comrade.

vitamins and medicine, something you are more likely to take as you get older, sometimes make the toilet turn weird colors. it's okay.

if you still have your tonsils and get those little stones and get sore throats more than once a year you should plan on getting those suckers out before the tonsils cause an infection and go septic. if you're getting stones at all you should get those reevaluated every year, especially if the stones are bigger than a needlehead (or get bigger over time). it's gross and yucky. I don't care. get them looked at before you end up in the hospital.

you'll probably need to add foot support to your shoes if you don't already do. this is fine.

your body changes. sometimes it can feel sorta weird and upsetting that it isn't what it used to be. that is okay, and it is okay to be upset. just know that this is normal, it's normal to be upset or not upset, but don't let it hinder your quality of life. trans or cis, there is a certain level of acceptance you just gotta give your body and forgive your body for as you get older. it's okay.

it's okay. I promise.

[1007xf]

Hm? Is it last week of August?? Looks like it's be depressed about how you've not done anything the entire summer and are still the same stunted loser time. Again.

[ajarofpickledtears]

tfw my sister is chill with our (half-)brother and also texting and whatever

meanwhile I regularly forget he exists, have no sibling connection to him at all, nor am I interest in it, and if I think of him I get upset lmao