Can we not throw up our hands and admit defeat, that a large number will die and there's not a thing the government can do about it, given that the economy is also on the verge of collapse and when that happens all our lives will be severely affected.
The Swedish government have decided to go for 'herd immunity', something we were also pursuing as government policy and I initially was very critical of that policy because it seemed to me to be a very callous that more people would die perhaps needlessly.
But as the enormity of the situation unfurls and it seems that what ever we do, other than continuing to isolate people in their own home for as long as the virus is around, then we have to face the fact that the economy comes first and people will have to be discarded hoping that sufficient numbers survive for it not to be viewed a crime.
It's not much different from the policy of battlefield attrition in the First World War when generals on both sides, in full knowledge of the odds threw men over the top to run against withering machine gun fire in the hope that enough men would survive and a foothold in enemy territory was secured. The daily carnage was an acceptable fact of life in 1915 and perhaps we have to become too squeamish in accounting for death now
Perhaps immunity, and vaccines are our only long term weapons if we are to reengage in economic livelihood. Perhaps swathes of vulnerable people, the aged and the physically weak will have to be sacrificed, just as young men are sacrificed in war. It's a decision we made when we thought we were fighting for our lives and our national identity, why not now. If there is a thinning out of the frail and the weak so be it, otherwise those who do not succumb to the virus will succumb to a broken economy and the turmoil it will bring.
It's a question of choices. Perhaps if a frail old person contracts the virus, instead of prolonging a dreadful death drowning in their own fluids we should practice euthanasia,
mercy killing (I'm sure we already do) to remove the terror of dying in such a terrible way.
Life after all has greater resonance for the young and the medical and social construct we have built up, that there is no cut off point in life's journey, that we can keep people alive irrespective of the quality of that life, when in animals we would say that induced dying is more humane.
It's the manner of the dying which is so worrying and this surely is in the medics hands.
Evolution tells us that any society or group, stripped of its weakest, prospers. A pride of lions throw out the ageing Patriarch for younger more virile males, ensuring that the pride prospers. In our civilising, moralistic philosophy we assume, all life is equal when clearly it is not. We spend enormous effort in researching ways to extend life, a life a few years ago which would have been acknowledged as a reasonable life span but now we battle to extend and extend. Perhaps this virus will force us to reassess our values and for us to be we less aghast when a person dies or chooses to end their life when their life has become simply awful.
Perhaps we have taken our eye off making death a part of life, of celebrating death and making the progression as easy as it can be.
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