The problem with the Swedish strategy against the corona virus is that the elderly care in the municipalities does not function well in a time like this. The question is whether it is sufficient at all? The politicians imagined that care for the old folks should be done in their homes and our earlier homes of old people were dismantled. The staff should run around to the old in their homes and fix the essentials. The time press is huge and there is rarely time to sit down and just talk. It is strictly cost-effective what the staff can do and how much they must manage. We have privatized elderly care and put it out on a number of private companies, which, like all other companies, are most interested in the business making a profit. Therefore, they chase costs as far as possible and beyond. In practice, you have too little staff to provide the necessary care to the old folks. Many are only employed hourly and lack right skills. They are underpaid keepers and the old people often have to accept a large number who come and go. There are examples of how an old person must accept visits by up to twenty people. Now that the whole system has been subjected to harsh trials, we see how masked and miserable this is. The lack of practical preconditions, knowledge, time, continuity, understanding of necessary hygiene routines and willingness to truly care for the old, is now proving to have disastrous consequences. Already now (08.04.20) we see that 121 elderly residents in Stockholm have received the infection. 630 elderly are infected and 159 dead. In Gothenburg, some 40 infected and about ten dead. Skåne is in development about four weeks after Stockholm and has now received the coronation of four elderly homes, eleven infected and two dead. But at the Public Health Authority they are worried that this is just the beginning. It is the municipalities and the care for the old that fail in our fight against the corona virus.
Kritikern Alf 