Why I’m going back to the office, even though I’m 68 and ‘vulnerable’
Millions of workers with underlying health conditions face an agonising dilemma. Here, a Channel 4 boss explains...
AGED 68, I am, like millions of people in their 60s, still working. And, also like millions in this age group, I have an underlying health condition — an autoimmune disease. So, as the nation gears up to return to work, how worried should people like me be?
And if we are worried, what are our options? The first point is that many older people have to work. The official state pension age has been rising for several years and is currently 66 but is expected to rise to 67 in 2021 and 68 by 2028.
I am lucky enough, in my role as editor-at-large at Channel 4, to be able to work from home. I have not missed the hideous commute and dressing up for the office. The Government position has been that if you could work from home, then you should. But as the country opens up, more people are expected to be making a return to their offices.
In many ways we older workers will be looking forward to seeing colleagues and work friends just as much as younger people are. I also feel concern for the small businesses near my office.
I went to collect a dress I’d left at the dry cleaners next to my office building before the pandemic and was greeted like a celebrity. When I dropped into a nearby coffee bar, I was sad to see it completely empty.
People of my age are undoubtedly at higher risk than younger groups. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says anyone aged 60 or over is at higher risk if they contract Covid-19, and still advises they should be visited only by healthy people and ‘avoid crowded spaces’.
THE WHO says the advice is relevant everywhere.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said anyone 65 and older was at ‘high risk of severe illness’ should they contract Covid-19, and France and Switzerland warned anyone aged 65 and over they were at risk.
So what might be the consequences if I did contract Covid-19 through returning to work? Early in the pandemic, I noted that in China, 3.6 per cent of people aged 60 to 69 who contracted Covid-19 died and in Italy, 3.5 per cent.
Central Statistics Office figures show the risk increases with age here, too. From March 11 to May 15, those aged 65 and over accounted for almost 92 per cent of all deaths from Covid-19. .
But how significant is it to be at ‘higher risk’? The R number currently stands at 1.6 and while there is cause for concern, most people are now wearing masks and following the social distancing rules.
We also have to face the fact that older people die more anyway. Professor Sarah Harper, a gerontologist at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, says it seems Covid-19 increases the risk of premature death only marginally among people in their 60s.
The risk of dying appears to be following the overall mortality risk by age, she explains. ‘One’s chance of dying from Covid-19 is still very small, even at over 70. In fact, the chance of dying from an underlying health condition is still in most cases greater than the chance of dying from Covid-19.’
Professor David Spiegelhalter, of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in Cambridge, concurred: ‘The risk is still roughly equivalent to the risk of dying this year from something else, which on average for 65 to 69year-olds is around 1.5 per cent for men and 1 per cent for women.’
Professor Spiegelhalter points out that age is the dominant factor when looking at the risk of death from Covid-19 but ninetenths of people who died had pre-existing medical conditions.
And this is what worries older workers; many people in their 60s have underlying medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, which raise their level of risk of severe infection or death from Covid-19.
The numbers are significant — the charity Diabetes Irelandestimates around 13.8 per cent of people over the age of 60 have diabetes.
Over half of adults over the age of 45 in Ireland have high blood pressure. And many of teh over 60s l have had cancer, potentially lowering immunity.
My auto-immune condition is two related diseases — polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) and giant cell arteritis (GCA), both affecting people in their late 50s onwards. PMR causes severe inflammation in the shoulder and hip joints.
GCA, left untreated, can cause such serious inflammation in the arteries in the head that it may result in partial or total irreversible sight loss. And many people with PMR and GCA take drugs that affect immunity.
AT the start of lockdown, I was on the immunosuppressant drug tocilizumab for a temporary relapse in my GCA, which lowered my white blood cell count and I was warned it made me vulnerable.
Around half the people with my condition are likely to have other health conditions, too, and this issue of people with multiple health conditions going back to work is worrying charities.
Helen Kirrane of a leading diabetes charity says: ‘Workers at potential risk who can work from home should have the right to do so and furlough should be adapted and extended for others.’
Liz Egan, of Macmillan Cancer Support, says: ‘Some people have to choose between protecting their health and protecting their jobs. Our phone helpline is receiving an increasing number of calls. For now, people are being advised to seek help from their doctors, although there is no guarantee they will be deemed unfit to return to the workplace.
But many employers are letting people work at home if they may be at risk (and indeed, under the law, employers have to make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, which includes anyone who’s had cancer).
I am no longer on tocilizumab so, looking at the statistics, I will go back to my office when asked, but I won’t go on public transport: I will walk or drive.
But if I were still on the drug which lowered my immunity, I would be very nervous about going back at all. I can certainly understand why older people with several significant conditions would be worried.
Of course, if there is a second wave, we will all have to re-think.