Protecting Older Adults During the Covid-19 Pandemic - Essay Sample

Introduction

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, most of the people have been quarantined and banned from accessing public places, and this has led to the emergence of other difficulties. People cannot shop as they use to do before for fear of contracting the contagious disease. Unfortunately, older adults are prone to acquire the disease; thus, there is a need to protect them at all costs. It may mean isolating them in their houses and denying them access to public interventions where they can mingle with other people. For this reason, Nik Liu has come up with an app to help the old get access to foodstuff without necessarily going to the market. China being the most affected nation, thinks that it is wise to train the older people about the way they should use their smartphones to access the products they want.

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At first, I thought it was a good idea to train these older people on how to use the app and get them order food and get it delivered. Besides, who will dispute that great idea, the only solution to the spread of Covid-19 so far? The idea is great, and if implemented well, it can greatly reduce the impact of the pandemic. However, the implementation of the idea, as portrayed in the interview, posse more challenges than the solution to the disease. Kim primarily concentrates on how he can train the elderly to use the app, how he can help them understand the ordering and paying process without considering the spread of the disease like keeping the social distance.

According to Harvey (2020), students should be given a chance to train the elderly on how to combat the disease. However, Kim's intervention on how to get into contact with the elderly while training them on how to use the smartphone app is not recommended. The social distance is not observed, and this can lead to more challenges as he may facilitate the spread of disease in case he gets in contact with one of his clients who is affected. The face to face interview with the elderly may seem difficult during these trying moments, and the success of the training may not be true. The story is adapted from another article (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/teens-helping-seniors-coronavirus?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0) in a different setting, and it does not necessarily applicable to the situation in China in which the pandemic is more serious than any other country. For this reason, I think the author is not genuine about the intervention of combating the pandemic though his reasons for helping the elderly access foodstuff may seem reasonable.

Furthermore, the interviewee's response to the matter is not comprehensive as the idea is adapted from other sources, and he seems to lack more details concerning the usage of the smartphone apps. He is not clear about how he managed to train the elderly without getting in contact with them, how long the training took, and more details on the challenges he faced. Naturally, the elderly are prone to fear of getting the disease than losing the money through the untrusted application, as portrayed by Storci et al. (2020). Also, the interviewee is not clear about the measures they took to avoid being in contact with the elderly during the training on how to use the smartphone for ordering foodstuff from the stores. Nik cannot use online training to people who do not even know how to use the smartphone. How will they go online if they cannot even use the smartphone while carrying out the basic tasks? So the issue of carrying online training does not apply in this case, thus making the findings null and void. I think that there is more involved than what we are told in the article and the interview.

References

Harvey, A. (2020). COVID-19: Medical students and FY1 doctors to be given early registration to help combat COVID-19. BMJ, m1268. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1268

Shirvell, B. (2020, April 1). These teens are helping self-isolating seniors stay connected. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/teens-helping-seniors-coronavirus?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0

Storci, G., Bonifazi, F., Garagnani, P., Olivieri, F., & Bonafe, M. (2020). <strong>How studies on inflamm-aging may help to understand and combat COVID-19 pandemic.</strong>. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202004.0158.v1