American Eldercide
How It Happened, How to Prevent It
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9780226827773
American Eldercide
How It Happened, How to Prevent It
A bracing spotlight on the avoidable causes of the COVID-19 eldercide in the United States.
Twenty percent of the Americans who have died of COVID since 2020 have been older and disabled adults residing in nursing homes—even though they make up less than one percent of the overall US population. Something about this catastrophic loss of life in government-sponsored facilities never added up.
Until now. In American Eldercide, activist and scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette investigates this tragic public health crisis with a passionate voice and razor-sharp attention to detail, showing us that nothing about it was inevitable. Gullette argues that it was our collective indifference, fueled by ageism, that prematurely killed this vulnerable population, compounded by our own panic about aging and a bias in favor of youth-based decisions about lifesaving care. Walking us through the decisions that led to such discriminations, revealing how governments, doctors, and media reinforced ageist biases, and collecting the ignored voices of the residents who survived, Gullette helps us understand the workings of what she persuasively calls an eldercide.
The compassion this country failed to muster for the residents of our nursing facilities motivated Gullette to pen an act of remembrance and a call to action that aims to prevent similar outcomes for all those who will need long-term care.
Twenty percent of the Americans who have died of COVID since 2020 have been older and disabled adults residing in nursing homes—even though they make up less than one percent of the overall US population. Something about this catastrophic loss of life in government-sponsored facilities never added up.
Until now. In American Eldercide, activist and scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette investigates this tragic public health crisis with a passionate voice and razor-sharp attention to detail, showing us that nothing about it was inevitable. Gullette argues that it was our collective indifference, fueled by ageism, that prematurely killed this vulnerable population, compounded by our own panic about aging and a bias in favor of youth-based decisions about lifesaving care. Walking us through the decisions that led to such discriminations, revealing how governments, doctors, and media reinforced ageist biases, and collecting the ignored voices of the residents who survived, Gullette helps us understand the workings of what she persuasively calls an eldercide.
The compassion this country failed to muster for the residents of our nursing facilities motivated Gullette to pen an act of remembrance and a call to action that aims to prevent similar outcomes for all those who will need long-term care.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Inside
Dedication
Prologue: Those We Lost
1. “Sweeping Up the Heart, the Morning after Death”
Part 2: Instead
2. Instead . . . The First Months of 2020
3. How Americans Learned to Accept That “the Old” Would Die
4. A Chasm Opens: Vital Youth vs. Moribund Age
5. Consequences
6. On Futility and “Miracles”
7. The Before Time
Part 3: Ahead
8. The Guardians of Later Life
9. In Search of the Missing Voices
10. The COVID Monument We Need
Epilogue: Reckonings
Appendix: Undercounting the Deaths of Residents
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Dedication
Prologue: Those We Lost
1. “Sweeping Up the Heart, the Morning after Death”
Part 2: Instead
2. Instead . . . The First Months of 2020
3. How Americans Learned to Accept That “the Old” Would Die
4. A Chasm Opens: Vital Youth vs. Moribund Age
5. Consequences
6. On Futility and “Miracles”
7. The Before Time
Part 3: Ahead
8. The Guardians of Later Life
9. In Search of the Missing Voices
10. The COVID Monument We Need
Epilogue: Reckonings
Appendix: Undercounting the Deaths of Residents
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index