'When am I going to be vaccinated?': Anguish, anxiety and stress among older adults who still do not have a turn

Emilia vexler

03/13/2021 3:25 PM

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 03/13/2021 3:25 PM

Santo Maratea is 72 years old and cannot "afford" to stay at home until the Ministry of Health marks 0 in daily infections due to coronavirus.

"Mentally and financially", you need to keep working in your nursery.

Plants need constant attention and he needs to give them to her.

His daughter, who also lives in Provincia, wrote it down in January.

But the turn for the vaccine does not come.

Santo belongs to

two risk groups

: age and chronic respiratory disease.

You have COPD.

The turn doesn't come and he tells

Clarín

that he can't take it anymore.

The experts in Gerontology and Psychology interviewed in this note give names to these symptoms of waiting:

anxiety, stress and anguish

. 

"It gives me a lot of anger for what they do to me," he says in reference to not having been vaccinated yet.

"I think they should have vaccinated me by now.

More than outrage, it's impotence.

Or I don't know how to describe it. You are signed up and you can't do anything but be signed up. You don't know when, nor 'more or less when' you go to vaccinate. Nor do I want to find out about all those who vaccinate before us, "he says, referring to those over 70, who continue to be the main laggards among the priority groups in the slow and" changing "vaccination plan.

Five blocks from his house lives a 48-year-old woman, asthmatic, who did receive the vaccine.

"But my brother, who is 85 years old, was never called," he adds.

To "loosen up with anguish," he does kokedamas.

That Japanese artisanal technique of growing plants.

sister to that of bonsai, it requires a lot of patience to achieve the correct roundness of the base that will contain moisture.

He says the State does not contain him.

"Anxiety is 'towards what is unknown'. It is uncertainty. That is why many older adults experience it, unless they are very informed or are dedicated to medicine. The coronavirus generates uncertainty even with several existing vaccines. It generates anguish waiting, being signed up and not having a turn, or not being able to sign up (as in the City), because they know that the proper entry of doses into the country was not foreseen, "

the gerontologist Miguel Angel Acanfora

explains to

Clarín

.

This specialist saw

the curve of the "mood" of those over 70 years

from March 2020 until now.

Always plagued in uncertainty and fear and with a peak "of hope" when they began to vaccinate in the country.

"

Now the peak is of anxiety, of anguish

, and the question: 'When are they going to vaccinate me?' But this group must be made aware so that they know that if they get vaccinated they will not have such a bad time with the virus, but that does not mean that they have to eliminate care ", adds Acanfora, who is director of the Master's degree in Clinical Gerontology at the Barceló Foundation.

A pandemic is experienced by adults over 70 who are with their partners or are close to their children, and another who are more alone in life.

"Some of these people became hermits. They are alone and they deal with friends who left for care, or who died.

Many feel this anguish of the friend who died

(by coronavirus or any disease associated with old age) because they don't have anyone to talk to about the virus, "he adds.

According to the national vaccination monitor,

624,774 doses

were applied to

people over 60 years old

until this Saturday

.

Of this number, there is no discrimination, how many are between 60 and 70 years old, how many are 70-80 and how many are over 80. According to the figures of the Strategic Vaccination Plan itself,

those over 60 years of age exceed 7 million people

.

Older adults not only show extreme slowness in terms of their immunization, but in these more than 365 days of the pandemic they also posed a challenge to their family members, because they "no longer want to stay at home."

When you are older, are you more or less aware of the coronavirus?

Many believe they are "invincible", because "they have all already experienced them in this country."

Not so clinically.

"There is a process of denial, that the virus does not exist. But, in addition, it is always difficult for the elderly to get vaccinated. If there is not a family member behind taking them ... it happens to us every year that there are 30% of older adults those who have to be convinced to get the pneumonia vaccine. There is still a better campaign on this vaccine, "the expert closes.

Those over 70 are more likely to be in front of someone who wears both than to lie on a couch.

Therefore, without psychological support, Health personnel agree that, more than boys and girls, they

are the group that suffered the most from the pandemic.

And that now suffers waiting for the vaccine.

In the City, you could see the tears of hope and some hint of boredom, among those in their 80s who, finally, lined up, too close together, to receive their doses.

But Gino Ferrari, 70, who lives in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Mataderos, says that it is not anxiety that he feels but "stress", because he believes that he will

not be vaccinated "for months

.

"

"Knowing that the vaccine exists and that it is already registered or that it will be possible to take an appointment, at first generated a kind of relief to the anguish. But then there is the stress of 'when'.

When an older person is perceived In a state of vulnerability, the possibility of contagion rises.

Because there is a general decline. These people are worried about themselves and their environment. All this led many to forced isolation. An imposed loneliness. Those who are waiting for the The vaccine can even develop a state of panic in the face of the fear of 'What if I got infected just before?' ",

Enrique Novelli, a psychonalist from the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA)

, explains to

Clarín

.

For this reason, he clarifies, "they should never have descended steps compared to other priority groups."

As director of the Ecobioethics-UNESCO chair at the University of Morón, Novelli speaks of a

curious but widespread symptom

that also emerged in this wait.

That of "the excluded third party."

"It is a fanciful thought," he says, in contrast to the fact that "they do get vaccinated and I don't."

A feeling of injustice.

"I am not referring to those who were vaccinated when they should not have, that this happened, but rather that these people feel that in themselves

they are already excluded from the rest and the vaccine is not going to get to them

."

What about the biggest?

"Those over 80 in general are the least independent and the pandemic led to an aggravated deterioration of the usual diseases of people of this age. But also to a mental deterioration:

depression

. Loss of mobility, such as going for a walk "It was not an option and it is not today, because they do not have the vaccine. These doses present a great solution to the social rehabilitation of this group. Psychic recovery", explains Enrique Rozitchner, a doctor specializing in Psychogeriatrics at APA.

"It is evident that the neglect and abuse, to which this group is often accustomed, now older adults are also more vulnerable to any situation of abuse.

Such as postponement or disorganization of vaccination systems.

Easy access to Shifts or enrollment is also a problem. Some will wait for a call to the landline. Others to the cell phone. Others will have help from family members. If there is poor organization of shifts or waiting too long for shifts, anxiety and stress in them will be transformation in which, in reality, they

are being mistreated by the vaccination plan,

"he closes.

ACE

Look also

With more doses, the Province has already vaccinated 15% of those over 70 registered and the City has not yet called them

After the controversy, Mirtha Legrand received her vaccine against the coronavirus