COVID-19: Close encounters of the senior kind

“That moment when you’re worried about the elderly, you realise that you are the elderly.” This vividly illustrated meme, in circulation via social media in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdown in India, touched a chord with me and many in my cohort.

Till March 2020, we had been blithely going about our lives as regular human beings: busy with work; family and household responsibilities; professional and community engagements; exercise; social, cultural and other leisure activities; paying bills and taxes; staying abreast of news and information (and trying to ignore or counter fake news and misinformation/disinformation) ; getting resigned or addicted to the evidently interminable and unavoidable pandemic of apps, and so on.

Then, all of a sudden, around mid-March, we found ourselves defined almost exclusively by our age group. Overnight, everyone aged 60 and above became an undifferentiated whole that was said to be particularly susceptible to infection by the dreaded, little known and less understood novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. While the majority of those who contracted Covid-19 were expected to undergo a self-limiting illness and recover, “older” adults were reportedly at a significantly increased risk of severe disease, possibly requiring oxygen therapy or ventilators, and sometimes resulting in death.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), eight out of 10 deaths among “the elderly” occurred in individuals with at least one underlying co-morbidity, particularly cardiovascular disease/hypertension and diabetes, but also a range of other chronic conditions. But “older” became the defining characteristic of this abruptly endangered section of the population.

It is perfectly understandable that such a specific, somewhat alarming, physical vulnerability would necessarily circumscribe corporeal options, ruling out activities likely to lead to avoidable exposure to the virus. So most “senior citizens” had no choice but to observe “reverse quarantine”.

Even though, for some of us at least, our natural instincts were to be more actively engaged in the unfolding crisis, especially the desperate plight of migrant workers and others dependent on daily earnings for survival, we perforce had to make do with contributing as much as we could from the safe confines of our homes. At the same time, many of us – especially women – had to cope with the unaccustomed, exhausting and seemingly endless burden of housework, while also figuring out how to virtually procure essential and, in the early days, scarce groceries.

Considering the reality of our pre-pandemic lives, it was both annoying and amusing to observe the noticeable, if subtle, shift in perceptions of and attitudes towards the “high-risk” demographic in which we unexpectedly found ourselves. In an ironic role reversal, there was suddenly a lot of exasperated, albeit (hopefully) affectionate, talk about the difficulties of keeping restive parents in check, making them understand the gravity of the situation, ensuring that they are kept amused with online entertainment, and the like.

If some progeny tended to infantilise, even obviously sympathetic and well-meaning experts often ended up generalising, if not patronising. There was seldom any acknowledgement of the fact that “60+” represents quite a heterogenous bunch, even among middle and higher income groups – diverse not just in terms of physical fitness but also with respect to activity, mobility, agility, adaptability, independence/self-reliance, and so on. Not everyone in this demographic is even a retiree; many older adults (not only politicians!) remain active, professionally and otherwise, well beyond the official retirement age.

So it was a bit galling to read this in a recent newspaper report about mental health issues faced by the elderly during the lockdown: “While young people can learn and adapt faster to change, ageing brains cannot.” I merely rolled my eyes. But it did come across as an unacceptably inaccurate, insensitive and disempowering statement about a rather broad range of people, especially coming from a mental health professional.

Interestingly, according to a 2019 article, the US-based Pew Research Center, which has been studying the “Millennial generation” for over a decade, had decided that anyone born between 1981 and 1996 (a 15-year span) could be considered a Millennial, while anyone born from 1997 onward would be considered part of a new generation (popularly known as Gen Z). Similarly, disaggregating senior citizens into at least two groups would appear to make sense.

Unfortunately, the stereotyping and homogenising of this age group in the Covid-19 context was evident in official pronouncements, too. Whether they emanated from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MHFW) or the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE), advice for the elderly and their care-givers appeared to address the realities of middle and higher income groups alone.

The series of advisories issued from mid-March onwards appeared to presuppose the existence of secure homes with multiple rooms, and access to smartphones, internet connections, unlimited water, soap, disinfectants/sanitisers and tissue paper (!), nutritious meals (including fruit juices), prescription medicines, and so on. There was no reference even in MSJE advisories to the ground realities of older members of the “disadvantaged and marginalised sections of society, including scheduled castes (SC), Other Backward Classes (OBC), the disabled, … the victims of drug abuse” who, besides “the elderly”, the Ministry is supposed to be responsible for.

The latest available data (circa 2011) puts the population of the 60 and above age group in India at nearly 104 million, 8-9% of the total population, of whom 73 million live in rural areas and 31 million in urban areas. According to a survey by the non-profit organisation, HelpAge India, about half of them – around 53 million – are very poor. And about 6% of the elderly live alone, even in rural areas.

A number of organisations in urban areas provide various kinds of invaluable support services to senior citizens even in normal times. During the lockdown period, many voluntary groups also sprang up, offering practical help to seniors trapped indoors and finding it difficult to procure essential groceries and medicines. Many Residents’ Welfare Associations and neighbours also kindly pitched in to provide much-needed assistance.

While civil society similarly stepped into the breach to provide basic meals and other aid to many migrant workers and others who suddenly found themselves jobless and penniless, the plight of the elderly among the poor – as “high-risk” as the rest of us, if not more – remained unknown.

On my first, wary, masked, gloved, sanitised foray into the outside world a couple of weeks ago, I saw an elderly man seeking alms at a traffic signal – wearing a mask but with his nose exposed. I wondered if he had even heard of the monthly pension supposedly being given by the government to 2.98 crore poor senior citizens, widows and persons with disabilities, in addition to an “ex gratia” amount of Rs 1,000, to cover three months of life under the threat of Covid-19.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based senior journalist, author and co-founder, Network of Women in Media, India)