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Impact of COVID on Elderly with Tyrone Grandison.

❝All countries are getting older, faster❞.

❝There are 1.6 Million in elder guardianship who are in control of 250 billion dollars❞  ~ Tyrone Grandison

20

Of the Global Population

❝will reach a median age of 60 and over by 2050❞ ~ Pew Research

77

Of Hospital Admissions

❝are above 65 years of age❞ ~ CDC

❝There is little evidence that older people today are in better health than their parents❞ ~ WHO.

❝By 2050, the world’s population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion❞ ~ WHO.

Impact of COVID on Elderly with Tyrone Grandison.

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In this talk on the Impact of COVID on the Elderly with Tyrone Grandison, the speaker explores his concerns around the way AI is being used to monitor and care for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and at risk, a valuable talk that offers an in-depth exploration of the speaker’s insights and experience of working in the field of elderly care and the potential solutions AI can offer for the care sector as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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TRANSCRIPT

00:03    I now get to introduce our next speaker, so our next speaker is highly renowned but also highly humble so without any further ado it is my honor to present a mentor to one of my mentors Dr. Tyrone Grandison take it away doc,  today I’m going to be talking about covid 19 and the elderly and I’d like to start by just acknowledging the time that we’re in right now like we’re in a pandemic and it’s just affecting all of us in multiple different ways we’re in a time where well literally the whole world is figuring out that systemic racism is bad and it’s hurting and killing and harming people, we have fires and tornadoes and climate change saying it’s real and we’re here and here to stay, so I want to spend like just 15 minutes to just settle down both after that audio whatever that was and embracing like what we’re experiencing to the center and to be here right so just 15 minutes of this time intentional balance.

01:35   Sorry nine minutes okay all right I want to thank you for that and I want to introduce you to Darlene, and Darlene grew up in Alaska her dad was an avid dark bug slider his passion kind of led Darlene to become a vegetarian and to be an animal rights activist, all values actually instilled in her three kids and her five grandkids 72 in Kirkland Washington you know where I’m based, Darlene died on march 7th march 6th from covid 19. I want to introduce you to Patricia Fryson and Wanda bailey, sisters I’m a close-knit family deeply religious, Patricia was the first person in the state that should die from Cloverdale on the 16th of March 2020 and her sister died nine days after her on the 25th 

03:02   So I like to bring up these stories to share these stories because it’s important for us to always recognize that behind everything that we’re doing behind this data that we’re going to be discussing our people are actual human beings, living breathing people, that have people that love them, that care about them and it is our responsibility during this hackathon and while we’re doing our work to make sure that these people are included 

03:42  Now to make sure that we’re all on the same page there are a few things that we all have to be aware of and that we all have to agree on, the first is that the world is getting older and this shift is happening everywhere and no country is going to be immune to the shift or to the consequences and it’s natural, it happens when you have life expectancy increasing and earthquakes declining, second is that the speed of aging across all nations is accelerating so all countries are getting older faster means that by 2050,  20 of the world’s population is going to be over 60 and of that 20 percent 80 of them are going to be from low and middle-income countries.

04:50  And the third fact which I can’t believe I’m actually saying publicly but I think I have to and we have to be clear on and we have to agree on is that covid 19 is real and it is infecting a lot of people across the world even worse it’s spinning out of people across the world now in the united states around February 29th, we had our first recorded case the first supported death that was in the news all the time and the sea sky was in their 60’s, no travel history to China at all,  he was in a senior living home in Washington state in Kirkland called the Evergreen Health Medical center a few days passed and in March we discovered that two other people in nursing homes that were close by also died

05:58  So then we had the case of the first death known to covid, move to the 26th then you know circled back to April like two months afterward and someone in Santa Clara California does an autopsy and finds out that someone there who died on February 6th died from COVID-19 and you can see this the progression you can see the fact that the nature of our understanding of COVID-19 simply because it’s novel and we’re just catching up and we’re learning every single week, every single month makes it interesting, it makes it actually novel, so the interesting thing about the elderly and covid is that they’re the first community, the first demographic group where we celebrate and the effects of it like being very stark, so given that we can assume that you know what that community is going through is what all of us are going to be going through all the time right so it could give us a good indication of like what is ahead for all of us right 

07:12  So what have we observed so far about the elderly program? The first thing is that seniors are going through tough economic times they’re on fixed budgets they’re heavily dependent upon the state and federal government those who have jobs have seen their income slashed you’re making really hard decisions, we already know that seniors are dying at a really high rate versus other demographic groups,  we know that shelter-in-place and social businesses are leading to higher cases documented cases of mental health episodes in different care homes, we know that the availability of medical care for the elderly that need it is now reduced because medical practitioners need to be elsewhere and also medical practitioners are being taken down hurt by COVID-19

08:12  We know that the elderly can no longer participate as first responders because of their own one ability to call that itself and finally, we’re observing that well, we’re not observing like even before financial and physical abuse of everything was like a hidden and a rampant issue right where one example is like in the guardianship, a little elder guardianship field – a realm where you have probably 1.6 million adults being in the guardianship where guardians are in control of around 250 billion dollars worth of stakes and financial fraud and abuse of those other people is like well-known right what we’re seeing is that this is acceleration being dependent today we can’t actually look through and address all six of these things we’re just going to look at four the top four the before that I think that we should be really focused on mortality long-term care mental health and elder abuse 

09:32   First, let’s talk about mortality, so when you look at freeopp.org the first thing you see here is that countries that have a culture of transitioning their elderly into your homes seeing you lots more death in your homes make sense, and countries that are extended family-oriented and oriented with or towards multi-generational living tend to have more debts, unquoted in this demographic at home right if we were to say visualize this differently and say tie the diameter of each one of these circles to the population of elderly people that actually died both in their non-care homes you get the magnitude of the problem for each particular country and you can actually see the magnitude of the problem for comparably for each country itself.

10:39  So like right now we can see that UK, Spain, and Belgium have a larger problem on their hands in their particular country than say Ireland France new Zealand when we focus on the United States the center for disease control and prevention tells us that the number of hospitalizations is dominated by people over 50 and if you look at the people over 65 that is approximately 77.1 of all hospital emissions as of June 6th, 2020. when you drill down and look at the debts by age brackets you see that the elderly represent 20.7 percent this is still in June.

11:36  Fast forward to September doesn’t look much better but there’s that blue more hope it now down points seven percent and it’s 80 of those people that are dying are above 65. the fact is that people that are over 65 when it comes to covid is 4 to 13 times more likely to be hospitalized than someone who is say 18 to 29.

12:10  And 90 to 630 times more likely to die from covid than someone who is 18 to 29 and this primarily stems from the fact that the elder communities are more vulnerable because they have preconditions they have a propensity to have asthma and hypertension and obesity and diabetes and the lesson we learn here is we have to stay healthy and we have to try and not to develop these conditions.

12:46  Now after the second issue a second area long-term care, now the long-term industry, long-term care industry –  is actually like it’s fascinating it’s a virus and it’s complex and I’ve been in it for like almost a year now and the spectrum of cure the options are just like plentiful you can have everything from uh continuing care retirement communities ccc RC to uh in-home scenic here and like multiple different spheres in between that overlap depending upon the level of care you need and supervision and all of they have different cost elements associated with them now for ease the industry normally tends to put everything into four buckets right.

13:38  First is independent living so that’s where you have freedom and you have access to other seniors and other activities assisted living where you need personal care management and you may require some help with some adls and adl is um activities of daily living so brushing your teeth bathing inside things there is third skill nursing or skill in nursing care and there you definitely need a medical professional like looking at you every couple of days and the fourth bucket is memory care so that’s the highest level where you require almost daily supervision because you have dementia or Alzheimer’s now nick which stands for the national investment center for Cena housing and care is a nonprofit that monitors the market aspects of the long-term care industry a next map data service a very useful tool that helps you understand the business aspects of the industry and nick just released their Q2 2020 market fundamentals report.

14:52  And the three big takeaways are that senior housing occupancy is around 84.9 percent and that is down 2.8 from the prior quarter, uh assisted living is at percent that is down from that’s down 3.2 from the last quarter and independent living is at 87.4 and that’s down from 2.4 percent from the last quarter as well so we’re seeing a decline in all different options of senior living if we were to just drill even further and hear IELTS independent living at assisted living nil nursing here and look at the trends year over year we clearly see that they’re more incidents in long-term care facilities and it’s a combination of in facilities as fatalities and fear for people that may have wanted to be in a long-term care home but because they’re hot days they just don’t want to do it at this point.

16:11  If you drill down even further and look at In the different metro areas that nick covers you see that the trend the decrease in occupancy is still there it’s clearly there except for if he outliers in Seattle and Sacramento which to this day I still can’t figure out, why it is increasing your view for those areas, the good news is that um nick just started a study on the impact of probate on all the Americans in senior care homes okay so we expect to have a result from that in the next two to three months but from their preliminary study that ended in may we can clearly see that there’s a correlation between the type of cure that you’re getting and the propensity you know for you to actually get tested and the propensity for you to have a confirmed positive test right so if you’re you know memory care or nursing here resident then there’s a correlation to you having a high chance of being tested and a high chance of having a confirmed positive test right however, this is just all preliminary,  we’re hoping to actually know more once this next study is finished in a few months

17:37  So mental health no mental health was one of those areas that were the elephants in the room pre-pandemic right across all demographics across all nations you know in the u.s alone it was one in five Americans in 2019 that reported having a mental illness so that’s around 47-49 million people and of those, you have like twenty percent of that so around 11-ish million saying that they had a melting puff episode that required them to just like stop doing things that were important to them, uh the problem is to say in in this community in the yellow community the uncertainty of fear around this pandemic has led to increasing effects on their mental state right there is the fear of death that is heightened they tend to ponder the possibility of losing their loved ones and not being able to say goodbye

18:53  They have guilt and shame that’s associated with being possible carriers all this leads to the situation when you have self-reflect you have them not following their prescribed courses of treatment leads to higher levels of being susceptible to misinformation I mean there’s a really good Nia study that came out in June 2020 that outlines all the effects that they were seeing from March until June however when you actually look at or look forward data as was the case before the pandemic you know it’s limited right because there’s a stigma attached to mental health now the scarcity of data in this area is even more pronounced and is even more pronounced in the elder community there are a few glimmers of hope

19:57  The Kaiser family foundation has been exploring this place by sending out surveys over the last few months and over may June and July they uncover that there’s a steady increase in people saying that there they have symptoms of mental health issues when you dig in and you look at only people 65 and over you find more and more people in this community saying that they’re worried about the impact the negative impact of it on their mental health 

20:31  Now a final error is elder abuse now the who the world health organization like pre-pandemic reported that elder abuses are a hugely significant problem that’s in the shadows right and that you know one in six people older people in the world has been abused like last year no given what I said at the very beginning about the world quickly aging and we’re all going to be in this demographic pretty soon like it believes us to actually think about how we’re going to solve this and pay attention to the ramifications of LGBTs the other views can actually take many different forms you know I mentioned earlier the issues around elder guardianship in us it could take the form of  neglect and abandonment sexual abuse  motional abuse physical abuse and it can happen at any time and it can happen repeatedly when it comes to abuse it’s normally performed by somebody that has power or has power over the elderly right

22:01  So it’s normally a judge that decides that somebody is um mentally incapacitated right and can actually make decisions for themselves and puts all their estates and their decisions into receivership, for guardians to take care of it could be in the form of a healthcare workout that may have had you know a bad context meaning day bringing week whatever else and has a moment where we take it out on somebody who’s in a home it happens everywhere and sadly no one is actually monitoring just like with mental health it kind of suspects the rates are much higher than they currently are being reported at 

22:51  But no one has a true estimate of like the real from the data that we currently do have, we know that the ways to actually address elder abuse are very limited and you know people that are being abused are fearful of reporting it either because they fear retaliation or they’re worried about their abuser getting into trouble because their visa could be a family member um cognitively they’re not they are or they feel ashamed or embarrassed you know that that they’re going to do this so we also know I mean this is factual like we know that it has an impact a really devastating impact on the people going through it and we know that it places a significant burden on all our systems particularly the American healthcare system for the tune of 5.3 billion we also know that of the people over 65 with mental health issues 66.67 of them um have experienced abuse right but we also know that it’s just not limited to them and it can happen to any other person so unfortunately, we have suspicions about the rate of elderly’s accelerating during the pandemic 

24:28  Mentioned before the data is scarce to actually see what the true size of this problem is the incentives for the court system for the legal system the justice system the medical profession to even try and change or address this is just not there and as we’re all getting older we’re all going to be in a position where we can be taken advantage of so I think it’s our responsibility to spotlight a problem and to seek out solutions um I’d recommend that we all look into the whole’s initiative on the decade of healthy aging and figure out how we can actually all play a part to improve this not just for the current loved ones that we have that are older but for the future with that

25:27  I want to thank you and open the floor for questions she’ll do you have time for questions yeah ty I think uh we are out of question time um the words the specific questions audience would like to ask I don’t even see any specific questions, I think Bruce had one question Bruce do you want to turn on your mic and ask quickly yeah let’s do it sure hey ty Bruce Hoffman I was um we recently had done another hackathon where there was a lot of stuff related to mental health and I just wondered has as any of the measures you’ve gone through shown that the risk and or you know has uh increased significantly and maybe also just within the elderly um during this, you know during coven since I saw all the other numbers you showed you know it looks like there’s fear that would show just from the reduction in attendance so I’ll be quiet there but that’s what I was wondering

26:43  Yeah so I mean there are a few um I kind of papers out now and I am national library of medicine that are hinting to like there is an increase in different geographies but we don’t have a full review across us our full view across the world we know that it is a significant problem in say Massachusetts and some parts of California um but as much as that’s as much as we know right now got it we’ll be great to see you know any follow-up on studies on it I think there are some opportunities to help yeah I think if you look at the um cms’ nursing home data and probably the specific senior living resource in your particular stage that’s going to be your best bet right now I am not I’m not advising anyone to look at CDC for anything at this point all right um with that I want to thank you so much and I apologize for the audio issues at the start no worries ty thank you so much this has been a pleasure awesome presentation and loved your insights on covet for the elderly thank you so much for sharing, thank you.

Speaker

Tyrone Grandison, DataEthics4All Think Tank

Dr. Tyrone Grandison

DataEthics4All DIET Champion 2021, a member of the DataEthics4All Think Tank Community & CTO and CEO at Pearl Long Term Care Solutions, Inc. 

Dr. Tyrone Grandison is a well-known expert in the field of Care and Care Management, and in the Fireside Talk, he raises one of the most pressing concerns in today’s society; a growing elderly population internationally. He explores the impact and complexities Covid-19 poses for all of us, young and old, particularly the vulnerable and elderly in this talk.