published a story about how the fear of catching the disease has caused many patients to have gone weeks without a shower or having their teeth brushed, while residents with dementia have suffered from lack of human contact. This often leads to depression, loss of weight, mobility and speech. Sharon Wallace, a senior whose multiple sclerosis caused her to go into a nursing home, told the NYT, “I feel like my health is going downhill.” This has made Aging In Place a more popular option as Assisted Living Facilities become hotbeds for disease. “Nursing homes are really little hospitals, yet they’re not staffed like it. If you asked an I.C.U. nurse to take care of 15 people, she’d laugh at you, but that’s essentially what we have,” Chris Laxton, the executive director of AMDA, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine said.
