Opinion: Rebecca McQuillan: Keeping over-70s at home isn't victimisation. It’s protection

It’s a striking choice of word, victimisation. It suggests that older people could feel unjustly treated if governments went down this path, perhaps because they would feel they were being kept under house arrest so that younger people could get on with their lives.

Now, I’m not sure how true this is. The over-70s I know are strictly adhering to social distancing and apprehensive about the idea of relaxing the precautions.

But even if some are fed up with it, it takes a peculiar sort of logic to regard ongoing shielding for the over-70s as some sort of ill-treatment when the main objective would be to protect their lives.

The older people’s advocate Dame Esther Rantzen, for one, seems to feel this view misses the point somewhat. She thinks lockdown measures for the over-70s should continue if the scientific advice ministers get points that way: “I think it’s a measure of the value they place on us,” the 79-year-old is reported as saying. “I would object far more if there was an official view that people over 70 didn’t matter and therefore they can come out and catch the virus and go down like nine-pins.”

Rantzen is absolutely right. If this seems discriminatory, then imagine how it would look if restrictions were relaxed across the board and cases among the over-70s surged. Governments would rightly be accused of seeing older people as expendable.

Sure, you can understand Age UK’s anxieties on behalf of frustrated over 70s who are fit and healthy, people living alone without family and friends, and perhaps above all, those with dementia.

But “victimising” older people? No. No government in the UK is yet advocating an extension of lockdown specifically for the over-70s, but they might well do it and to suggest the move would be unfair – or, as Dr Donald Macaskill of Scottish Care puts it, “a blatant form of discrimination” – seems to ignore two crucial factors: one, that there’s good reason to think the measure would save lives in that age group; and two, that younger people desperately need to get back to work, not just for their own good, but for the good of the economy and public finances we all depend upon.

Saying that is not to sneer at the paid and unpaid work older people do, but to acknowledge that having so many working-age people stuck at home has sent the economy into freefall.

Not all age-related decisions are discriminatory.

Ms Abrahams argues that an enforced lockdown of people beyond a certain age would make people feel victimised unless there were “really clear clinical evidence” showing that getting older makes you more likely to get seriously ill with Covid-19, regardless of the state of your health.

But we have the evidence. It is not the sort of sophisticated evidence that takes years to collate – coronavirus only emerged a few months ago – but it’s certainly strong enough to cause deep concern.

And that evidence, from China and Italy, indicates that age itself is a risk factor for dying of Covid-19, quite separately from a patient’s pre-existing medical conditions.

One possible explanation for this that our immune systems become less effective with age, but whatever the reason, it means that you could be a superfit 75-year-old vegan who runs marathons but you might still find yourself with a mask over your face, being wheeled into intensive care for ventilation, if you’re unlucky enough to get Covid-19.

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There is no perfect choice here, when the harms being caused by social distancing are so pronounced and the alternative – catching the virus – is potentially deadly.

Dr Macaskill has written movingly about the impact of isolation on people with dementia. He paints a picture of bewildered men and women starved of the hugs and family companionship, left wondering why their loved ones have not been visiting. For many, the lockdown has been “a maze of confusion, distress and very real emotional trauma”. This isolation is causing real harm.

Where the impact of isolation is so severe, it’s reasonable to argue that the choice should not be between total isolation and normal life. As testing is expanded, the relatives of people with dementia should be on the priority list, so that they can visit their loved ones knowing they are not carrying a silent killer. It’s not ideal, but an alternative might be to give them access to full protective clothing.

Meanwhile, the “social bubble” idea under consideration in Scotland and elsewhere, under which groups or “bubbles” of people from different households could visit each other provided they did not mingle with anyone else, is a promising idea that could help ease the pain of loneliness.

And if the over-70s are to live for longer in isolation, there should not be threats of draconian sanctions for rule-breakers. The success of the population-wide social distancing guidance to date suggests strong advice would do the trick without the need for a hard line approach.

But governments should not be easing the restrictions for this age group unless they can be absolutely sure they are not risking another spike in deaths by doing so.

The coronavirus crisis has raised legitimate questions about age discrimination. Early on, reports emerged of care home residents being asked to sign “do not resuscitate” forms simply because of their age. The assumption that frail old people in care homes can’t be expected to survive this disease is wrong – many do – but it’s possible that an unconscious bias to the effect among some medics, journalists and policy-makers may have contributed to a delay in tackling the outbreak in care homes effectively. The impact of prejudice in how older people have been treated will need to be properly examined.

But that doesn’t mean we should see prejudice where it doesn’t exist.

It’s a strange sort of victimisation that has the victim’s best interests at heart.

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