"high quality home care would really help." I am in complete agreement. Not only would high quality home care help, it is, largely, the only thing that helps.

"high quality home care would really help." I am in complete agreement. Not only would high quality home care help, it is, largely, the only thing that helps. "I would choose hospital care over home care any day of the week..." I think that's a very bad heuristic that is widespread in the US - across a broad spectrum of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. If you just have the flu a visit to the hospital is useless at best. At worst, that secondary bacterial infection you're (rightly) worried about is alive and well at the hospital. Hospitals are breeding grounds of such infections. "I think you are being too directly logical and not thinking systemically." I am indeed thinking systematically - as I have witnessed emergency rooms full of kids with colds and flu who will be given comfort and/or placebos and who are racking up healthcare costs and displacing actual emergencies. And then there's the exposure to bacterial infections ...