I’m grateful for protection, but the idea that all older people like me are frail while the young are invincible is dangerous

While there is a correlation between age and susceptibility to the worst effects of this virus, this blanket assumption ignores the fact that everyone else needs to be safe too, writes Vince Cable

Healthy seventysomethings should be able to do their bit (PA)

I was one of the lucky amongst the millions of Brits in danger of being stranded overseas, in my case somewhere between here and Australia. My wife and I got back, with some difficulty, and are now in self-isolation, in our case doubly qualified as travellers and “vulnerable” over-70s.

To return from overseas is to see with some clarity the British response to the coronavirus: good and bad. What is good is that the rather smug British establishment, and in particular, a complacent prime minister, has recognised that it has much to learn about suppressing pandemics from better-organised countries in east Asia. The government also gets credit for a radical, unorthodox and sensible set of economic policies, though there is still an urgent need for help for the self-employed. And there are lots of encouraging stories of individuals and companies going the extra mile to help others.

Less impressive was the confusion over government messaging. My wife and I were among the thousands arriving at Heathrow border control at dawn on Saturday. We were given a leaflet on how to behave if we had virus symptoms. But there was nothing to guide the vast majority without symptoms who may not have known of the self-isolation policy for travellers, nor the blanket ”stay at home” general advice (at that point, still optional), nor the leeway for shopping. Wake up, Priti Patel.

Worse is the anti-social plundering of supermarkets. The educated middle-class of Twickenham, who would normally consider themselves above such things, managed to empty the local Waitrose of essentials from fruit and veg to toilet rolls. The toilet roll panic is curious, especially as there was kitchen roll available of a similar texture. I also wonder how many toilet roll hoarders have stopped to consider how the vast majority of humanity manages personal hygiene without this particular western luxury.

What I have learnt so far from the ersatz Churchill who broadcasts from No 10 near-daily is that we are at war. But it is a strange kind of war. Wars involve sacrificing lives for some higher objective like freedom, or a lower objective like conquest; and the economy works flat out, at full employment, to produce the materials needed. This war is the opposite: sacrificing freedoms and the economy to save lives.

We are, nonetheless, being urged to rally round to support the war effort. I am not a conscientious objector but I am beginning to worry about what we are being asked to do, and why. My contribution to the war effort is to share a pleasant existence with my wife, reading and writing, listening to music and going for walks and cycle rides in unpopulated areas, keeping in touch with family and friends by phone, email and Skype.

I would prefer to help. I would be no use among today’s heroic Spitfire pilots working in NHS hospitals. But my skill level and fitness are sufficient to support the infantry if needed as a van driver, shelf stacker or gravedigger (though in a recession or depression jobs should go to the unemployed, not the retired). However, I am told I am not needed because I am “vulnerable” and that my most useful contribution is to get out of the way lest I get the virus and clog up a hospital.

I may well be vulnerable but I am not clear as to why the 70th birthday is, in itself, a source of vulnerability. The Americans are shortly to choose one of two men, almost exact contemporaries of mine, for the most powerful job on the planet. I can think of many adjectives to apply to Donald Trump (or even the nicer but less sprightly Joe Biden) but “vulnerable” isn’t one of them. While there may be a correlation between age and susceptibility to the worst effects of this virus, a blanket assumption that the old are frail while the young are invincible is dangerous.

The genuinely vulnerable are not privileged pensioners like me but young families now forcibly trapped in overcrowded homes with grizzling toddlers or restless teenagers; those stuck in flats with communal lifts and without their own gardens; the homeless; the mentally ill, with a new reason for chronic anxiety; and those worried sick about how they will cope with less income and fixed rent and utility bills.

Yet these are the frontline troops in a war to save me and my contemporaries from a shorter life expectancy. The metric of success is “lives saved” or “excess deaths” avoided. But behind the numbers is a value judgement that all lives and deaths are of the same value. They are not. As a generally fit 77-year-old, I have a life expectancy of, probably, a decade. In 10 years’ time, if I survive, it will be two or three years. Yet my teenage grandchildren can expect to live 60 years or more. Of course the NHS should get every resource possible to save everyone, but I am clear that the young should have explicit priority. Surely we should be measuring the whole life equivalent of lives lost and saved to judge how the war is going.

A decent and civilised society has a compassionate concern for the welfare of the elderly. I value my involvement in an innovative project to use new technology to assist in the care of those with dementia. But there is a danger of unthinking sentimentality. We have to be hard-headed. I understand that, in Italy, desperately harassed clinicians are having to allocate scarce beds and ventilators to the young rather than the old. Rightly so. Our NHS may be in a similar position before long. But that awesome responsibility should not fall solely on medical staff. It is for the rest of us, through our representatives, to decide the principle.

Since Imperial College London figures show the death rate from coronavirus as much less than 1 per cent among the under-60s, this strange and very costly war is largely, though by no means exclusively, about preserving life among older people. I hope that they (or, rather, we) are suitably grateful. We already live in a society in which so much – from public spending priorities to property ownership to political outcomes – reflects the interests and prejudices of my age group. When the war is over, and won, we need to correct the balance.

Sir Vince Cable is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats and a former secretary of state for business