The true test of any society is how it treats its elderly and most vulnerable in times of crisis

The coronavirus crisis is telling us a lot about ourselves. Sociological doctorates on the crisis will fill the shelves of academia for a century to come. The behaviour of the herd, the behaviour of families, the actions of individuals, the role of the media and the responses of states will be parsed and analysed.

Photographs of people pushing shopping trolleys laden with toilet paper will be used to illustrate the days of COVID-19.

Those with responsibility for public health and well-being have a difficult balancing act to accomplish as they seek to alert the public to the dangers of the spread of the virus while looking to keep people calm.

In this regard they have been eager to reassure us that most of the population will not be affected. It appears a certain section will catch the virus, another percentage will become ill and recover, while anything from 1pc to 3pc of those who contract it will die as a result of it.

In the rush to reassure the majority, the fragile and vulnerable minority — made up of older people and people with underlying conditions — have been treated almost like sacrificial lambs that will be swept up by the Angel of Death while the rest remain relatively unscathed.

Those under 60 and in good health have little to fear, those over 60 would want to be careful, but those over 80 are regarded as vulnerable along with those of any age with certain underlying conditions.

Sensitivity

I’m sure that when it comes to it the health services will do their best to protect the most vulnerable cohort, but a bit more sensitivity towards them would not go astray in these heady days when the pace of events is driving the narrative.

My recent brush with serious illness was mercifully brief but it did give me an insight into vulnerability and afforded me a glimpse at that cloud of unknowing we call mortality.

I can only imagine the profound fear of those living constantly with conditions that render them exposed to the extreme effects of COVID-19. The fear of those of advanced years whose physical capacity to fight it may not be what it once was is very real.

In the coverage of the crisis to date there is little comfort on the airwaves, online or on the pages of newspapers for these people. They are like collateral damage, unfortunate but inevitable.

In terms of proportionality, far more airtime, column inches and online chatter have been devoted to the impact of the virus on the stock market, the airline industry, tourism and sport.

The rush to assure the broader sweep of the populace that they ‘will be grand’ means the quality of life of older people and people who have endured a lifetime of suffering is being even more impoverished.

Friends tell me that their elderly relatives are at their wits’ end, with many phoning their solicitors to make sure their affairs are in order.

Isn’t it interesting that despite all the lip service we pay to protecting the most vulnerable in society, no sooner is the whole of society threatened than the most defenceless are swept to the sidelines in the headlong panic towards herd survival.

These past few weeks have been a time of great insight into how far we have come in the fields of medical and bio-medical science, and how information technology and artificial intelligence are putting modern human beings at a huge advantage when facing the most complex of natural threats.

However, these days have also left us with questions about how civilised we really are.

Last Saturday I listened to the BBC’s Orla Guerin talking on RTE radio about the immigrant crisis on the Turkish border.

She described how she witnessed an Afghan family walking toward the border with Greece carrying an extremely weak, elderly relative on a metal chair.

When this became too awkward, they lay him on a blanket and carried on, but when this became too much one of the younger men carried him on his back.

I remember a story from the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s. A man who joined those fleeing the conflict crossed the mountains into Albania pushing a wheelbarrow of blankets. When he arrived at a refugee camp, he unwrapped the blankets to reveal his elderly mother.

Surely this is what civilisation means.

Friends tell me that their elderly relatives are at their wits’ endwith many phoning their solicitors to make sure their affairs are in order