“They’ve had a coronavirus death at the local hospital – but they had underlying health conditions,” the Facebook thread ran, with group members piling in to offer a collective “phew”. It was hard to ignore the underlying sentiment being expressed: that those with underlying health conditions were going to die anyway, so what did it matter if Covid-19 took them now?
But here’s the thing – that death that doesn’t matter, it could be me. It could be your school pal. Your workmate. Your neighbour. We’ve all been merrily going about business as usual for years – you’d pass us in the street without noticing that we’re living with an ongoing health condition. And now we’re all being made to feel our lives don’t matter.
Where does this attitude come from? Ever since the first report of a coronavirus fatality in England, the government has been trying to calm nerves by stressing the victims’ poor health. The statement by the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, announcing the death ran to four sentences, the third of which read: “The patient, who was being treated at the Royal Berkshire hospital, was an older patient who had underlying health conditions.”
Last week Boris Johnson blithely pronounced: “I must level with you, the British public. Many more families are going to lose their loved ones before their time.” I’m 53 – how much before my time is that?
The language used by officials describing the spiralling scenarios risks dehumanising us, and makes us feel we no longer matter. To take just one example: Dr Nick Phin, deputy director of the National Infection Service at Public Health England, went on Newsnight last week and didn’t blink as he nonchalantly talked about those with “pre-existing conditions” who will have “more serious illness and unfortunately death”.
How many of us is that? NHS England’s latest report on the health of the nation acknowledged that 43% of adults – that’s nearly 20 million people – are living with at least one long-term health condition. Although not all of those would be directly in danger from Covid-19, there’s still a major section of our society who will be. You’ll know somebody, for sure.
Until Monday’s U-turn, the UK government’s policy was to manage rather than to contain the virus – which would have allowed close to a quarter of a million people to die. Allowing Covid-19 to spread throughout the population in the hope of building some “herd immunity” among the youngest, fittest and healthiest felt irresponsible at best, and callous at worst. When an esteemed epidemiologist thinks the government’s plan is satire, then we must question what’s going on. As William Hanage so succinctly put it: “We talk about vaccines generating herd immunity, so why is this different? Because this is not a vaccine. This is an actual pandemic that will make a very large number of people sick, and some of them will die.”
Although plans have now changed, Boris Johnson’s new announcement doesn’t go far enough. He needs to take a leaf out of Emmanuel Macron’s book and launch a war against the virus, rather than surrendering lives prematurely.
Rehearsing with my amateur dramatics group last week, I looked around and noted with a jolt that practically everyone there had an underlying condition, be it asthma, diabetes, living in respite from cancer, or living with an organ transplant. We are not sick people day to day. We are highly functioning individuals – contributing fully to the economy and also playing important roles in our community, as carers for children or parents. We are not ready to die.
I’ve just got off the telephone from speaking to one of my oldest friends, an NHS anaesthetist who is about to embark on specialist training to intubate coronavirus patients. “Kathryn,” she said, “You must not take any risks. We need you to get through this.” At last, someone values my life. If only my government and the rest of society could see me and my “underlying health issues” peers the same way. We matter. Everyone should matter.
• Kathryn Hearn is a Guardian deputy production editor
