Published: 26 March 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
I BECAME OLD SOMEWHERE around March 1, though it might have been earlier.
I regret that I did not record the date because that is one of the benefits offered us by the virus, to know in a very consequential way, when exactly old age is upon us, upon people like me.
Perhaps somewhere in our collective unconscious, my generation, lucky enough to be born in the aftermath of the Second World War with all its horrors, and having lived a life of unprecedented prosperity and health - in the developed world at least - perhaps we nevertheless always knew that 70 was not the new 60, let alone the new 50.
Perhaps in our collective unconscious we always feared that there would be a reckoning for the way we lived, with those graphs of life expectancy always heading upwards as if given time and luck, we might never die.
I turned 73 in February. While the virus was alive and spreading by then from China to the rest of the world, I think I considered myself to be not yet old. I cannot be sure of this because I can’t now remember exactly what I felt back then because back then was before the virus had colonised my consciousness.
I do remember the birthday dinner with my wife and my children and their partners at our favourite Chinese restaurant but I cannot remember whether we talked about my age. I think not. Back then, if I ever suggested that perhaps I was approaching old age - and that suggestion would be made lightly, jokingly because I now think I did not believe it, not deep in my bones anyway - my children would insist I was still young, barely out of middle age.
That birthday dinner feels like long ago. There are many people I am sure who have that experience, of before the virus being long ago, a fading memory of a vanished time.
What I feel most deeply, what I think about relentlessly, is what it means to be old, to be made old by the virus that at the moment is deathly dangerous for people my age
For my generation, or rather for me in particular, for I should not suggest I am the voice for anyone but myself, what I feel most deeply, what I think about relentlessly, is what it means to be old, to be made old by the virus that at the moment at least is dangerous, deathly dangerous for people my age and even more life-extinguishing for people older than me.
I am old. The virus has made that clear. All the age-defying notions I once had have turned to dust. I am old. And there are consequences to my old age that were unimaginable a few weeks ago.
The personal consequences for people old like me are clear and I do not intend to rehearse here those fears that a sudden acceptance of old age always brings into sharp focus and especially, of course, in the time of the virus.
Fears about dying, I mean to say. Dying from a virus that for whatever reason, is much more likely to kill old people like me than younger people, especially children. I am not without fear of dying, I am not. But in the time of the virus, I have greater fears.
What I fear most is that the virus will change and that it might attack younger and younger people, threatening them in the way that it is threatening me at the moment.
I search for research about whether the virus turns on the young once it has finished with the old and what I find is that there is no definitive research about this one way or the other. That’s why I find the so-called plans that involve more or less letting the virus spread among the young while somehow sheltering the old and vulnerable almost obscene.
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That appears to be what Donald Trump is now contemplating in America. Trump, who is old and no doubt isolated, contemplating a ‘let it rip’ policy when no-one knows whether the virus might soon attack the young in a more virulent and extreme fashion.
I am old. I listen to our prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, pleading with and lecturing young people about how they are putting the lives of old people at risk by refusing to drastically change their lives in the ways that have been mandated by Morrison and Murphy and other not-so-young people.
And I think, of course, that some young people would not even listen to them. Middle-aged and older politicians remind them too much of their parents, one minute comforting and the next threatening dire consequences for their children’s misbehaviour.
But I wonder whether there’s more to the way so many young people are flouting the rules, with seemingly no concern for the old lives they may be endangering. The people in my generation, the middle class part of my generation in particular, pampered and affluent and busy, have been prone to stick our parents in homes often because we just did not have the headspace to do anything else.
I wonder whether, as a consequence, we have made it difficult for some young people to care about old people.
Middle-aged and older politicians remind young people too much of their parents, one minute comforting and the next threatening dire consequences for their children’s misbehaviour.
On my walks through the streets of my suburb in Melbourne, alone or with my wife, keeping a safe distance from other people out walking, I walked past cafes and pubs(before everything was closed) and I looked at the people crowded inside or sitting at tables outside. I looked hard at them, not in anger, not at all - but in the main, they did not look at me.
I felt, as I imagine the homeless must feel, invisible. Perhaps it is because of shame at what they were doing, flouting the restrictions, that they did not look at me, but probably not. More likely, I was just not there for them.
Perhaps, I thought as I searched for signs of something in their faces - signs of what I do not know - many of them have no old people in their lives. Perhaps their grandparents are in nursing homes and are not part of their lives.
I wondered how these young people, sitting in the pubs and cafes, would circumvent the new restrictions. Would they party at home with their friends? Would they party at the beach? In the parks? Clearly, they were not listening to Scott Morrison or Brendan Murphy.
Now I fear that for many young people, old people are an abstraction rather than made of flesh and blood. How can we transform abstractions into living human beings?
If the politicians and the peak health bureaucrats and even the world-class specialists in infectious diseases that we have in Australia can’t make the young listen, get them to change their behaviour, we surely must find new ways of reaching out to them.
I fear that for many young people, old people are an abstraction rather than made of flesh and blood. How can we transform abstractions into living human beings?
How do we get them to listen, not just for the sake of people like me, but for their own sake because young people are dying from the virus and no-one knows whether the numbers of young people seriously stricken by the virus might not at any time increase.
Who might they listen to? Perhaps they would listen to other young people, to footballers and other sportsmen and women and to musicians and actors and celebrities of their generation. They are out there, these footballers and musicians and actors and celebrities.
You can find them on social media. Governments should reach out to them. Build a campaign that would flood the media with these voices and the images of these young people who have changed their lives to save the lives of others. It needs to be done now. There is no time for market research to establish whether it would be effective.
In the end, I embrace being old, made so by the virus. I am thankful that it is much more likely to cause me to be seriously ill than my children or my grandchild.
We should pray that this does not change. But prayer is not enough. Things must be tried that might not succeed - but the trying matters. I am old but I can’t sit quietly and wait to see whether or not the virus will find me and those I love.
Photo: Alexandros Avramidis (Reuters)
