FREEDOM

 Freedom is a nebulous concept.  Are you free?  Are you happy?  Would you being willing to live your life over again?

Tim Harford on the Radio 4's 'More or Less' programme, asked the question, "if newspapers were published once a month, what would their headlines say?  If they were published once a year?  Decade? Century?"

Great question.  Harford suggested the headline for the century paper would read, 'life expectancy more than doubles over the last 100 years'. 

Increase in life expectancy across the world

Few people would argue that this is not a statistic to celebrate.  But just as if everyone in the world were equally rich, and we all had helicopters, our lives would actually be hell, so long life comes with its problems.  Long life is one of the great pressures on our planet: homes, food, health. Perhaps it would be better for us all to have shorter but more fruitful and equal lives. 

There is no doubt that Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand/Aotearoa is an intelligent effective communicator, but she tapped into the idea that 'no one should needlessly die' in this pandemic.  Again, everyone will agree.  But if we applied this principle to everything, risk of death by pandemic would be low down the list of 'death risks to our populations'.  

The American website 'Odds of Dying' spells it out for Americans.  In the UK, it can be argued that the current death rate from Covid19 has been 1 death per every 521 people.  The vast majority of these people would not have expected to be alive 100 years ago.  Conversely, I know an 82 year old who moved into a care home, only to be told she had Covid after being tested. She had no idea this was so.

To a fearful generation, death is the final sting.