Stoicism, emotion, and panic

 It's been a while since I added to this blog. I’d like to write more often, but being a carer has its challenges - your priority has to be those you care for. Since my last update I’ve had extra caring work come my way; my mother moved into a care home in September, and I’ve been busy getting her settled in, and helping with some of her financial and administration work. 

I’ve also been involved in my late stepmother's estate, and these new challenges have made me consider the contrasting attitudes that different generations seem to have, and to contemplate how these differences have arisen, and whether modern attitudes actually represent an improvement on those in the past.  

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My father didn’t talk much about  the war. Like many of his generation, he witnessed some pretty horrible things - I know he saw burning enemy tanks with German soldiers stuck inside (1), and he was also involved in the clean-up at Belsen. I do, however, remember him saying, on more than one occasion, that the troops had a fatalistic view of death - ‘when your number’s up, your number’s up’, he used to say. During the war people didn’t have time to grieve, to commemorate, or to wallow in sadness - one mistake and you’d be a goner. 

I think he, and no doubt many others of his generation, retained an element of this attitude for the rest of his life. When his parents died they were cremated, with no memorial or anything. He never even kept details of when and where the ceremonies took place. Further, he was hospitalised - and nearly died - soon after retirement, from what I firmly believed at the time, and still believe, was medical negligence (he had been prescribed specific  medication for far longer than it was documented to be safe). Neither he nor his wife - my stepmother - felt as I did, and would in no way consider even a mild complaint to the doctor about what happened - let alone seek any form of compensation. They were very fortunate to never need support from carers to look after him, for if that had been required they would have had to join the queue for state funded social care.  

When my stepmother died - fifteen years after her husband - she was also fortunate in that she went quickly; she had suffered a number of minor strokes, and had support at home from her daughter, but she had never needed serious care until, aged 89, she suffered a massive stroke, and was admitted to hospital, where the prognosis was poor. She could have been kept alive mechanically, the family were told, but she would never regain consciousness. The doctors sought my step-sister’s views, although I believe they had already made their minds up. My stepsis did not object, and was told that the hospital would make my stepmother ‘comfortable’ - a word of which, in such circumstances, I know the meaning; I’m not sure that my stepsis did. Two days later my stepmother was dead - I suspect following a goodly dose of morphine and perhaps midazolam. 

My stepmother would have had no objection to this: she had been a nurse years ago, and placed far more trust in the health service than it ever deserved. However, to me, her demise did rather seem too much like what happens to an elderly pet for which the vet’s bills have become too expensive.

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I see things differently. My stepmother wouldn’t hear of having a Health and Welfare Power of Attorney; Viv and I both have them, and, what’s more, I have used Viv’s. During her stay in hospital six years ago I was concerned at the seeming lack of focus on her fluids, and raised concerns - which were pretty much ignored. The hospital staff didn’t, at first, believe I had H&W PoA, and asked to see the original copy - which I duly provided. They didn’t do anything more about checking her fluids but did say I could help, so I spent eight hours a day in the ward with Viv, helping her drink, and keeping track of her fluid intake - she never had less than 1.8 litres of fluid when I was there (and always seemed thirsty when I arrived - she clearly had little when I wasn’t). Keeping her hydrated may well have stopped her deteriorating to the point where doctors might have wanted to ‘make her comfortable’, I have always believed; in the end, Viv was discharged to my care, and her recovery started as soon as she got home.

I’m not going to just accept that my - or Viv’s, or anyone else’s for that matter - number is up. I need it to be proven to me - and, having a scientific and management background, I can understand enough of what is going on in a hospital environment to know when an explanation adds up - or doesn’t (2).  I’m also more interested in my ancestry, my family background, than my father was; I tend a couple of his grandparents’ graves regularly, and have paid for plaques for my father and his parents at the cemetery in the village where he was born (he, like they, had no memorial). 

I believe, however, that I am not wholly emotional; I fully accept that my time might be going to be up at some point, perhaps even soon. One very key event in my youth involved a few seconds trapped under a motorcycle, underneath the trailer of an HGV - which started to move. I got out, obviously - but, perhaps like my father, I can say I have come close to death at least once in my life. Now as I am in my mid sixties I am winding down a little, thinking of doing less as I get older - a complete contrast to my father and stepmother who embarked on one grand trip after another in the years after he retired, aged 65. At the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 I had a bad chest (didn’t everyone?); I just kept going, one day at a time, getting fresh air and exercise, and eventually the infection went away, but the thought did cross my mind that I might end up in hospital, on a ventilator (3).  Whatever I did feel - much as when under that lorry in (I think) 1984 - I did not feel panic; I knew the importance of keeping my emotions under control.   

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But it's now clear that I was in a significant minority at that time. Social media (urgh) spread images from China of people collapsing in the streets, ‘celebrities’ with huge numbers of ‘followers’ demanded lockdowns (but of those celebrities, how many had science degrees and so were able to judge the quality of the work supporting such demands?), ordinary mortals expressed panic on said social media, and politicians, wanting to be popular far more than they wanted to do the right thing, gave us  lockdowns, social distancing, tiers, furloughing, masks, bubbles, working from home and of course vaccines that offer little protection but at significant risk to some sectors of the population. Much of this we know from the released WhatsApp messages published by the Telegraph. 

At the time I wrote to my MP about the clear lack of competence shown by Government; I do have a degree in a scientific subject and experience of reviewing academic mathematical models (in the field of atmospheric pollution, in my days at the much-missed Central Electricity Generating Board). However, he suffers from that bane of modern public life, a degree in PPE, and he didn’t understand my points. What is clearly a problem for this country - and is happening with, for example, Net Zero, as well as with Covid - is that decisions affecting everyone, almost to the point of life and death, are taken by people who had no understanding of what they were dealing with. For that lack of understanding I can forgive them, but what I can’t forgive them for is that in 2020 they did what much of the rest of the population was doing: they opted to panic, rather than to take time and approach the problems in a structured, controlled fashion. Faced with talk of half a million deaths, the Government did ‘what the voters want’; at no point did ministers stop to consider the damage that the measures they were going to introduce would inflict. Three years later we are paying the price, and will be for a generation or more.

And why was there so much panic? Presumably, it was all the talk of deaths. It may be that in the world of the ‘metaverse’ there is no death, and that we all live forever, so that users never consider that their existence might be finite; overall, it may be that society as a whole does not see death as closely as in the past. (Perhaps a good question for a budding MP at the next general election might be ‘have you ever faced death?’).Maybe the education system shields students too well from ‘difficult’ or ‘stressful’ topics, including death? I cannot for one moment believe that politicians of the seventies would have panicked in the way messrs Hancock and Johnson did - the likes of Denis Healey and Edward Heath both fought in the war (oddly, Harold Wilson didn’t). 

Margaret Thatcher, of course, would not have panicked in the slightest for a different reason: she held a science degree (I believe she’s the only Prime Minister to ever hold such a qualification - that in itself represents a failure of our education and political systems). The idea of her panicking over anything scientific is absurd - she would have ripped apart Ferguson’s models in an instant. 

To me it's clear, there was not much driven by emotion in Government in March 2020 as by pure panic. Decisions made in panic are often regretted, if you have the chance, in leisure; did no one in Government ever watch Dad’s Army, and recall Corporal Jones’ catchphrase?    

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So, what’s gone wrong? There are multiple problems: the inexperience of those in government, their lack of a broad education incorporating mathematics at or beyond degree level, and their, and society’s, lack of close experience of some of the horrors of life. There’s also the internet, spreading news, often manipulated news, widely and instantaneously. What we need - but, judging by the current bunch in the House of Commons are unlikely to get very soon - are politicians with experience of real life, rather than individuals for whom the role of an MP and that of a government, even prime, minister is merely a stepping-stone on the way to a lucrative job at somewhere like the WEF. We need science graduates at the very top of government, and politicians who can do what is right rather than what is, at the time, popular: after all, if asked, low interest rates for mortgages, and high ones for savers would be very popular, but the combination would be a disaster.

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Footnotes

1 -  British tank crews were considered luckier than their German counterparts, for our tanks were fuelled by petrol, and would explode when hit, killing the crews instantly; the German panzers diesel fuel just burned, roasting anyone trapped inside.

2 - That’s how we got to the point of starting the negligence claim that has been going on for the past six years.

3 - Bloody good job I didn’t, now that it's known that ventilators were used far too much early on in the pandemic.