NEW YORK (AP) – Who will take your pet when you die?

The question often doesn’t have an easy answer, especially for ill or older people headed to residential nursing care or assisted living. During the pandemic, specialised rescue, advocacy and adoption services run by volunteers are trying to fill the void, one pet at a time.

Leaders in the small movement said the past couple of years have opened the eyes of many.

“The thing about COVID is a lot of people are thinking, I can’t be guaranteed to be around forever. A lot more people are trying to make plans in advance, which is the best thing to do because unfortunately, a lot of people wait until they’re in hospice or there’s a desperate situation,” said founder and director of 2nd Chance 4 Pets in suburban Sacramento, California, Amy Shever.

The number of pets surrendered to shelters due to caretaker health or death is up from 7.3 per cent in 2009 to 10.2 per cent during the pandemic, according to the Best Friends Network of thousands of public and private shelters, rescue groups and other animal welfare organisations in all 50 states.

The pets of seniors are often seniors themselves, languishing in shelters or the first to be euthanised after they’re declared unadoptable, Shever said. They’re routinely given up by relatives who can’t take in a dog or cat. The life spans of other pets, such as parrots, are far longer, which sometimes scares off loved ones.

Shever’s focus is educating veterinarians and shelters on how they can get involved. Her organisation also tries to help pet owners in need of direction. She urges owners to identify a committed caregiver, provide written instructions for a pet’s routine and put a financial plan in place. Her group has distributed thousands of emergency-card door hangers, for instance, to pet food banks and animal welfare organisations so owners can make their wishes known.

Another organisation, Pet Peace of Mind, works directly with about 250 hospices around the country to provide and train volunteers who care for pets of the seriously and terminally ill, said Dianne McGill, the president and founder in Salem, Oregon. Most of the hospices are providing home services, where pets are often giving comfort and support.

“These specialty volunteers bring pet care knowledge with them so they can do whatever is needed to help,” she said. “So they’re walking, feeding, playing, cleaning up or helping to arrange a plan for rehoming.”

While providing pet care or adoption services often isn’t top of mind for social workers or nurses, it’s a huge emotional driving force for patients and loved ones living far away, McGill said.

“Care workers hear about the issues from family members,” she said. “They say, my mom is really, really upset about what’s going to happen to her pet. I live out of state. I can’t help her. How do we get some pet care in place while she’s navigating her end-of-life journey or when she passes?”

“I’ve got a million stories about patients who literally hung on until they heard that their pet had received a new home,” McGill said.

Enter angels-on-earth like 79-year-old Kathy Reister.

She adopted a 12-year-old Chihuahua named Jackson with the help of Tyson’s Place Animal Rescue in Holland, Michigan. The nonprofit helps people with terminal illnesses find new homes for their pets. Reister, who has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, had recently lost her own dog and was having a hard time at home alone when she took in Jackson last August.

“I’ve never been without a dog since about 1965,” said the widow. “His previous owner had passed away.”

Soon after, Jackson was also diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and Tyson’s Place stepped in with a grant to help Reister cover his medical bills. She promised to return him to the agency for rehoming should her health take a turn for the worse.

“Having him has really helped me want to continue to live and keep fighting,” said Reister, of Grandville, Michigan. “I started walking one block down and one block back home with him. Now we walk at least 20, 25 minutes a day. He needs to walk and I need to walk. He’s made such a big difference in my life.”

Caitlin Koska, 31, and Michael White, 34, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, included 14-year-old Luna in their May 1 wedding after Koska adopted her through Tyson’s Place around Thanksgiving 2020. Luna, also a Chihuahua, was their ring bearer.

“Her owner had gone into a nursing home and could no longer take care of her,” Koska said. “She has a lot of dental issues, cataracts and very poor hearing. She’s just the sweetest dog. Everybody who knows her loves her.”

Jill Bannink-Albrecht founded Tyson’s Place about six years ago. It services the entire state of Michigan, working directly with a pet owner before rehoming becomes an urgent matter, or with family members after a death, using a small network of foster homes.

For Koska, Tyson’s Place took care of extensive dental work for Luna before she was adopted.

“I used to work for a high-kill animal shelter, and I knew what happened to the old dogs when they came in.

“I remember one dog who animal control literally picked up from the side of his dead owner’s body, and he didn’t even have an opportunity to be adopted. He was put to sleep because we didn’t have space,” Bannink-Albrecht said.

Now, hospices and social workers refer patients to Tyson’s Place. Bannink-Albrecht is struggling to expand her foster reach.

I just can’t meet the demand for this kind of service, especially when it comes to cats,” she said. “In the last two months, I’ve turned away 40 cats that meet our mission just because we don’t have a place to put them.”

Bannink-Albrecht knows of just a few other rescues like hers. One, in Canada, also needs help.

AP – An unfounded theory taking root online suggests millions of people have been “hypnotised” into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19, including steps to combat it such as testing and vaccination.

In widely shared social media posts this week, efforts to combat the disease have been dismissed with just three words: “mass formation psychosis.”

“I’m not a scientist but I’m pretty sure healthy people spending hours in line to get a virus test is mass formation psychosis in action,” read one tweet that was liked more than 22,000 times.

The term gained attention after it was floated by Dr Robert Malone on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ December 31 podcast.

Malone is a scientist who once researched mRNA technology but is now a vocal skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccines that use it.

But psychology experts said the concept described by Malone is not supported by evidence, and is similar to theories that have long been discredited. Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: The concept of “mass formation psychosis” explains why millions of people believe in a mainstream COVID-19 “narrative” and trust the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

THE FACTS: Malone highlighted the unfounded theory on a podcast hosted by comedian and commentator Joe Rogan. During the episode, Malone cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccine safety and claimed the mass psychosis has resulted in a “third of the population basically being hypnotised” into believing what the top infectious disease expert in the United States (US) Dr Anthony Fauci and mainstream news outlets say.

“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotised and can be led anywhere,” Malone said. He claimed such people will not allow the “narrative” to be questioned.

Crediting a professor in Belgium, Malone also said in a December blog post that this “mass hypnosis” explains millions of people becoming captivated by the “dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines.”

Psychology experts say there is no support for the “psychosis” theory described by Malone.

“To my knowledge, there’s no evidence whatsoever for this concept,” said assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University Jay Van Bavel ,who recently co-authored a book on group identities.

Van Bavel said he had never encountered the phrase “mass formation psychosis” in his years of research, nor could he find it in any peer-reviewed literature.

“The concept has no academic credibility,” social psychology professor at the University of St Andrews in the UK Stephen Reicher wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The term also does not appear in the American Psychological Association’s Dictionary of Psychology.