Devaluing people by their age is wrong
Maureen Eames, a pensioner from Barnsley, went viral recently with her comment to a BBC interviewer on the latest pandemic lockdown: “I’m 83 and I don’t give a sod.” She reminded me of an even older patient, who told me that “I’ve lived my life, now we should let the youngsters get on with theirs.” Mrs Eames’s spirited vox pop has been enthusiastically endorsed by advocates of the strategy of easing restrictions on the young while sheltering the elderly and vulnerable.
The most evident difficulty with this approach is that both the young and the elderly live in the same communities, often in the same houses, sometimes in the same crowded flats. Relaxing social distancing and other regulations will result in more cases of Covid-19 among young people, most of whom will have a relatively minor illness. But it will also lead to a rise in cases among older people, more hospital admissions and a rising death toll.
Though the average age of death from Covid-19 is around
80, there have been a significant number of deaths among younger people. Many people, including
some who experienced relatively mild symptoms of infection, are experiencing the persisting illness and disability of long-covid.
Mrs Eames and my patient express a commendable sympathy for the young, who are indeed more directly affected by the lockdown than by the virus.
But this outlook gives succour to those who are inclined to the view that the lives of the elderly are less worthy than those of the younger generation.
The increase in life expectancy over the age of 65 is one of the most remarkable achievements of modern civilisation: on average Covid reduces life expectancy by between 12 and 14 years. These are years in which millions of older people have come to enjoy unprecedented opportunities for travel and other activities, as well as enriching the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Though Mrs Eames’s frustration with the Government and its advisers is understandable, her counsel is not one I would encourage them to follow.
Giuliani’s tough test
It has been a bad month for the former New York governor Rudy Giuliani. As Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, he was charged with the forlorn task of fronting his claims that his Democratic opponents had stolen the presidential election. He also featured as the target of an excruciating episode in the latest Sacha Baron Cohen spoof featuring the Kazakh TV reporter Borat.
Purdue Pharma, a firm represented by Giuliani over the past decade, has just been fined $8.3 billion on charges of bribing doctors and lying to regulators over the marketing of Oxycontin. The abuse of this opiate painkiller is estimated to have caused 300,000 deaths over the past 20 years.
The conviction of Purdue – the source of the Sackler family’s philanthropy – is of largely symbolic value as earlier claims have already pushed it into bankruptcy.
Giuliani’s advocacy is credited with keeping three senior executives out of jail. Trump will be hoping he can keep up the same level of commitment in his work for him.
Corona rat race
“When leaving his surgery on the morning of 16 April, Dr Bernard Rieux felt something soft under his foot” – thus the famous opening sentence of Albert Camus’s 1947 novel The Plague describes his encounter with a dead rat, signalling the onset of the eponymous epidemic. A patient described a similar recent experience as she walked up the stairs to her flat.
Others have complained of poor sanitation and fly-tipping – resulting from reduced rubbish collections – encouraging less welcome forms of wildlife. Pest control authorities have reported record demand since the lockdown has closed shops and restaurants, forcing rodents to seek food in more domestic locations. But many people celebrated sightings of foxes, hedgehogs, badgers and deer moving into quieter city streets.
Still, it was a relief to my patient when the council ratcatcher arrived to deal with the problem.
The young and the elderly live in the same communities, sometimes in the same crowded flats