Ageism Goes Underground as COVID Suffering Continues in Daylight

Co-written with John Beilenson, President, SCP, and member of the National Advisory Committee of the Reframing Aging Initiative.

For almost 12 months, we’ve known that COVID-19 was bad for lots of us, but that it was really bad for those of us who are older and with underlying health conditions like heart disease and diabetes. We now know that more than 80% of the nearly 500,000 people who have since died from the coronavirus in this country have been 65 and older. And according to the CDC, we also know that older people of color have been particularly hard hit — hospitalized at three times the rate and dying at twice the rate as their white peers.

Our public policy response continues to be debated, but underlying these actions (and inactions) has been a set of ageist ideas that directly and indirectly devalue older people.

It wasn’t long after COVID entered our lives last year, that eruptions of explicit ageism — discrimination against a person or group of people based on their age — found its way into the media and social media. We saw things like “Boomer Remover” memes, implying the pandemic was a useful way to cull the post-World War II generation. There were triage policies that made age a criterion for limiting or denying care. There was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, saying publicly that grandparents would be “willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren.” There was the massive underinvestment in providing nursing homes with the personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing they needed (and continue to need) to prevent older residents (and staff) from succumbing to COVID.

Ageism … out in the open in broad daylight.

Aging advocates objected, and while policy actions and accompanying appropriations did not change, the public rhetoric softened. Ageism in the age of COVID-19 didn’t disappear, it mutated. It could be found in underlying discussions of COVID-19 fatigue, the desire in many places to “get back to normal,” to be able to go to bars and restaurants once again, gather in movie theaters, at concerts and sporting events. It could be found lurking beneath the videos of angry “mask deniers,” who refused to cover up in stores or other public spaces.

These messages and actions were often framed as expressions of a uniquely American sense of individual freedom or anti-science bias. They were also unconsciously reflecting age (and in many cases race and class) prejudice. Ageism, like other forms of discrimination, can operate all too effectively in the shadows.

Certain behaviors and points of view may not explicitly demean us as we age, but the downstream and negative effects of this discourse ultimately have fallen on older people and particularly older people of color. Many have been stuck for months in draconian lockdowns of skilled nursing facilities and other congregate care sites. So many others — our older family members, friends, us — have been hospitalized or died.

Almost everyone has a story to share. Here is just one of them.

Jolene’s Story

COVID nearly wiped out a generation in my family. Before COVID-19, my Aunt Irene, who was 84, visited her husband (my Uncle Gene) of 63 years, almost every day at the care center (nursing home) in Iowa. When he got COVID and was isolated, my Aunt Irene reminisced with him by phone about his favorite things. He died on December 3, 2020. He was 86 years old. Around the same time, Irene also contracted COVID. She died just nine days later.

My Aunt Kathleen, pictured above, was 93 when she got COVID-19. The last time I saw her was on Zoom. Kathleen was “lucky.” The hospital was planning to discharge her to the local Care Center, where she could likely have died alone. With some coaching from my cousin, she was discharged to her granddaughter’s home, who had recently recovered from COVID herself. Aunt Kathleen died several days later on November 16, thankfully with part of her family by her side — a family that includes six children, 15 grandchildren, and 24 great grandchildren.

My Uncle John survived COVID. Two of his five daughters are nurses. When he got sick, they made sure he was hospitalized immediately, and he later recovered in his daughter’s home.

My Aunt Dixie now spends most of her time alone at home. She has seen what COVID has done to our family and anxiously awaits her vaccine.

Taking a Hard Look at Unconscious Biases

The effects of COVID are heartbreaking and they are real. Our unwillingness as a nation to address our implicit biases about our aging has had tragic consequences.

During the past year, a more age-positive perspective and associated messaging could have driven real policy and practice investments and prevented some of our suffering. Indeed, the approach to the newly available vaccinations has placed older people closer to the front of the line, not because we are more deserving as we get older, but because we are just as deserving as anyone else and among those most at risk. This suggests progress.

No matter our age, we all should have the right, the ability to participate fully in our communities and our nation. As we have learned through the pandemic, ageism — sometimes explicit, often implicit — leads to a variety of bad outcomes for older people’s health and well-being. These attitudes demean us as we age. They threaten our health, and the policies they support can exclude us from family, work, and other activities. Going forward, we would do well to take a hard look at our unconscious biases as we seek the solutions, policies, and programs that improve everyone’s health and well-being.