My mother is 91, and pretty frail. She sees these lockdowns as stealing what very limited time she has left.
Mine is 87 and feels the same. She has not seen Seat Son, her grandson, for well over 2 years now because of international border closure and despairs of ever seeing him again before she shuffles off. She has missed months out of of the lives of her two great-grandchildren (aged 15 months and 10 months) because of various state border lockdowns. As a widow who lives alone, would have been incredibly lonely and socially isolated had my sister (who does not always see eye to eye with me) and I not agreed on sensible evasion of the rules about visiting her. At least this time, there is a singles bubble in the ACT. My friend's mother-in-law of a similar age with dementia who lives in a residential care facility has suffered a great deal by the inhumane lock out of her entire family, friends and support system for most of the COVID era.
This is no longer "protecting the vulnerable elderly " in any meaningful way. Most of them are double vaxxed now, and are very aware of their approaching demise and just want to enjoy what time is left before pneumonia, the flu, melanoma, dementia, etc carry them off. And the elderly were not consulted before the politicians paternalistically decided to "protect them". And now younger people complain of making sacrifices to protect the elderly - many of whom did not ever ask for that protection and actually don't want it. What a clusterf@#k it all is.
And before the usual suspects shout me down about the sanctity of life for the elderly - paraphrasing what
@sydunipete said in another thread, if an older person wants to individually pursue lock down, there is nothing stopping them from doing that, but imposing it on everyone in an age group, or a region, or a state, or a country is well past use by date. Even those in residential care, in most cases, could be segregated into a "lockdown wing/floor" away from those willing to take their chances so they can see friends and family.
www.abc.net.au
