Full transcript: Dr. Tony Burch on London Real
2:23 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dr. Tony Burch, a medical doctor with 25 years’ experience specializing in medicine and health care for the elderly.
2:42 You have served 14 years as a trustee for Age UK, the leading charity for older people, who too often feel they have no one to turn to for support. Age UK exists to help elderly people at a time in their life when they need us the most. 18 months ago you joined the board of Age UK London and have helped facilitate the crucial campaigning work that is being done to support older Londoners, and furthermore, to promote London as an age-friendly city. Dr. Burch, welcome to London Real.
3:08 Thank you very much, Brian. Great having you here. I really want to talk about this. You know, I really want to learn about how we can take better care of our elderly population, because I think it’s truly one of our most valuable resources. My grandparents were a really big part of me growing up.
3:22 When I was in California, I had one grandpa in Colorado who was a potato farmer, and I would spend summers with him, just to go out and do the hard work with him every day. He had gone through the Great Depression. He lost his toes when he was 18, and the lessons I learned from him were incredible. And my other side of my family, my grandpa Benedict was a cattleman in Arizona, and he would teach me how to trade horses and all these crazy things, and they really taught me a lot about business and life and manhood that my parents really couldn’t teach me.
3:52 And, um, I really think our older generation is just our most valuable asset. So I’m really glad you’re here today. A lot of questions to ask you. Um, I guess I wanted to start off and maybe talk about mental health. I mean, Age UK had just recently posted something that said some people are quote dying from sadness because they’ve been cut off from loved ones for prolonged periods of time.
4:12 What are you seeing our elderly population struggle with from a mental health perspective, you know, over the last six months of the lockdown and COVID, et cetera? In short, it’s social isolation. Um, social isolation has always been a problem for some older people, and everyone knows that it’s an issue, and in the last few years there’s been quite a lot of research done into trying to quantify some of that, in albeit imperfectly, and the relationship between social isolation, mental health problems, and also physical health.
4:44 It all kind of ties up, but what the pandemic has done and lockdown has done is to magnify all those issues. And now we’re over six months after the initial lockdown. A lot of older people are still stuck at home, whether they’re shielding or just stuck at home, and they may be for a whole year, and that is really worrying, and we know and are in contact with some, a lot of older people who don’t have regular contact with other people. And of course there’s no touch.
5:18 There’s no hugging of family members, and there’s grandchildren. You mentioned your own experience, a lot of older people love their grandchildren, and a friend of mine said a month ago, when the schools were going back, who’d seen her grandchildren over the summer, who said, should I stop seeing them now they’re going back to school? And I’m afraid I answered, probably yes, because the schools were bound to be a breeding ground for COVID, and it’s nobody’s fault.
5:52 That’s the thing. It’s just tragic. We have to do what we can do, but we have to bear in mind some of the costs. I think we’ve all, most of us at least, have had our issues over lockdown, and and so on, but at least if we can get out, or if we can get to work or do things socially or on Zoom even televisually, there’s some human contact. A lot of older people really, really are stuck in yours as prisoners in their own homes, and we’ve almost lost them, and we’ve certainly lost their voices.
6:28 And my concern is that we will start to forget our older folk. I don’t want to over-dramatize this, but it happens, and it happens slowly, without anyone really noticing yeah, without actually talking to them and hearing their voices and their cries for help. Um, it’s easily that they, they become a statistic. And like you said, living for grandchildren, I mean, my, my aunt told me later in life that when we were born my grandpa became a completely different person.
6:56 He was kind of a real gruff, angry guy in his 50s, and when the grandchildren come over, he became a new person. So I know they live for them. I know I have young children, three and four years old, and during the lockdown, when I didn’t have contact with people, literally hugging them and touching them and playing with them every night, was, it was a lifesaver for me. And I know a lot of older people, they don’t have that option. No touch is really, really important for older people.
7:21 We figure, obviously kids growing up, touch is part and parcel of it all, but for older people too. And I think, though, those I was going to say, very simple but really important aspects of older people’s lives, for perfectly good reasons I completely understand, are missing, and really missing badly. What can we do with you know, our elderly? I mean, I understand you’ve got to be careful, and like you said, if the kids are going back to school, it increases the risk that they might carry something, and so older people really have to ask themselves a question: is it worth the risk?
7:57 And I’ve heard different schools of thought. You know, I’ve heard one, one someone’s grandma said I only have five years left, and I don’t want to leave it, spend it alone. But then some people say, I don’t want to take the risk. Um, you know, or how else can we make contact with our elderly? Just a word about risk.
8:14 I agree, it’s all about risk. It’s about our risk, and it’s about your risk and other people’s risk, about us. And um, we may come back to that, because we’ve all got to make decisions about what we do. Before I came here, I established that there was a good ventilation system, and I can feel it on my face, so that’s reassuring, that, um, that I’m in a safe space. But that was my risk assessment, and obviously you and all your staff too.
8:41 Um, and everyone has a choice about what they do and about what they’re prepared to do, and I can completely understand that lady who said, I haven’t got long to live, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna do this. Um, and that really is her choice, as long as she doesn’t cause a risk for somebody else, and that of course is crucial. Yeah, so each person has to make their own individual at-risk assessment as far as keeping in touch is concerned. I think whatever helps, and whatever anyone can do, um, a lot of Age UKs and now a lot of mutual aids as well are doing friendly phone calls.
9:19 My local Age UK got some funding for a telephone befriending service, um, Call Chat Care it’s called, and I hope that we can carry on the funding, because that’s vital, and some human contact, even if it’s only over the phone, is better than nothing. I know a lot of neighbors will do shopping for the, uh, for the elderly neighbors and a suitably distanced doorstep chat. is not a problem, but again, it’s all at a distance, and it’s for short periods of time, but actually that’s really important, and it may well be the highlight of somebody’s day, even if they’re weak.
10:02 I must correct you on one thing. I’m not a specialist in older people. I was a general practitioner, but I had a special interest in older people, and I so remember the first time, I remember an old person sitting in my consulting room, and it dawned on me that they hadn’t spoken to anybody else that week. I was the first person, and it was a Wednesday or a Thursday, and I was so shocked. It was many years ago now, but I remember that was such an important moment for me of realizing what some old people have to live with and live without, and of course it’s all magnified now.
10:39 Yeah, let’s talk about that mental health damage. I mean, what does that do to a person, because not only elderly people are feeling that, but even some other people that are just isolated. What does that do to a person, and how is that damage done, and can it be undone? Uh, to answer your second question first, I’m sure it can be undone. I think we do have a remarkable way of healing ourselves if we put our minds to it, if we want to.
11:11 I’ll give you an example. I knew I was having, I live on my own now. I knew I was struggling a little bit, but thought I was doing okay through the lockdown, and I went away in August for a week. Um, had a lovely week on the Norfolk coast. Came back and I nearly went berserk.
11:31 I was on a Zoom call with some friends and I shouted at them not to speak over each other all the time, and one of them said, you look terrible. And I spoke to her later, and I realized at that moment that I was back in my four walls, and I had had a much worse time than I’d thought, and that actually that was a turning point, because I found so much more energy then, and I got on and did stuff. Uh, well, in the last six weeks, six to eight weeks, that I hadn’t been able to do before, then.
12:01 So so it was quite a turning point, and that moment of going berserk was actually quite therapeutic. Right, so you have to kind of know that you’re suffering, or potentially suffering, from mental health, and then be proactive. Yes. So if there’s elderly people right now that are watching us who maybe haven’t had that contact, find some way to engineer it. At least find a way to see someone on the doorstep, or see someone at distance, or get on the FaceTime and get on the Zoom and do more than you think you need.
12:28 Maybe. Absolutely. Um, I don’t know, again, my own experience. I found I’ve kept in touch with a smaller circle of friends, and I’m starting to think seriously now about how to make, make contact again with a wider circle that I have. But I think you’re right.
12:47 Any and every opportunity. Um, and some, uh, charities, some mutual aids are putting leaflets through doors, if there’s a phone number there to ring, uh, to ask for someone to talk to, or whatever. If someone does come to the door, how can you carry on that conversation? How can you get back in touch with family? You know, the phone isn’t as good as Zoom or FaceTime or something, but it’s really, really important, and you know the vast majority of people do have a phone.
13:20 Yeah, anything, anything to make that contact. Yes. Yeah. I know it’s not your specialty, but we keep hearing in the news about, about care homes, and you know, I know that the recent Public Health England numbers said still 43% of COVID transmissions is happening in care homes, and I think all of us, it’s just almost flabbergasting, but I don’t think most people have ever been to a care home, and we even know what that is like. So, maybe there’s things you can tell us about what it’s like to be in one of those homes, or any information that might help, so we can try to understand what that’s like mentally, and then what, what, what, what could be solutions to that?
13:56 Well, nobody needs to know what the inside of a care home looks like until they need to go there, um, either to live there or to visit there, or obviously to work there. Um, there’s still a lot to learn about, uh, the disaster of care homes. And I should add it’s not just this country. Sweden, that’s had a very much more liberal policy over lockdown, had a terrible disaster over care home deaths, that they’ve got an inquiry into at the moment, I understand, and we’ve all got things to learn, and I suppose care homes weren’t designed for this kind of pandemic that affects older people, and care homes, to generalize, have the very elderly in them.
14:44 They are designed to keep people together, for reasons we’ve just been talking about. Um, people come in and out of them. It’s, I read an interesting thing that the smaller care homes have had less infections, simply because I assume there have been less people coming and going from outside, and some care homes, the staff decided to stay there, to live there, to camp out in their own place of work, so they weren’t always coming and going and potentially picking up infections from outside.
15:14 That is a huge sacrifice uh, to make, um, often from care home staff who are not very well paid, often from abroad, um, uh, immigrants working uh, in the UK, who’ve moved from somewhere else, and they’ve made those kind of sacrifices, and I think that’s extraordinary. But we’ve got a lot to learn. Yeah, we’ve got an awful lot to learn and think about, and it’s not just about how care homes are arranged physically and organizationally, but how we look after our older people, too, much more generally.
15:54 Yeah. I know, very much so. I mean, you mentioned there was some real problems, you know, in these care homes, and I think Amnesty International, uh, you know, recently said that, you know, some of the care home policies, you know, violated the fundamental human rights of vulnerable elderly residents, and they said some of the treatments were inhumane, degrading, inexplicable, and I think we’re all a bit frustrated, and I would love it if the government could think about, you know, channeling more resources, you know, to this area of our economy.
16:21 Um, it’s just not being talked about enough. No. Um, thank you. That’s absolutely right. There have always been issues in care homes.
16:30 Um, it’s sort of reached some sort of public consciousness about poor care and abusive care, but this has thrown it much, much more into focus, and where suddenly the main abuser is a virus, not a human being, but nonetheless it’s thrown care into focus, and we’ve been promised for some years now a whole review of our social care system. I’m talking about providing care in people’s own homes as well. So it all is part of something much larger. And we’ve yet to see something.
17:06 I understand that governments are reluctant because of the potential cost and the consequences, but we are an advanced civilized Western society. What are we doing, ignoring our older people? And I go back to what I said earlier on. The problem with older people being stuck at home for so long is it’s terribly easy to forget about them. They lose their voice, and we need to allow those voices to be heard again and taken note of.
17:38 Yeah. I feel like we’re the voice of them now, trying to get people to take notice of what’s going on here, and again, you judge a society by how they treat their elderly people and their disadvantaged people. I mean, that’s how, that’s how we’ve always judged societies. Absolutely. What do you think?
17:51 You said there’s maybe a fundamental way we need to even look at this differently, you know, this whole end-of-life experience, whether it’s care in the home or carrying a care home. But do we need to think about it differently? I think we do. Can I broaden the concept to not, to end of life, because people think about the last few weeks or months leading up to death? I’m talking about a whole phase of life, when, uh, we may not be, I mean, I have my health and my fitness.
18:18 I have to think about not only keeping that, but what I would do if I, if I lose it and I become, uh, dependent to a greater or lesser extent. And I think how we manage, uh, as a society, not just the health service, but including that and social care, and we as family carers, uh, for our loved ones, how we think about that approach to caring for people, because caring for people is about valuing them, and I think we have to rethink how we value our older people in many societies, and, uh, a lot in poorer parts of our own, uh, of our own country. There is multi-generational living, a lot of people living in the same premises now.
19:09 That’s been a problem for the spread of COVID actually, but at least older people are more integrated into the community. And of course, in, in, in the West we’ve tended to lose that. And again, I don’t want to over-dramatize this, but the phrase out of sight, out of mind comes to mind. I know that there is a load of exceptions, and I know of so many people who really care about their elderly parents and grandparents, and who go to stupendous efforts and sacrifices to care for them.
19:43 I am, as well, a trustee of a charity called Dementia Carers Count, which is just what we do, and we work to support specifically those family carers of people living with dementia. And I know, and have worked with, people with extraordinary experience and knowledge and understanding of that caring role. So it’s a very mixed picture, but I’m talking generally about how as a society we’ve got to rethink ourselves and support our older people and support our carers as well.
20:15 Yeah. Again, like when I grew up, almost like our grandma and grandpa were kind of the patriarchal matriarch, you know. We would go there for Christmas, and they were, they were the ones we looked up to. They weren’t like, and also ran. They weren’t in the back room.
20:27 They were almost the focus, the, the structure of the family, going around to grannies. Yeah, it was a big deal. And I know my, my boys now, their, their grandmother from Bulgaria has come over, and when she’s in the house, I’m telling you, everything’s better. I actually invited her to stay here, you know, much to the chagrin of my wife sometime, but I’m like, when your mom’s here, everything’s better. The kids are better, we’re better.
20:48 I mean, there’s a reason for having these multi-generation living experiences, if you can do it safely. Um, and just to really ask ourselves hard question, like, you know, how are we showing our appreciation for our elderly people? They have so much wisdom. You know, this Captain Tom guy really hit the papers recently, and it showed, I think, Britain how much we truly value these people that have lived so long and given their lives for our country and can teach us about things in the past that we’ll never know about again, and that richness of memory and experience and the stories, uh, that we heard.
21:23 I remember the stories that I heard as a child, um, way back in the earlier part of this of the last century. But when you think that someone who turns 80 this year was born in 1940, in the darkest days of the war, and that is the generation that rebuilt this country, and, um, and now how are we repaying that? Yeah, yeah, you’re right. It’s invaluable lessons. And they went through the Battle of Britain, and then again the rebuilding of this country, the 20 years after, which was very difficult times, and they bring a stoicism that can’t be taught.
21:58 And I think that it’s great for the children to see that, you know, when grandma says, okay, guess what, you know, we’re going to handle this, and this is what I went through, and we always find a way, and we’re going to continue moving forward. That perspective is very important. Sometimes you mentioned dementia, and I think it’s an important piece to talk about, because I had read an article that the dementia therapists, um, or some, were being shut out of care homes because of the coronavirus pandemic.
22:24 This seems like a very important therapy for dementia, and not having it, it seems very dangerous. And maybe you can speak on that. It’s heartbreaking, and again, I come take you back to risk. What is the risk to someone, um, who’s elderly anyway, with or without dementia, and somebody coming into a care home, and who’s going to make an assessment about that risk, and particularly if someone with dementia can’t make decisions for themselves, then someone has to make the decision for them, and the care home manager and staff have to think about the other residents as well, and if somebody comes in and gives COVID to one resident, how do you keep that resident away from everybody else in a home that’s not designed to keep people separate?
23:15 So I completely understand, um, what you’re saying, but it’s really very complex. I’ve got a, a friend who spoke to me about her mother, who was in her care home at the start of lockdown, having been in hospital before that, and she couldn’t manage, um, at home, um, yet. And I had a phone call, and she said, Mom’s okay, but there’s COVID in the home, and she said, my mum said to me, oh dear, and I go back to that stoicism. And she just said, oh dear. Now there’s a happy ending to this.
23:52 Um, she got a cough, and she told somebody, and immediately was shut away at the other end of the home, and was actually safe, and is now back at home. Um, but it’s, it’s a real, it’s a very complicated and complex decision process that especially in care homes, but not only in care homes. Yeah, and like you said, it seems like the COVID, you know, crisis has magnified the fact that we have been ignoring maybe care homes for a long time, and ignoring some of the things that we need to look out for in those places.
24:26 Now COVID has really put it on the map and shown us these tragic deaths, this mistreatment, and this, this, again, 43% of the virus is being spread in care homes. When you hear that number from Public Health England, it’s, it’s almost unfathomable. It’s almost something, it’s like a wake-up call. Yes, we need to take this more seriously. I think this crisis has hurried up a lot of things that were happening already.
24:48 My own general practice has suddenly had to go distance consulting. To what extent is that going to go back to normal? Well, I think it’ll be a very different picture. It’s very important that people can consult their doctor, for instance, if they need an examination, or that sense of closeness and touch that’s so important, and it was, uh, my privilege to be able to offer to my patients, um, but I think it’s, it’s hurried up a process that would have happened anyway.
25:23 And I think you’re right. When it comes to care homes, we cannot now, hopefully, I hope to God, we can’t any more ignore the crisis that has been building for years and years in care homes, and it is it’s, amongst other things, very importantly a funding crisis. Um, and there again, who is going to think about that when they don’t want to, um, until it’s on top of them? And but we have to, we have to think in advance, and we have to think about not only the ones ourselves, the people we care for and care about, but also as, as a society: how do we look to our older people, and how do we show that we value them?
26:10 Yeah, I was actually running the numbers, uh, I think last week, and I think on the day there was, I think, 1,500 deaths in England, and on that same day, I think there were 13 COVID deaths, and I looked in and saw that it was almost 10 times that amount was due to dementia and Alzheimer’s, and another 10 times due to smoking-related illnesses, and it just made me wonder. Wow. You know, of course, because of COVID we’re focusing on this, and it’s important that we do, but I didn’t realize that there was so much death from dementia and Alzheimer’s, and it just seems like something we need to look more into and to see what else we can do.
26:46 Yes. It’s quite a complex subject. Uh, dementia is an illness of old, older age, so inevitably people with dementia are more likely to be older. I’m talking in generalisms here, more likely to be older, and therefore more likely anyway to be at risk of COVID. They’re also more likely to have physical conditions, general frailty, or other conditions.
27:15 We’re not only talking about Alzheimer’s. Vascular dementia is a condition where you have many strokes all the time, and so you’ve got a cardiovascular system that’s fractured and more likely to put you at risk. So there’s a multitude of risks that add up. Yes. How do you think we can protect our elderly from this virus, but also allow our children to go back to school, or also allow people from other age groups that seem to be less likely to die from this disease?
27:55 How do you think we can do this? It’s a question that’s being talked about a lot, and we’ve seen the numbers. If you look at, as you get older, your chance of dying from this virus goes up almost exponentially. Yes. Oh, um, listen, we have to play swings and roundabouts here.
28:10 On the one hand, the children needed to go back to school. I don’t think anyone disagreed with that one, but on the other hand, what about the teachers, what about their families back home? I said, you know, what about the grandparents? Um, on the one hand, certainly at first we had to lock down the economy, because it was just running rampant, but then on the other hand, we stopped the economy, and we can’t allow that to carry on forever, otherwise the economy will collapse.
28:39 So we’ve got all these pulls in different directions, these dilemmas, these conflicts, and I’ve mentioned some of them already in terms of individual older people, uh, perhaps, and their own decisions and our decisions about them, and that’s not going to go away. We’re constantly having to weigh risks, um, experience conflicts, and think them through. And all I’d say to anybody is allow yourself the discomfort, and it is jolly uncomfortable to really acknowledge some of these conflicts and some of the, of the pulls, and how we are pulled and sometimes feel pulled apart, and we have to go through that, because that’s the only way we can think about them and stay on top of them in our own minds and make sensible decisions um, about what, what we do and how we handle ourselves and other people.
29:33 Yeah, because we lock down everything, there’s a lot of mental health and even physical health issues. If the economy crashes, you have all sorts of other problems as well. So yeah, you have to do a risk assessment, really. One, one of our one of our campaigns in Age UK London was, we, Dub Park Walks. It was a bit of a borrow from Park Runs, but it was to encourage older people to get out of doors to enjoy London’s green spaces, of which there are many, and to meet other people.
30:01 Well, I’m afraid we’ve got our timing a little bit wrong on that one, so it’s had to go online. It’s on our website, and there is, for instance, uh, some lovely views of, uh, woodlands around. We did this in conjunction with the Woodland Trust, but there are also some exercises that it’s safe to do at home. And, but a lot of people who are shielding and not getting the exercise that they would have done otherwise, they’re not getting the sunshine, they’re not getting their vitamin D, they’re at risk of falls and fractures and all sorts of things.
30:30 So it’s multi-factorial, and, um, we, what we can do is encourage people to think about those risks and to mitigate them as as far as possible. Um, I know, because my wretched watch tells me that I can do my 30 minutes of exercise every day, but it says you’re not doing as much as you did last year, Tony. Thanks, but, um, I do what I can do. How important is it for our elderly people to stay active, even if they’re at home? Really important.
31:03 Okay, really important. Um, inactivity. Well, our muscles waste, but so do our bones, and that’s what puts us at risk, and our balance then, especially if the balance isn’t so good. Uh, to start off with, balance becomes more at risk. I mentioned falls risks.
31:23 Um, it’s really, really important, and on the other hand, there’s quite a lot that you can do. Walking around the room isn’t the same, especially if you don’t have a garden to go out into, but walking around the room is something that you can do. Stretching, exercising, even if you can’t stand up terribly well. Chair chair exercises. There are all sorts of chair exercises on the NHS website, Age UK’s website, Age UK London site, and lots of other places to keep fit and keep active.
31:55 Physical exercise makes us feel better. Yeah, um, it’s all to do with endorphins and serotonins and things like that. I don’t care, it makes us feel better if we’ve taken some exercise. Yeah, my, my aunt is in Denver, Colorado, and they closed her pool down for a while. I didn’t know she was swimming at 74.
32:15 But that was a big deal for her, and she got that low-impact exercise. It’s so important. So if anyone’s listening now who’s in that age group, or who has parents or grandparents, you know, try to speak to them and say, you know, there’s these exercises on the NHS. Getting that mobility is so important. Getting the bone density is important.
32:31 And again, falls are really dangerous. They’re life-threatening, and absolutely those happen probably more if you’re not mobile, kind of counterintuitively. So yes, that’s right. Yeah, yes, safe. Absolutely.
32:42 Doctor, what are some of the things we need to think about as this winter approaches? You know, we’re going into the months of November, December, January. It’s going to get colder. You know, we know flu season is coming up as well. What do people need to be aware of, again, if they’re of the age group, or if they have parents or grandparents in that age group?
33:00 The standard things that, um, everyone’s talked about already: keeping warm, keeping moving, keeping company, making sure there’s food in the house, and things like that. There’s one very specific thing, though, and that’s the flu vaccine. It doesn’t protect against COVID, but there is a lot of evidence that having both together is pretty, a pretty deadly mixture. And we are very keen in Age UK London to encourage older people, older Londoners, to make sure that they get their flu vaccine.
33:34 Not easy, because it may mean going out of the house. There’s, I’ve seen pictures of tents in car parks and all sorts of things to try and, uh, move people through. It’s it’s difficult, and everyone’s struggling. GPs, Age UK’s, mutual aids are lots of, lots of people are working on this, how to get older people to have their flu jab. But I also, if I may, want to take an opportunity to myth-bust about the risks of flu vaccine, which are really very, very low indeed, and the risks of not having flu vaccine, particularly for those older Londoners who are going out.
34:14 You really don’t want to get both together. There’s a chance, and we know from back in March, um, a few people, uh, across the country did get both together, and the mortality rate doubled. Doubled. On the other hand, we know that in Australia they mobilized really well in their winter, through March, April, May, June, and they got 70 percent of the older citizens to have the flu jab, and the number of cases of influenza dropped by over 90 percent. Less than a tenth of Australians got the flu in their last winter than they did the winter before.
34:59 So we know it can be done, and we know it will save lives and also protect our health service. I mean, we, we all saw the pictures of the hospitals, in the, uh, at the height of the pandemic, and the heroic struggles that my hospital colleagues were, were making. And we just don’t want that again. Please, we don’t want that again. So there’s a general point about helping the health service, but there’s a specific point about helping ourselves.
35:32 Yeah. Some people do get, um, a reaction. I, and I, I think it gets less and less the more that you have, which is, um, I’m saying please have one every year, because I was a frontline health worker. I started having flu jabs years ago. I can’t actually remember the first time I had one, and I remember having reactions then.
35:54 Um, I thought, oh, I was going down with flu, and then I realized, of course, it was four days since I’d had the jab, but now I have the jab and I don’t even notice. So please, unless you’re allergic, and you know you’re allergic to it, please have the jab. Right. Right. Um, any final thoughts as far as, you know, finally, on kind of care homes, anything that our government should do or think about in order to prevent some of these things from happening in the future?
36:21 Anything we can do as a society to really look at this and make sure that these transmission rates drop below 43% and we find out that none of these other, you know, problems and missteps happen? Yes. Um, to be short, get a grip. Uh, get a grip of the track and trace service, that will stop the spread of this second wave or slow it down significantly. And then grasp the nettle on, uh, care of the elderly.
36:54 It’s not just care homes. It’s about our whole societal attitude to looking after and caring for our older people, and valuing our older people, and allowing them a voice. And so it’s not just about Whitehall. It’s about all of us joining in a public debate about that. Um, it is going to cost money, and I think we just got to be honest with ourselves about that, and ask ourselves what we can afford, and why we want to afford it, and why we don’t, if we don’t.
37:27 But please, can we just think about that? And I talked a little bit earlier about sometimes the pain of acknowledging these issues and of these dilemmas and difficulties, but I think we have to be grown-ups and do that. Sorry to use a word like grown-ups, but it’s terribly easy to run away from these things. And you mentioned everyone’s feeling a bit, um, a bit down in, in lockdown. I’ve noticed a sort of regression.
37:56 I feel much more like a child than I did before, and it’s been quite a revelation in lots of ways, and it’s very easy to regress and run away from those very naughty problems that we need to confront. Yeah, no, very much so, and I agree. It is ultimately something we have to collectively take responsibility for and take ownership for. And you know, the other thing that’s strangely counterintuitive is when you’re feeling down, one of the best ways to feel better is actually to reach out and make someone feel better.
38:29 It really works. It really works, and it’s so, it’s so easy to be in your own head and woe is me and my life is difficult. But actually, reaching out to an elderly person in your life that is related to you, or maybe just an old friend of a friend, and giving him a 10-minute FaceTime call now today, could literally change their week. I mean, that might be the most intimate contact they have in seven days, whereas if you are a healthy adult, you know, you might be having 20 human interactions throughout the day, fine, at safe distances, but those actually help you survive with your mental health.
39:01 Yes. So really, I think it’s, we all owe it to go out of our way. We are social beings, and making that, that little effort, thank you, making that little effort to get in touch with someone for social contact is so, so important. Yeah, it can really make their day. Absolutely.
39:19 And I’m trying to remember that with me. I mean, my, and my parents, now are older. They’re in their mid-70s, and they’re isolating in California, and I always try to remember, like, what’s, what are they going through? What’s my mom doing? What’s my dad doing?
39:29 And shoot them an email, do the call, and, and sometimes you have to push them a little. Too sometimes they’ll be like, I’m fine, but you know they’re not. So just do the FaceTime call and get them on the phone and show them the kids, and just, you know, let them know everything’s okay. I think we all need to do that. So I would say anybody watching, listen, is now, right now, today, try to make some contact with someone elderly.
39:51 See if you can help them out. Again, do a doorstep visit, make sure it’s distanced, but I think it’s important that we just get in touch and make sure we continue to have these interactions. Uh, so important. Final thoughts, uh, for you, as far as you know, our elderly and how we can really take care of these people. Anything else we need to know or anybody listening that they should know about, what they can do?
40:15 Keep in touch, keep warm, keep active, keep well. We’re all saying that, get your flu jab, um, and we’ll get through this. It’s a long one, but we will get through it, but we need to make it happen for ourselves, and for the people we love, for our neighbors, for everybody. And we will get through this. And I know sometimes I still remember back in March and April, it looked like the darkest of days, you know, and I was trying to keep everyone here on our team, and everyone I knew, you know, at least positive and optimistic and proactive and busy as well, so they could feel like they were doing something.
40:52 And you know, it’s, it’s, the situation now is a lot better than what we originally thought, and I’m sure six months and a year from now we’re going to find more solutions and more innovation. So I agree, let’s stay positive, but let’s also take this moment to see what we can do to change our care homes and change the way we treat the elderly, and let’s look out and be prepared for the winter. So Dr. Burch, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate the work you do at Age UK, and Age UK, and it’s incredible, incredible website, incredible things you’re doing for the community.
41:19 So keep doing the good work, and let’s take care of our elderly. Thank you, Brian. All right, until next time. Thank you.
