The metrics of the corona virus, complicated as they can be,
pretty clearly indicate that older people are at significantly greater risk
than younger people. Not surprising really and not unusual for diseases. The
mortality rates skew heavily toward the 60+ demographic. One ethical upshot of
this pandemic is how much of an economic hit should the country and the world
take to preserve, to extend the lives of seniors. As a member of that
demographic, let me just say, “Not so fast.” Seems a pretty complicated policy question
to me and prone to any number of paradoxes. For example, a couple of 60+ prominent
right-of-center public figures have—well, not quite—offered to die for their
country in the interest of re-opening the economy. They’re white and
sufficiently-resourced with access to higher-end healthcare, I suspect, so they’re
not exactly proposing to actually die, but to run the risk. Which I am, too, personally,
having no underlying health issues, but it’s not so simple. You also have to be
willing to kill, to possibly be a vector to vulnerable populations, however
unwittingly and unintentionally. Social
distancing is as much about protecting others as protecting oneself.
An equally profound paradox arises with regard to the idea
of “dying for one’s country”—not to mention the distinction of dying for one’s
country’s economy. Depends on the country. In Alcestis, Euripides’s tragicomedy, the main character, Admetus, the
king of Pherae, received from the god Apollo the extraordinary privilege of not
having to die at his appointed time if he could find somebody to voluntarily
take his place. (A weird premise, no doubt, but such are the workings of art
sometimes.) Among Admetus’s expectations is that because his parents are older
and seemingly closer to death, they should
rightfully take his place: “They were ripe enough to die with grace—/yes,
die gracefully and praised—/for their own son’s sake: an only son at that.”
Neither of Admetus’s parents were so inclined, and his
father, Pheres, spoke for them,
I brought you into
this world. I brought you up:
you to be the
master of this house.
Ought I now to die
for you?
Is this the custom
handed down—
that fathers die
for sons? The Greek tradition?
It was never handed
down to me.
You were born for
your own good or ill.
Whatever is your
due from me you’ve had.
…………………………………………………………………..
Don’t you die for
me and I shan’t die for you.
You enjoy the light
of day.
Do you think your
father doesn’t?
Admetus, the
king, personification of the city-state, strikes us as both resolutely presumptuous
and supremely unappreciative. He permits his wife, Alcestis, to die in his stead. Need any
more be said about his qualities.
A country
that expects the older, the more vulnerable, the darker complected, the poorer,
and the generally more at-risk to die in its interest is not a country worth
dying for. That country is already morally dead.
