Corvid-19 an alternate viewpoint from Private Eye

"Prolonged intubation and intensive care is often futile, expensive and unkind". A tad amoral perhaps?

750,000 agonising deaths isn't your usual flu season.
 
Needs updating already, but gives much needed perspective to it all. What exactly is the 'natural death' that we are supposed to be entitled to?
 
br14 said:
"Prolonged intubation and intensive care is often futile, expensive and unkind". A tad amoral perhaps?
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Earlier this year we bade a sad farewell to an elderly relative. She had been suffering from reduced and failing heart, kidney and liver function for some years and had dementia (though happily not too much mental impairment) a few years ago we had had to make a decision on resuscitation in the event of her having a stroke or heart attack. Resuscitation of an elderly patient in such circumstances can be quite brutal resulting in broken ribs and often irrecoverable mental damage. After considerable soul searching we decided that in such an event she would be left to pass in peace. In this case it did not happen and she died peacefully in her sleep with my wife at her bedside. So no, it is not "a tad immoral", far from it, witholding extreme treatment from elderly people can be a kindness. We think too much that we have to cling to life but we will all die, death is immutable.

We shoot horses.
 
Muttley said:
Earlier this year we bade a sad farewell to an elderly relative
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I have some sympathy with your position and watched my father in law die a terrible death from cancer, but this is not saying goodbye to elderly relatives who are clinging onto lives.

I have five elderly relatives I doubt would survive infection, but who will probably live another 10 years of fruitful if not quite so full lives without infection. If they were to survive they would undoubtedly need "intubation". But they will not receive that help.

By the time this virus reaches it's full extent, Doctors will be making life and death decisions every hour deciding who will get the precious ventilator beds necessary to support collapsed lung function. Older people will be left to die - no need to worry about "intubation".

Some time in the future, we can reflect on how perhaps for some it was the best outcome. But not now.
 
Good post Muttley. I have some friends in their 80s who are healthy. They seem to be quite pragmatic. They have said that if they get it, and die, then so be it.

I'm not saying that accounts for all 80 year olds, and personally I'm really concerned for my elderly friends... but they seem to feel that if Coronavirus doesn't get them, something else will.

(I seem to be more worried about them than they are about themselves)!!
 
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