Why Italy’s COVID-19 triage of elderly residents is all wrong

If the worst case scenario days of COVID-19 do come to fruition, I know who I want around to help me survive, and it’s certainly not the UberEats influencer generation, writes Lucy Carne.

Like a true Millennial, I’ve already eaten all my pandemic chocolate stash and am left with four kilos of flour in my garage that I have no idea what to do with.

“Maybe you could live off pancakes?” a friend suggested. Problem is, I’ve only ever made them from those shaker bottles.

Besides exposing the useless deficiency of the World Health Organisation, the coronavirus pandemic has also presented us with a deeply concerning quandary: young people have no idea how to survive a catastrophe.

And yet, in a chilling Grim Reaper pecking order, doctors in Italy have prioritised saving young lives over the elderly.

It’s an ethically-fraught hierarchy of survival that may also need to be made in Australia if our hospitals become similarly swamped.

An elderly patient is helped by a doctor at one of the emergency structures that has been set up in northern Italy. Picture: AP/Luca Bruno

But debates over fragile immunity aside, what we must remember when the apocalypse comes is it’s our senior citizens who will help us survive. These are people who have already weathered a Great Depression, a World War, numerous recessions and a childhood without sunscreen. They know how to knit, tie knots and make damper. They darn socks, use hankies, wash their plastic bags and reuse tea leaves.

Meanwhile, there’s Millenials who will starve once UberEats stops delivering.

We may be among the generations who grew up on Tomorrow When the War Began, but we’re not going to cut it during a viral invasion in our ridiculous Gorman raincoats and reliance on streaming services. And being able to Boomerang on Instagram is probably not going to keep you alive in Armageddon.

Like thousands of others, I’ve joined the coronavirus prepper Facebook groups. If you think being tasered over toilet paper is extreme, these people take it to a Thunderdome level.

There’s much chat about colloidal silver, using gin as antiseptic and a few preppers disappointed the zombies aren’t here (yet). There was also one person worryingly inquiring “where to buy a crossbow in Queensland”.

Italy has one of the world’s oldest populations and the coronavirus outbreak is taking its toll on family relationships. Picture: AP/Alessandra Tarantino

And so it is to the wise and wrinkled in my life who I have now turned for less-violent guidance in these uncertain times.

One friend in her 70s told me she was rationing toilet paper. “No more than two squares a wipe” and she’s happy to “go bush” and revert to leaves. Likewise, my mother, a staunch Brit who grew up in Libya, has gone down in suburban folklore for the time she roasted a bush turkey.

It was the 1990s when hordes of us kids roamed Paddington’s streets on BMXs with no adult supervision. A seven-year-old pegged a rock and in some freak alignment of accuracy, clocked the turkey on the head and killed it. My mother held the belief that no innocent creature gives up its life for no reason. “You kill it, you eat it,” she lectured.

And so, our eccentric Russian Jewish neighbour who grew up in China plucked and gutted the bird and my mother did a Delia Smith bacon and sage stuffing. It was gamey and tough and we all threw ourselves around shouting “disgusting”. But her point was made.

Someone dobbed my mother into the Environmental Protection Agency for cooking native wildlife and she got hate mail. But when society unravels and cataclysm comes, she’ll keep us alive. She is the woman who poaches a whole salmon in her dishwasher.

Elderly people stroll in Rome amid the coronavirus pandemic. Picture: AP/Andrew Medichini

And it’s not just culinary courage that makes old people so resilient. They also possess the strength to withstand long bouts of solitude. A crossword, puzzle or cup of tea will suffice.

The thought of being on our own is so terrifying we must constantly revert to our phones out of fear we may be left alone with our thoughts for more than five minutes.

But if we’ve learned anything from the screen, it’s that old people can be tough-as-nails legends. Who wouldn’t want Dumbledore, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alf Stewart, the Golden Girls, Mr Miyagi, Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown or George Costanza’s parents in the trenches with them?

Then there was the real-life busload of Aussie seniors on a Trip-A-Deal tour that made it out of Rome to the Italian border last week, only to be stopped by Serbian officials. A bunch of them, not wanting to get trapped in the COVID-19 epicentre, jumped the bus and tried to illegally leg it cross-country. Someone has to make that into a movie.

But in all seriousness, these are crazy times and our elderly are vulnerable. Be kind, drop off a loo roll, phone them for a chat and steer clear if you show any signs of sickness.

Please, keep them alive. For we need our oldies to get us through these dark days ahead. If we’re left with just young people, trust me, we’re screwed.

Lucy Carne is editor of Rendezview.com.au