JAYNE DOWLE: ANXIOUS TIMES FOR THE ELDERLY WITH COVID- 19 APP
Maybe this flaw has been thoroughly fixed, maybe not. But I don’t particularly want my parents to suffer 14 fearful days indoors, anxious whether they truly have the virus or not.
NOW THE global pandemic has thrown up yet another moral dilemma. When I popped round to see my parents last week, my dad showed me his phone. He has been schooled to never click on links he doesn’t recognise.
What then should he and my mother do about the NHS Test and Trace app? You might think that the answer is easy – of course they should download it.
My parents turn 77 this year. They are clearly in a high- risk category, so their health and safety should surely be a priority.
Yet, given the major failings, drawbacks and omissions within the Test and Trace system, I have understandable caveats.
The first one is that not everyone is comfortable with relying on technology. Older and vulnerable people especially struggle.
The other week, Dad had a mysterious swelling on his wrist. His doctor proposed a virtual appointment and asked him to send photographs via text.
He couldn’t hold the phone steady and Mum can’t get her head around it. I took the shots in the end, but it made me think very carefully about the assumptions made about our increasing reliance on technology.
Whilst Dad is generally pretty adept with mobile devices, Mum finds the whole subject overwhelming. She doesn’t even send texts herself or use the internet.
It has been worrying enough for them this year already. They both shielded from March until August, because Dad has COPD and a serious heart condition.
I’m relieved that since they were ‘ released’ ( Dad’s word) they have been going out and about. I know so many over- 70s – and plenty younger – who are so traumatised by the fear of contracting coronavirus that they have become literally housebound.
Of course, my parents are engaging with ‘ real life’ in a limited way, and always in their visors. Both wear glasses and mum has a hearing aid; they found facemasks very difficult to wear. They avoid supermarkets and crowded places, sanitise regularly and take their temperatures religiously every morning.
We haven’t hugged them since early March when we advised them to selfisolate, even before the official lockdown was announced. My teenage children don’t visit their grandparents indoors, but may stand in the garden and chat. We’re hardly talking irresponsible, selfish risk- takers here.
If anything, their attitude towards serious illness is pragmatic. I’m finding this when I talk to other older people with a similar attitude. By the time you’ve done your three score years and 10, you’re likely to have lost many loved ones. Death, as my next- door neighbour, a very sprightly lady in her late 60s says, holds no fear. So yes, my parents have no intention, to paraphrase the words of Dylan Thomas, of “going gently into that good night”.
They cherish their freedom so dearly, and I am fearful that their positive attitude could be so easily derailed.
That’s why I find the entire Test and Trace situation, in its current format at least, presenting such a moral dilemma. What’s the point of frightening any of us into self- isolation and all its attendant anxieties if it is not necessary?
However many reassurances about ‘ fixes’ are forthcoming, I fear that erroneous messages have the potential to cause more harm than good.
Last week, for instance, it emerged that taking the ‘ wrong’ test could render a person in quarantine even if the results were negative.
It was reported that the app’s countdown timer telling a user to selfisolate couldn’t be stopped, even if you were virus- free.
The only way to halt this would be to delete the app, which is entirely counterproductive.
Maybe this flaw has been thoroughly fixed, maybe not. Who knows? But I don’t particularly want my parents to suffer 14 fearful days indoors, anxious whether they truly have the virus or not.
Of course, if they were to develop any kind of potential coronavirus symptoms, the first priority would be to get a test – any test.
The Government’s communications department also has some work to do here on making clear which tests count. I’d consider myself relatively wellinformed, but until I started researching the subject of Test and Trace in detail, I had no idea that not all tests are equal.
When we know that the app is entirely reliable and all the kinks have been ironed out, I will have no compunction whatsoever about supporting Mum and Dad to download and use it.
However, I fear that if it could be allowed to go live with such a major problem unresolved – and other issues too – it will only be a matter of time before some kind of data- breach disaster occurs.
I can’t save my parents from everything, but I would like to spare them from that.