Post by pieter on Mar 29, 2020 16:35:30 GMT -7
Corona crisis in North-Brabant (Southern Netherlands)
Lilian M. C. Marijnissen (born 11 July 1985) is a Dutch politician serving as Leader of the Socialist Party and ex officio its parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives since 13 December 2017.
With tears in my eyes I sat yesterday watching the report of Nieuwsuur (Newshour: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuwsuur) from Brabant. I am very worried about what is happening in my province right now. I myself live in the middle of 'the epicenter of the corona outbreak' as the NOS reporter recently reported in the news.
A lot of people get infected. A lot of people die. Many people are afraid. There is a lot of sorrow. And we do not find much in the figures, care providers and RIVM (The Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) confirm. Do we really see to a sufficient extent how great this misery really is?
The general practitioner from Uden in the Nieuwsuur (Newshour) report told that he normally has to deal with a death in his practice about a week. Now there are one or two deaths a day. The undertakers and crematoriums in our region cannot meet the demand. The undertaker has ordered twice as many boxes as are normally needed. The crematoriums are now also open on Sundays, because otherwise they cannot give everyone a farewell.
That saying goodbye in corona time is actually inhumane too. In periods of loss and great sadness, you want to be there for each other. Be together. But that is not allowed now. I experienced it myself with a farewell to my uncle and my aunt two weeks ago. When I said goodbye to my uncle, I stood with a handful of family members and a chest in an otherwise large, empty auditorium of the mortician, DELA. Very unreal. In consultation with the family, I did not attend the farewell to my aunt, but left my place to someone else who was even closer. Truly, until recently, I never could have imagined that I would have to make such choices.
I also notice it in Oss on the street and in the supermarket. People are silent. Everyone keeps the requested distance from each other, but people all look at each other and give a small nod. A nod of empathy. A nod of understanding. A nod from 'we do this together'. It is beautiful, but it also gives a very uncanny feeling. What did we end up in?
I am also very concerned with how things are going in our nursing homes. From my time at the union, I did negotiations for the elderly care collective labor agreement there, I still have a lot of contact with people who work in home care and in the nursing home. I hear a lot of sad and disturbing stories and examples. Many people become infected, but not everyone is tested. Many people die, but not everyone is tested.
People are very concerned about the lack of protective materials. Too many people still have to do their work without protective materials. They are not only at risk themselves, but are also a risk for the elderly who are frail. What if they are infected, do not really have complaints themselves, but go from one older person to another? In this way they can infect much older, vulnerable people.
In addition, the work in the nursing homes is now very heavy. Family and informal caregivers are no longer allowed to enter, so everything comes down to caregivers, especially women. They run double shifts. And what they experience in those services are things they have never seen in this way. Seriously ill people. Very frightened people. Dying people.
Yesterday I heard about how a nursing home resident had died in the arms of a 21-year-old caregiver who had just started working in healthcare. That cuts hard. She was upset, but her work continues, she has to continue. Rightly, in the media and in politics, a lot of attention is paid to hospitals, to people in Intensive Care. Because what happens there is horrible. I only hear so many stories from the nursing homes at the moment, where many corona patients lie and die, that I wonder if that is sufficiently visible. A considerable number of these sick residents never end up in the hospital or in the Intensive Care Unit. The employees there are currently having such a hard time. The people who die there, before or after their death, are not always tested for corona and the number of deaths is actually much higher than the figures we hear every day.
My neighbor works in the nursing home in my neighborhood. She had to do her job using only gloves and alcohol for protection. She fell ill, tested in hospital Bernhoven and turned out to have the coronavirus. Now she is quarantined at home. Several residents in the nursing home appear to be infected and have also been tested positive. A number of residents also have the complaints, but are not being tested, so it cannot be determined whether they are infected. And of course my neighbor is not the only one.
It is truly unbelievable that our healthcare providers, who are now at the forefront of the battle to defeat the coronavirus, have yet to do so often with insufficient protection. It becomes painfully clear how stupid it is to move the production of these types of protective materials to low-wage countries, on which we now depend. It is crazy to say that we have jet fighters ready in case we ever end up in a war, but have no protective materials or opportunities to produce them ourselves in case we go to war with a virus.
Of course I understand that saving lives is now much more important than keeping statistics, but I fear that the magnitude of this disaster is even greater than we currently suspect because many infections, but also many deaths, in Brabant not be counted at this time. In addition, I am very concerned about our healthcare providers. About all care providers, but certainly also about care providers in home care and nursing home care. They have to deal with corona infections and deaths to the fullest extent, but appear to be little in the picture with media and statistics. Every day, the utmost is demanded of these caregivers under hellish conditions.
Next week there will be another debate in the House of Representatives on corona and we will ask for more clarity about the mortality figures and about the situation in our nursing homes. We must do everything we can to support our caregivers today. In addition, there should really be more opportunities for testing, at least for our healthcare providers.
For my own Brabant, I hope that this unreal and horrible time will soon come to an end. For the rest of our country, I really hope that everyone follows the guidelines of the RIVM, so that this hellish misery that I now see in Brabant can be saved as much as possible in the rest of the country.
Text Lilian Marijnissen on her Facebook page ( Original text:
Lilian M. C. Marijnissen (born 11 July 1985) is a Dutch politician serving as Leader of the Socialist Party and ex officio its parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives since 13 December 2017.
With tears in my eyes I sat yesterday watching the report of Nieuwsuur (Newshour: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuwsuur) from Brabant. I am very worried about what is happening in my province right now. I myself live in the middle of 'the epicenter of the corona outbreak' as the NOS reporter recently reported in the news.
A lot of people get infected. A lot of people die. Many people are afraid. There is a lot of sorrow. And we do not find much in the figures, care providers and RIVM (The Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) confirm. Do we really see to a sufficient extent how great this misery really is?
The general practitioner from Uden in the Nieuwsuur (Newshour) report told that he normally has to deal with a death in his practice about a week. Now there are one or two deaths a day. The undertakers and crematoriums in our region cannot meet the demand. The undertaker has ordered twice as many boxes as are normally needed. The crematoriums are now also open on Sundays, because otherwise they cannot give everyone a farewell.
That saying goodbye in corona time is actually inhumane too. In periods of loss and great sadness, you want to be there for each other. Be together. But that is not allowed now. I experienced it myself with a farewell to my uncle and my aunt two weeks ago. When I said goodbye to my uncle, I stood with a handful of family members and a chest in an otherwise large, empty auditorium of the mortician, DELA. Very unreal. In consultation with the family, I did not attend the farewell to my aunt, but left my place to someone else who was even closer. Truly, until recently, I never could have imagined that I would have to make such choices.
I also notice it in Oss on the street and in the supermarket. People are silent. Everyone keeps the requested distance from each other, but people all look at each other and give a small nod. A nod of empathy. A nod of understanding. A nod from 'we do this together'. It is beautiful, but it also gives a very uncanny feeling. What did we end up in?
I am also very concerned with how things are going in our nursing homes. From my time at the union, I did negotiations for the elderly care collective labor agreement there, I still have a lot of contact with people who work in home care and in the nursing home. I hear a lot of sad and disturbing stories and examples. Many people become infected, but not everyone is tested. Many people die, but not everyone is tested.
People are very concerned about the lack of protective materials. Too many people still have to do their work without protective materials. They are not only at risk themselves, but are also a risk for the elderly who are frail. What if they are infected, do not really have complaints themselves, but go from one older person to another? In this way they can infect much older, vulnerable people.
In addition, the work in the nursing homes is now very heavy. Family and informal caregivers are no longer allowed to enter, so everything comes down to caregivers, especially women. They run double shifts. And what they experience in those services are things they have never seen in this way. Seriously ill people. Very frightened people. Dying people.
Yesterday I heard about how a nursing home resident had died in the arms of a 21-year-old caregiver who had just started working in healthcare. That cuts hard. She was upset, but her work continues, she has to continue. Rightly, in the media and in politics, a lot of attention is paid to hospitals, to people in Intensive Care. Because what happens there is horrible. I only hear so many stories from the nursing homes at the moment, where many corona patients lie and die, that I wonder if that is sufficiently visible. A considerable number of these sick residents never end up in the hospital or in the Intensive Care Unit. The employees there are currently having such a hard time. The people who die there, before or after their death, are not always tested for corona and the number of deaths is actually much higher than the figures we hear every day.
My neighbor works in the nursing home in my neighborhood. She had to do her job using only gloves and alcohol for protection. She fell ill, tested in hospital Bernhoven and turned out to have the coronavirus. Now she is quarantined at home. Several residents in the nursing home appear to be infected and have also been tested positive. A number of residents also have the complaints, but are not being tested, so it cannot be determined whether they are infected. And of course my neighbor is not the only one.
It is truly unbelievable that our healthcare providers, who are now at the forefront of the battle to defeat the coronavirus, have yet to do so often with insufficient protection. It becomes painfully clear how stupid it is to move the production of these types of protective materials to low-wage countries, on which we now depend. It is crazy to say that we have jet fighters ready in case we ever end up in a war, but have no protective materials or opportunities to produce them ourselves in case we go to war with a virus.
Of course I understand that saving lives is now much more important than keeping statistics, but I fear that the magnitude of this disaster is even greater than we currently suspect because many infections, but also many deaths, in Brabant not be counted at this time. In addition, I am very concerned about our healthcare providers. About all care providers, but certainly also about care providers in home care and nursing home care. They have to deal with corona infections and deaths to the fullest extent, but appear to be little in the picture with media and statistics. Every day, the utmost is demanded of these caregivers under hellish conditions.
Next week there will be another debate in the House of Representatives on corona and we will ask for more clarity about the mortality figures and about the situation in our nursing homes. We must do everything we can to support our caregivers today. In addition, there should really be more opportunities for testing, at least for our healthcare providers.
For my own Brabant, I hope that this unreal and horrible time will soon come to an end. For the rest of our country, I really hope that everyone follows the guidelines of the RIVM, so that this hellish misery that I now see in Brabant can be saved as much as possible in the rest of the country.
Text Lilian Marijnissen on her Facebook page ( Original text:
