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DAY 33: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 144,047 WORLDWIDE

Someone called anonymously to report a body being stored in a shed.

That was how the story began. The nursing home facilities were taking a hard hit with the virus, and bodies were starting to pile up, literally.

When the police arrived no body was found in the shed, but seventeen bodies had been piled up in the nursing home, the workers unable to keep up with the rate of death. The grim reaper had been working overtime.

The home was located in Andover, New Jersey and could house 700 patients. These facilities were the hardest hit, the virus ripping through them like a death hurricane. Sixty-eight people including some nurses had died but there wasn’t enough time or physical tests to test everyone for the virus.

This was one of the current problems. Because of the lack of testing, the real death count could be vastly higher than what was being reported by the authorities. And nursing homes in some states were just left out of the total body counts. They weren’t regulated, and some were underfunded to begin with. The national government was just ignoring them. Just letting them rot.

They were old anyway, right? No use to society? Once a person served no function, and could not serve The State, they should be liquidated?

While the rich hid in their summer homes with their elderly relatives, the poor were at the mercy of whatever facility was housing grandma. And in the case of the Andover facility, every resident was now at risk, as was every care worker. The police called FEMA for assistance- could the reserve military help out? Could they send more workers and more PPE?

Nothing.

The Orange Leader made it clear that “it was up to the states” to handle their own situations.

What did he care or understand about the plight of the poor? His family was rich. She knew that because he talked about how rich he was, and how being president had made him less rich (a lie). He liked to talk about money. He had a golden toilet in his New York Penthouse.

She wondered what the poor who voted for him, who were in love with him, thought about their great leader now, as grandpa lay gasping for his last breaths, then continued to lay, rotting, or in a shed, or in a closet in his elderly care facility.

She wondered.

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