The Heartbreaking Politicization of Everything
Human lives are not political talking points.
I have never belonged to a political party. When I turned 18 and registered to vote, I remember deliberating in my young mind whether or not it would be a good idea to register with one of the parties, and I set to work researching which one I should join.
I was familiar with people from every political persuasion — Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Democratic Socialists, Libertarians. After researching each one’s platforms, though, I decided that adopting a political ideology felt wrong.
When it came to politics, I concluded, what actually mattered were policies and their impact — not labels or affiliations. Even at that young age, I’d seen enough to know that wrapping my identity around a political party would create blind spots in my ability to choose the best candidates.
The years that followed have only served to prove those youthful conclusions correct.
One of the more heartbreaking aspects of the last year for me has been the politicization of almost everything in the United States — the refusal of otherwise decent people to see things from any other perspective than the one that makes them feel most comfortable or gratified.
The stubborn blind spots created by that new culture of politicization have been a particularly difficult pill for me to swallow in the last six months, as I’ve endured criticism from friends and family while working to unravel the impact of public policies enacted during the pandemic. Asking hard questions about policies that affected real humans in my community, what went wrong, if rights were violated, and if we could do better in the future has become almost controversial.
As it turns out, the hard-line political narratives of 21st century America have become almost like their own heartbreaking form of soft censorship — and questioning those narratives has become the work of radical outsiders.
A shared tragedy
Questions about the disproportionate deaths of residents and staff in long-term care facilities due to COVID-19 should not be viewed as political — although anyone asking those questions in America today would never know it.
Beyond America’s shores, those questions have been treated fairly and taken seriously. In countries like France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the impact of pandemic policies on care facilities has been openly questioned and, in at least several countries, aggressively investigated.
Last April, France became one of the earliest nations to recognize the disparities between COVID-19 deaths in care homes compared to the rest of its population. At the same time, the French government openly admitted it had not been tracking the deaths properly.
One of the more heartbreaking aspects of the last year for me has been the politicization of almost everything in the United States.
That month, France began systematically tracking deaths reported to the government by care facilities. The data boosted France's death count by over 40%, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal from that time, indicating a significant problem.
Around the world, other countries quickly followed France’s example.
Circumstances in some of France’s care facilities were described to reporters days later in nightmarish detail, grimly illustrating the final days of the uncounted. French courts are now considering legal actions filed by families against several facilities as well as the Paris public hospital authority and the country’s national health agency, among others, according to reports from the Associated Press.
In July, only a few months later, Sweden’s Health and Social Care Inspectorate announced it had found “serious failings” in 91 of the country’s care homes after the relatives of elderly citizens filed complaints during the months prior.
Although Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic was strongly debated and often criticized throughout 2020, the problem of disproportionate care facility deaths was not unique to the Nordic country — it was present even among nations that had adopted much tighter restrictions.
Last October, an investigation by the international human rights organization Amnesty International into the U.K.’s COVID-19 care home response found that “a series of ‘shockingly irresponsible’ government decisions put tens of thousands of older people’s lives at risk.”
According to that report, those decisions included the discharging of “thousands of untested hospital patients into care homes and imposition of blanket DNARs (orders not to attempt resuscitation),” a lack of public health guidance, inadequate access to PPE, and limited testing availability.
Last November, an investigation by Amnesty International Belgium found that a failure by nursing homes to transfer severely ill patients to hospitals, combined with a lack of training, had likely contributed to the country’s alarmingly disproportionate mortality rates (according to the report, 61.3% of all deaths in Belgium related to COVID-19 between March and October last year were linked to care facilities).
A similar human rights investigation, conducted by Amnesty International Spain, determined last December that “the measures taken by the authorities [in Spain] to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in Catalonia and Madrid … violated at least five human rights of the care home residents.”
Beyond America’s shores, questions about human rights and COVID-19 policies have been treated more fairly and taken more seriously.
Another December report, this time from Amnesty International Italia, reached similar conclusions. Donatella Rovera, the organization’s senior crisis response adviser, said in a press release posted to the organization’s website, “Decisions taken and practices adopted by authorities at all levels [in Italy] resulted in or contributed to violations of the human rights of older residents of care homes — notably their right to life.”
In each of those countries, the disproportionate deaths of vulnerable elderly people due to poor decision-making by the officials tasked with protecting them was treated as a matter of human rights — not political dogma.
Why, then, was the issue treated so differently here in the United States?
A game without winners
Perhaps the most disturbing part about the reports on care homes from the U.K., Europe, and Sweden is that similar decisions appear to have been made in the U.S.
Late last March, Amnesty International joined U.S. public health and legal experts in an open letter calling on former Vice President Pence and federal, state, and local officials to achieve “a fair and effective response to COVID-19.” The letter addressed the unique risks faced by nursing homes twice.
“Special attention must be paid to the needs of people in long-term care or confinement, who are particularly vulnerable. People in nursing homes or long-term care facilities, as well as those who are incarcerated or homeless, are at special risk of infection, given their living situations,” the letter said.
Despite those early warnings, residents of care facilities still bore the brunt of the pandemic compared to the general population in the U.S., where around one-third of all deaths related to COVID-19 were linked to nursing homes, according to a New York Times analysis of data last updated in June. Some states had higher rates, some lower. Some didn’t track or report the data well, and have no idea.
Human beings belonging to a very specific population died of the same cause inside the same types of facilities across the world in disproportionate numbers — in some cases for months on end.
Last month, three of four identical probes by the U.S. Department of Justice that were opened last August related to the care home policies in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were halted (New Jersey’s probe is still ongoing). Those inquiries, and the decision to drop them, were all criticized as acts of partisanship by their critics, first on the left and later on the right, producing a bizarre stalemate that offered no real answers or solutions.
While both sides may be correct — it’s certainly possible both decisions were political — they also fail to address the actual point that a disproportionate number of human beings belonging to a very specific population died of the same cause inside the same types of facilities across the world, in many cases for months on end — and no one has been able to provide any real answers as to why.
Unlike the European and Nordic countries mentioned in the reports above, I have been unable to locate any reports by Amnesty International about the U.S. response to COVID-19 in long-term care facilities. (I’ve reached out to Amnesty U.S.A. to clarify whether or not any investigations were attempted, and will update this post if I receive a response.)1
Looking for answers
Beyond care facilities, poorly tracked death data has also created challenges for other vulnerable communities amid the pandemic.
In January, the Indigenous Investigative Collective began filing a series of data and FOIA requests. As a result, the group recently concluded that COVID-19 deaths among American Indians, Alaska Natives, and members of the Navajo Nation (one of the hardest-hit populations in the U.S.) were tracked so poorly that researchers may never know the full impact of the virus on that community.
The results of that reporting, along with a recent lawsuit in Michigan that revealed messy tracking of long-term care facility data in the state, highlighted an urgent need for officials in the U.S. to implement more sophisticated methods for tracking public health data, particularly among high-risk populations, and to create more effective policies centered around that data.
Although policies in the U.S. have not received the same level of scrutiny as those in Europe, the U.K., and Sweden, it seems unreasonable to ignore so many shared commonalities.
Although care home policies in the U.S. have not received the same level of scrutiny given to those in Europe, the U.K., and Sweden, it seems unreasonable to ignore so many shared commonalities.
As new coronavirus variants like Delta and Lambda loom, it’s critical that we — especially members of the press — find ways to ask hard questions and overcome the stalemates created by political narratives. It is only by being brave enough to consider ideas that make us uncomfortable, and scrutinizing the real impact of public policy, that we can find ways to better protect vulnerable populations in the future.
Update - 8/15/2021, 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time | Added the following paragraph for clarity: "While both sides may be correct — it’s certainly possible both decisions were political — they also fail to address the actual point that a disproportionate number of human beings belonging to a very specific population died of the same cause inside the same types of facilities across the world, in many cases for months on end — and no one has been able to provide any real answers as to why."
I reached out to Amnesty USA via email on Aug. 14 and again on Aug. 25, 2021 to inquire about any investigations into the U.S. care home response to COVID-19 similar to those conducted by the organization in Italy, the U.K., Belgium, and Spain. I have not received a response to either email. I will update this page if anyone at the organization responds.