Mar 24, 2020
In this episode of Life Matters Commissioner Johnston outlines the bright side of this unusual moment in history. Brian served as California Commissioner on Aging from 1995 to 1999. He also served on the State of California Board of Examiners of Nursing Homes from ‘95 until the year 2000.
Brian brings this experience, coupled with his active advocacy on behalf of the right to life of the vulnerable, to focus on the coronavirus outbreak of 2020.
The bright side: On the deeply personal level that all of us experience in day-to-day life, the coronavirus outbreak has brought us home. The emphasis on staying domestic and focusing on the immediacy of life in our homes is of huge significance for a busy and distracted culture.
Because of restrictions on church services, this has even required individuals to no longer view their faith as something that is exercised only in a special building. The advantage is it makes the living out of our faith that much more personal and an important aspect of our lives and family relationships.
Brian and his wife Valery have raised five children and homeschooled them all. He makes note that while the state of California’s education system has been at war, politically, with the homeschool movement, there has come a sudden and drastic need for homeschooling. Governor Gavin Newsom became a public advocate for the homeschool movement in March of 2020 in order to address the dangers that the spread of the virus posed.
But there is also a darker side posed not only by the virus itself, but in some of the answers being presented.
Throughout the world and especially in Italy - which was initially the hardest hit of the European countries - it appears that seniors, as with the flu virus, are the most lethally affected. The public has been warned, and young people in particular, to avoid contact with the elderly.
In Washington State the highest mortality rate has been in certain nursing homes outside of Seattle. These hotspots encourage a definitive ‘rule’ of interaction: avoidance of contact with seniors.
But as Commissioner Johnston pointed out, sadly, this has already been a cultural phenomenon in the United States. The nature of our nursing home system is such that it removes any sense of responsibility or involvement with the older members of our family. Culturally, nations like Italy, even in employing nursing homes, continue to be actively involved and engaged with the oldest members of the family. Such is rarely the case in America. While there are certainly exceptions, the vast majority of nursing home residents rarely have visitors.
This decided disdain, removal and distancing from our own eventual mortality has included an embrace of voluntary euthanasia - assisted suicide in all of the Western states and in many other parts of the nation and large swaths of the medical community.
Commissioner Johnston is joined by nursing home advocate, Joyce Unangst, as they discussed their experience in a visitation of a local nursing home in 2018.
Commissioner Johnston underscores that the recent change in laws to allow and encourage the killing of the medically vulnerable is an ominous indicator of an existing abandonment syndrome which many Americans and the American culture is already routinely practicing.
Commissioner Johnston ends the program on a positive note, giving specific guidelines and suggestions as to how to continue to be involved with the senior community and to encourage others in their care and the needed respect and protection our seniors deserve.
We should continue to be involved and engaged with the oldest members of our family and community. Perhaps we should be even more engaged given the depressing quality of this pandemic. Modern technology allows for extraordinary avenues of communication and intervention even remotely. So this current crisis actually offers a great opportunity to be other-centered and actively involved, even if not physically, in the lives of the most vulnerable.