"Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives."
This is from the abstract, but as far as I could find, this is never mentioned in the actual text of the paper? Certainly there's no reference to "oxygen", "morphine", or "administer" on the linked web page. So I guessed this had something to do with "end-of-life care", which is discussed in Supplement 6. But I could not find any explicit reference to morphine or oxygen there or in the sources of the supplement, either.
Maybe it's in (Habib, 2020), but the link is broken.
> Yngve Gustafsson, professor of geriatric medicine at Umea University, noted that the proportion of older people in respiratory care nationally was lower than at the same time a year ago, despite people over 70 being the worst affected by covid-19. He expressed concern about the increasing practice of doctors recommending by telephone a “palliative cocktail” for sick older people in care homes.
> “Older people are routinely being given morphine and midazolam, which are respiratory-inhibiting,” he told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper [5], “It’s active euthanasia, to say the least.”
Euthanasia requires the explicit desire of being killed, clearly expressed by the patient, normally with the family knowledge and after legal consultation that proves that there is excruciating pain are there is not a better alternative for treatment.
And this is killing a helpless person unable to defend his life or will, and blocking their relatives to help him/her in this task. And it was not exclusive from Sweden, probably.
"A 17 March directive to Stockholm area hospitals stated patients older than 80 or with a body mass index above 40 should not be admitted to intensive care, because they were less likely to recover. Most nursing homes were not equipped to administer oxygen, so many residents instead received morphine to alleviate their suffering."
This is from the abstract, but as far as I could find, this is never mentioned in the actual text of the paper? Certainly there's no reference to "oxygen", "morphine", or "administer" on the linked web page. So I guessed this had something to do with "end-of-life care", which is discussed in Supplement 6. But I could not find any explicit reference to morphine or oxygen there or in the sources of the supplement, either.
Maybe it's in (Habib, 2020), but the link is broken.