To think that people living longer is making quality of life for everyone worse?

[Futurascope]

Possibly controversial…,

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-14/one-in-three-councils-not-confident-they-can-provide-basic-adult-social-care

“The fears about meeting the legal requirements come despite eight out of 10 councils forecasting having to cut spending on other community services such as parks, libraries and leisure centres to try to protect funding”.

So - libraries, leisure centres, parks, all vital for young children, families and others - being closed because the elderly desperately need social care.

As awful as it is for us all individually to lose somebody that we love….. is curing every disease, and having us all live to 100 really a good thing if it is at the expense of quality of life for the rest of society?

Agreed.

I'm waiting for someone to suggest that we withdraw insulin from folk over a certain age.

I’m confused too. It’s the chickenpox virus that causes shingles as you get older - it lies dormant. So how does it help older people to be around children with it ?

I don’t see anyone here doing that. What I do see is people advocating for a humane attitude for the aging process and not judging peoples’ ‘fitness for life’ on how much they cost to maintain.

In practice I don’t think this happens very often given the number of people I know who have a DNR placed on their hospital notes by medical staff, because of multiple co morbidities and the fact that resuscitation will result in little or no quality of life.

Aye. I can't understand that.

As for the argument about vaccination, if I'm now understanding the NHS website properly - and I'd be pleased if any medics could weigh in on this - I think the reason it's not being given to the population in general is that it can sometimes be too dangerous?

It's saying that it's generally given to people so that they don't catch chickenpox and pass it to family members who are immunocompromised, which is why doctors and medics get it - so that they don't pass the virus to patients.

https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/chickenpox-vaccine/

If it was remotely realistic there would be more than a handful of posters pointing out that the real problem is the greed at the top of the tree, and that instead of punching down to the lowest level we should be having a conversation about the redistribution of wealth and the booting out of the Tories from government so that idealistic and unnecessary cuts stop.

"The Shingles vaccine is not available to everyone though, you have to be over a certain age. I’m vulnerable with multiple conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and my GP still wouldn’t give me the vaccine until I was in the right age group, despite multiple requests from the consultant rheumatologist."

Sorry to hear this. I'm sure you can see the similarities there though between people saying too much is spent on elderly care and more should go into care for children, and then kids being allowed to get sick (potentially seriously) to protect the health of older people?
It's sort of 2 sides of the same coin as far as I can see .

And I know chickenpox is usually considered a mild illness. But it definitely isn't always. A child I know contracted sepsis from chickenpox, and another child in my town (who I don't actually know but is a friend of a friend) developed encephalitis. Both were hospitalised for over a week and were very very ill. How is that allowed to happen?

Explain to me how exposing the elderly to chickenpox is beneficial when it’s the chickenpox virus that causes Shingles. Adult re-exposure to the virus only provides about 30% protection, and that’s a generous assessment.

It's ok, I got stroppy when I saw the thread title. I'm still here and not in pain.
I don't really think the OP would be pleased really.

But this is the bigger problem , everyone's more bothered that someone else is getting 1p more than them ...

Why should I sell my house and pay for my own care when Doris next door has had a council house handed to her for 50 years and now I've gotta sell my house to pay when Doris gets it for free ...

But you CHOSE to buy your house , you've had a lovely home for all those years and now it's time to sell it to pay for your next home .

Sadly , the system can't keep affording to pay for everyone and at some point people have gotta start taking more responsibility for themselves.

Just like families who keep having kids and expecting bigger council houses , people who smoke and drink and expect the NHS to keep throwing money at their health , people who go abroad and have surgery then when it goes wrong expects the NHS to sort it .

At some point , we've all got to look at the bigger picture as there's not an everlasting pot of money for everyone sadly.

@K0OLA1D thank you for your kind words

Not read the thread.

Fuck me, what an awful title. What do you suggest as a solution to this problem?

Some people go into their 80s/90s and still live independently, and are in good health. My mum has a friend in her late 80s who walks 12k steps a day.

At the other end though, I cared for a gent who had advanced dementia but was in hospital and having investigative ops for a potential cancer. I did wonder what the point was.

BBC link on why we don’t vaccinate against chickenpox

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240229-why-dont-some-countries-vaccinate-against-chickenpox

It appears to be that (people thought) once you have had chicken pox, your immunity, which also gives some protection against shingles, is boosted by being mildly exposed to other people within the population with chickenpox.

So it was good for the elderly population for some children to get chicken pox.

Seems v odd to me and now appears that it might not be the case anyway.

"Hi can you hurry up and die please my child needs a park and I'd rather the taxes you paid your whole life pay for that instead of your care, thanks xxx"

It's not controversial, it's gross.

I can only hope when you're old OP that younger generations don't take that view

This is ridiculous. People are not “advocating for treatments”, we are saying it’s unacceptable to have an arbitrary cut off and it should be based on a person’s medical status and their views (if they can express them). We are advocating for promoting choice and individuality rather than simply saying “oh you’re 75, no chemo for you”. There may be a 65 year old who wouldn’t benefit from chemo and there may be an 85 year old who would.

'Boomers' aren't all in the same circumstances.

I don't like lumping loads of different people into one group just because of their age so don't pay much attention to what ages are considered a 'boomer' nowadays, but if it includes people in their 60s, then they're the poorest group

State of Ageing 2023 highlights that, among UK adults, people aged 60-64 now have the highest rate of relative poverty (25%).

This below is about all pensioner age groups (so not just aged 60-64).

The report also details that the average annual income of the poorest 20% of retired individuals is below the minimum amount needed to live on.

Relative pensioner poverty is at one of its highest rates (almost 18%) this century and is more than four percentage points higher than a decade ago.

It means that 2.1 million pensioners in the UK have an income that is less than 60% of the national average.

Separate from 'boomers', older over 80s (including DH's parents) aren't boomers. I understand their 'label' is the Silent Generation, and they definitely didn't 'have it good'.

The Silent Generation were born before the NHS and welfare state, went through the second world war as kids, also rationing (which didn't end until the 1950s), and there was lots of slum housing.

Also the majority started working between ages of 14-16, and only a small minority went to university. This is relevant to 'boomers' and 'Gen X' too.

You have totally misunderstood my post

Unfortunately yes and to many children

Interesting thread. I don't think it's disputed that the ageing population and the demographic timebomb to come is a very real and well documented phenomena. It's already generating unsustainable costs. But we have cut almost everything else and the country is in a pretty terrible place. Wealth distribution is going to be essential but what I don't know is how much of these extra costs can be covered by taxing the wealthier? Could they all be covered or would we still be short?

Care to elaborate?

This is something that was added to another post (about the NHS) it wasn't me that wrote it but I think it sums up pretty well why it's right that we don't or shouldn't routinely do the sorts of major and expensive surgeries/ interventions on the elderly as we do on the young.

"there is a lot of benefit to be had around thinking about what the real outcomes and goals of healthcare are as people age. It's not just about the money either, it's about what makes for good care. Personally, I think the money element isn't really the point at all, it's just a result of the more basic problem of trying to work against the natural, and inevitable decline of the body, which always in the end has to fail to deliver.

If we imagine that somehow we can fend off death inevitably, or medical interventions will really put us back to feeling a lot better, we will tend to take one approach to medical decisions. That's how we think with kids most of the time, almost until death is imminent - old age is too far away for natural death to be a consideration, and if disease is beaten there may be a really high chance or good quality of life, a long life full of human experiences, and a real improvement in condition. There is often good reason to go full on with medical interventions, even if some are invasive and involve suffering.

When that's the reality, an 80 year old suddenly faced with medical decisions might make very different decisions than a 20 year old.

The usual approach is to let people make these decisions themselves, which theoretically is sound, but because culturally we don't really deal with the realities of inevitable decline and death,we get people at 75 or 80 making the kinds of decisions that people at 20 might make. Often medical staff don't really help them understand the realities around the outcomes of the treatments they are proposing. We have over the last half century or so added about a decade on to people's lifespan, but it isn't necessarily a healthy decade - often it's beset by illness and poor quality of life."

This isn't the same where I live (London) here's what I just found online:

Of the three age groups, children have the highest poverty rates, with 33% of children in London in poverty in 2021/22, compared to 22% of working-age adults and 23% of pensioners. In London, poverty rates for children and working-age adults fell between 2011/12 and 2021/22.

There is a lack of NHS/Council resources because of cuts to social care budgets.
The budget was increased by 5% last year BUT thats a real terms cut of 1%.

Yet Sunak boasts of cutting taxes by £31 billion.

Plenty of money, we ve just got twisted priorities.

we get people at 75 or 80 making the kinds of decisions that people at 20 might make
Or the decisions that those 20 years old will likely make for themselves when they reach 75.

When we are young, we can't picture ourselves getting to our 50s let alone our 70s and 80s.

We assume that by then, just like our body and brain slow down, so do our feelings and emotions.

Well a lesson for the youngsters: they don't! You feel just as strongly as you do when you are young. Your wish to live and keep going, your fear of dying and death and wanting to avoid it as much as possible, it's all there.

I think a lot of posters might think back about what they wrote here when they reach that age and feel very ashamed of their 'younger times' views.