For those of you who have read the short story with the above title by Kurt Vonnegut the title will not surprise you. For those who have not yet read it, it is a short story about organised state-run euthanasia of all persons over 65 years of age.
In today’s state of COVID-19 restrictions and economic upheaval there are strategies that are beginning to be discussed in the US, to begin with, under the anti-empathy presidency of ultras headed by Donald Trump, and now starting to be mouthed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his scientific advisers, that frighten me to death.
Because of the effects on the economy caused by the lockdowns and social isolation, impatience and fear for loss of assets is growing. It will take many more months before we get a vaccine or before enough anti-bodies are stored in persons who self-cure to allow businesses, public transport, government offices, schools and other public gatherings to return to normality.
Scientists with ultra-right tendencies are suggesting to isolate portions of the population who are in the higher risk zone, such as people over 65 or those with some illness or handicap, supposedly for their own safety, and to let the younger, stronger, preferably whiter, section of the population to get back to work.
We are here to live and not to be put aside
What will this mean if it is followed literally, and Trump has already suggested that he intends to do this by Easter this year, is that those of us who have built up the world economy (warts and all) since after World War II, those of us over 65, will be interned in concentration camps together with some younger, weaker members of our society. By putting us in concentration camps life as before can go on once more.
Shame on these scientists and politicians. We will never accept any discrimination nor will we, who have built the social systems and the economy, accept to be interned or exterminated, as Vonnegut, in 1968, prophecised in his short story. If you hear this argument being proposed please rebut it, fight it, mark it for what it is.
We are entitled to spend all the assets, in public or private ownership, that have been collected in banks, in homes, boats, jewellery, art collections, properties, safety deposit boxes and any other form of capital until we are all, without discrimination on age or health, protected and treated and this pandemic is behind us.
These assets are there to be spent and we are here to live and not to be put aside. The older generation is not expendable and will fight back any such ultra-right wing strategies proposed by idiots like Trump and his admirers.
The only viable strategy is to continue with lockdown of all activities except for the very essential ones, to forbid unnecessary movement and all social contacts.
Whether this lasts two or eight months is irrelevant. We have enough assets to survive and will come out of this depression with new ideas about how we want life to look like after this warning.
The Deluge in the Bible comes to mind. It is a sort of catharsis and a total shake up of how we lived in the last 40 years. Going back to the status quo ante will only bring us quickly back to this situation once more.
Let’s slow down the world. It will be a better place.
John Vassallo is former ambassador to the EU