Gosh. This is suddenly the first post by "carpathian" since 2014...six years ago.
Tell us about how you are caring for your elderly relatives during this geezer medical crisis.
Survival of the fittest
A careful observer easily noticed the change in tone in how those in power address us: they are not just trying to project calm and confidence, they also regularly utter dire predictions – the pandemic is likely to take about two years to run its course and the virus will eventually infect 60-70 percent of the global population, with millions dead.
In short, their true message is that we’ll have to curtail the basic premise of our social ethics: the care for the old and weak. In Italy, for instance, it’s already been proposed that if the virus crisis gets worse, patients over 80 or those with other heavy diseases will be simply left to die.
One should note how accepting this logic of the “survival of the fittest” violates even the basic principle of military ethics which tells us that, after the battle, one should first take care of the heavily wounded even if the chance of saving them is minimal. (However, upon a closer look, this shouldn’t surprise us: hospitals are already doing the same thing with cancer patients).
To avoid a misunderstanding, I am an utter realist here – one should plan even medicaments to enable a painless death of the terminally ill, to spare them the unnecessary suffering. But our first priority should be nonetheless not to economize but to help unconditionally, irrespective of costs, those who need help, to enable their survival.
So I respectfully disagree with Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben who sees in the ongoing crisis a sign that “our society no longer believes in anything but bare life. It is obvious that Italians are disposed to sacrifice practically everything — the normal conditions of life, social relationships, work, even friendships, affections, and religious and political convictions — to the danger of getting sick. Bare life — and the danger of losing it — is not something that unites people, but blinds and separates them.”
Things are much more ambiguous: it DOES also unite people – to maintain a corporeal distance is to show respect to others since I also may be a virus bearer. My sons avoid me now because they are afraid they will contaminate me (what is to them a passing illness can be deadly for me).