For the love of God, Gov. DeSantis, tell worried families where elderly people died | Editorial

“ For people reckoning with the possibility of adored elders dying alone, it might seem irrelevant what, exactly, causes them to draw their last breath.

But it isn’t irrelevant. We know from life experience that people care very much about the minute details of every element of a serious illness, from the day of diagnosis to the moment of death.

Today, families and friends of 200,000 seniors living in Florida’s eldercare facilities are barred from visiting, because Gov. DeSantis closed these places to visitors to protect residents and their caregivers from exposure to the coronavirus. It was a wise and proper public safety measure for which the governor is to be commended.

A session on Skype with Grandma or FaceTime with Uncle Bob, even if it can be provided, is no substitute for the bedside manner of a devoted child, a beloved grandchild or a dear old friend. We mustn’t forget the families on the outside, left to their imaginations and fearing the worst.

That’s why reporters all over the country have pressed state and federal officials to release the names of facilities where long-term-care residents and staff have been exposed. Florida has thus far refused to do so, for reasons that are unpersuasive.

State officials have confirmed that three individuals already have died from the extremely contagious disease, and admit that 33 Floridians living in a skilled-nursing or assisted-living facility had tested positive.

Florida has 691 nursing homes and 3,081 assisted-living facilities (ALF) licensed by the state. The victims could be in any of them, and residents’ families will assume that they are unless and until the governor scratches that item off their worry lists.

“He wants to do the right thing,” his spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferré told the Herald, and we want to believe that he does. The governor is genuinely enraged at Atria Willow Wood, a Fort Lauderdale ALF and memory-care center where now a total of six residents have died after contracting the infection.

In several press conferences, DeSantis has gone off on Willow Wood like a bottle rocket, pronouncing the facility guilty of noncompliance with state guidelines; negligence; and, possibly, criminal culpability that “cost those residents their lives.”

He should also be concerned that, as the Miami Herald reported on Thursday, an employee of another Broward County facility, the Lincoln Manor ALF in Hollywood, has tested positive for COVID-19. Two residents were removed after showing symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. The ALF’s owner said those two tested negative.

Owner Larry Sherberg is one of the most powerful leaders in Florida’s ALF industry, relentlessly pushing for looser regulations. With only a few exceptions, state leaders have given the deep-pocketed industry kid-glove treatment for more than a decade. We hope DeSantis is not more interested in protecting the tainted homes and their influential owners.

Plus, having blasted Atria, DeSantis, an attorney by trade, leaves his administration’s lawyers zero room to assert, as they have, that there are legal or moral grounds to withhold the names of homes with positive test results “to protect the privacy of residents” or “medical confidentiality.”

In a time of crisis, in a sea of uncertainty, the smallest act of kindness can be a lifeline, and the slightest scrap of information can provide frightened people with a badly needed sense of control.

For the love of God, governor, tell us where the positive coronavirus tests are, so families can stop worrying about places where they aren’t.

This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 12:43 PM.