Victoria Jones\/PA Wire\/PA Images<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nTwo years ago my second child was born with a condition which meant he could not breathe unaided. I thought he was going to die. My perspective on the world changed in those early days of his life, as he used a breathing device and then a ventilator, and then received a tracheostomy at two weeks old.<\/span><\/p>\nFacing your own mortality, or that of someone close to you, is life changing. But recognising our mortal vulnerabilities is also a fundamentally important part of human nature.<\/span><\/p>\nNot facing up to them \u2013 until we are forced to by a crisis like coronavirus \u2013 is not good for society. Yet for many years in many Western societies there has been a collective reluctance to face our mortality and the reality of our fallible physiological condition.<\/span><\/p>\nPsychologists and sociologists have examined this sense of\u00a0denial of death\u00a0since the 1960s, a period without world wars or pandemics which has witnessed incredible advances in medical technology. Over that time, people have lived longer and longer lives.<\/span><\/p>\nThe\u00a0average age of death\u00a0in the UK is now 79 for men and 83 for women. Those who die prematurely or before their parents are considered as out of sync with the natural order of things.<\/span><\/p>\nBut now a global pandemic is happening. So what can we hope to learn from it?<\/span><\/p>\nAs an academic who has worked on\u00a0death and society\u00a0for almost two decades, I barely know where to start. But I do feel that the pandemic provides us with a perfect opportunity to reassess how we value life, death and what happens in between \u2013 particularly with regard to social and economic equality.<\/span><\/p>\nA couple of weeks ago the BBC news presenter Emily Maitlis was\u00a0widely praised\u00a0for drawing attention to the deep societal inequalities that coronavirus has exposed. My favourite antihero\u00a0Jonathan Pie also predicted\u00a0how COVID-19 would lay bare the enormous economic inequalities inherent in the UK, where \u201cthe rich are protected and the poor and vulnerable aren\u2019t\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\nControlling life and death has meant that the workplace \u2013 where we sell our labour \u2013 has changed radically in the past 60 years. Since the birth control revolution of the 1960s, millions of women have entered the labour market (while\u00a0typically remaining responsible\u00a0for the lion\u2019s share of child rearing). And a gradual economic shift towards a service economy and away from production and manufacturing has led to much less hazardous workplaces \u2013 and fewer work-related deaths \u2013 for most in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\nThis means that the average person can now expect to spend 50 years of their life working. That\u2019s five decades spent trying to generate sufficient income to cover living costs, and if possible, some savings for a retirement spanning another 20 or so years.<\/span><\/p>\nOlder and wiser?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThese changes to working lives, and the financial imperative to earn enough to live, have perpetuated economic inequalities. Those born into affluent families\u00a0race up\u00a0the occupational hierarchy and housing ladder compared to those born into poverty.<\/span><\/p>\nHighly educated and relatively wealthy people feel more equipped to self-advocate for their healthcare and can better afford high-quality, nutritious food. They inevitably\u00a0live longer than their poorer counterparts, as during their working lives they live in larger accommodation with outside space, eat better, and have more stable and secure employment.<\/span><\/p>\nMedical and public health advancements have therefore contributed to the\u00a0growth of the gap\u00a0between the richest and the poorest in society. And coronavirus has shown in stark terms how, despite extraordinary measures to cover some people\u2019s wages during lockdown, those at the bottom of society simply cannot afford to be unwell.<\/span><\/p>\nSo in terms of what we can learn from COVID-19, as we reflect on the social and economic cost of this pandemic, we will need to assess how we view and accept our own mortality and that of others.<\/span><\/p>\nThis requires a sensible debate about life expectancy and poverty. About whether we need, or want, to continue to constantly strive for longer and longer lives \u2013 and at what cost. The more people who live into their 90s and beyond, the greater the financial pressure on the workforce, and the more socio-economic inequality thrives.<\/span><\/p>\nMoments where we fully realise that we are not invincible, individually and collectively, are profound. As I did when my son was born, facing the very real possibility of death can forever alter how you see the world.<\/span><\/p>\nWhile delaying death can be regarded as a medical and public health success, and something of a modern luxury, it has allowed social and economic inequality to grow unfettered. Such inequity has to stop. Let this be a life-changing moment for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nKate <\/span>Woodthorpe<\/span><\/span><\/strong>
\nSenior Lecturer in Sociology, <\/span>
\nUniversity of Bath<\/span><\/p>\n
\n* Published in print edition on 12 May 2020<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Coronavirus provides a chance to re-assess our values<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":26907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8348],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/allowed-inequality.jpg?fit=926%2C617&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-6ZY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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