The current health emergency has had many warnings about how dangerous the newly rampant virus is for older people. It seems to be sparing the young and landing on the old, especially those with serious health problems. Yet the news is full of older folk who are basically ignoring the warnings and planning to head off on trips and attend events as planned (if those things are even being held.) Here is the question. Do seniors feel they can ignore the health risks because they have fewer years left on this planet? Are we seniors focused on getting in that last cruise, knowing our time is short, ignoring those who have a much longer run ahead of them?
675,000 Americans were killed in the flue pandemic of 1918, part of the estimated one third of the entire population killed world-wide. Yet we are all probably more aware of the bubonic plague than we are of this national disaster in our recent past. A statement was made by a noted commentator that we have erased this terrible event in our historical memory because we did not act well as citizens and neighbors. People were later ashamed of their lack of care for those afflicted, and just wanted to forget the whole thing.
Are we beginning the same cycle here? Pictures of people loading up carts with all the hand sanitizers they can get their hands on, or fighting in the aisles over toilet paper are not things we are going to want to remember. For us in the older age bracket, it seems that we should be at the head of the compassion line. Perhaps the best we can do is follow the rules and think of our neighbors, and that in itself is a form of being helpful.
But the model of how we handled ourselves during World War II is more to the point. We gladly remember that phase of our national history because we worked together as a nation to face a threat from outside. Business tycoons came quietly down to Washington to serve the government for salaries of a dollar a year. One of the models for Rosie the Riveter, who came from a family of privilege, chose to work the night shift driving rivets into the metal bodies of Corsair fighter planes at a plant in Connecticut. Families rationed meat, grew their own vegetables, saved tin, bought war bonds, and sent their children to the front lines.
There was a recent interview on TV with a South Korean gentleman who was directing traffic at a drive-through virus testing spot. He was a bus driver in his pre-virus life, but was volunteering in what South Korea has announced is its number one priority, overcoming the coronavirus. He commented through his mask, “As citizens we are here for the safety of our fellow citizens of Goyang City.” An admirable idea to follow for all of us, whatever our age.