Can we speak frankly? The coronavirus sucks in so many ways. As of today, more than 211,000 people have died in the United States from it. I feel for every person who has suffered from the virus and every family who has had to suffer with them. But let's not forget those who have never contracted the virus but are still being forced to suffer because of it.

In this era of COVID, I can't imagine what it would be like to have an older family member in a nursing home or other senior-type living facility and be prevented from seeing them, or worse yet, hug them. And just for a moment, think how they must feel, especially those who are living out their final days removed and isolated from the people they love.

This week, in Greeley, Colorado, a group of nursing home residents decided they had had enough of their mandated isolation. They banded together and held a protest, right out on one of the busiest streets in Greeley, holding up signs that said, "I'd rather die of COVID than loneliness," and "We are prisoners in our home."

Just as one of the signs said, these residents have been prisoners to their small rooms for nearly eight months because of COVID-19. They haven't been sick with the coronavirus, but they've been forced to live in seclusion because of it. Separated by a virus that most of them will never actually contract and that 95% of the people who do, won't die from it (according to the CDC) even if they're in the riskiest demographic for it.

Complete Colorado spoke with a nursing home administrator (not affiliated with the protester's nursing home) who told them that she had seen more deaths due to depression among her residents during the pandemic that she has from COVID. “The isolation is what kills these people,” she told Complete Colorado.

It’s just incredibly sad that they can’t live out the last part of their lives with their family surrounding them.

Here's some folks who face the highest chance to lose their lives to COVID, actually standing up to it, rejecting the idea that they should be held like prisoners in the name of "protecting" them from a virus they may never even get.

I'm sure that none of these nursing home residents want to die from COVID-19. But their protest tells me that they know the mandate that they must live under is actually killing them anyway. Their ordered isolation may keep them from dying from COVID but is that preferred than slowly dying from depression because you are all alone?

These nursing home residents are clearly saying, "No!"

 

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