I feel like the emperor of Rome looking down at the gladiators. The only difference is I am saluting them, not the other way around. “You who are about to die I salute you.”
My society has decided to put itself to the sword to protect me. I was born in the last year of the baby boom, 1963 and the pandemic is my cohorts nemesis or at least significant health risk.
The younger generations are not so endangered by the viruses deadly embrace unlike us boomers. Boomers like me are the vulnerable group. Nonetheless the younger generations have generously gone along with a plan to destroy their futures so that I might have the chance to live a little longer.
I have about 25 years left in me and on average my death date is 2045. With the pandemic that death date would have fallen by a whole 12 months. My expectation for life, with Covid-19 run amok, would have reset my death back a whole year to 2044. I am so grateful that our society has wrecked its economy for my incredibly precious 12 months.
To the young their educations spoiled, to families destroying their finances and losing their jobs for me, I thank you. I thank the poor for giving up their pathway to prosperity, I thank the government for putting the whole country into a decade of debt and destroying innumerable industries for their swift action to give me hope of seeing those last four seasons.
Let me be clear, I did not ask for this, I am nothing but a bystander to the situation. So, I am even more appreciative of receiving this giant sacrifice by the young and vital, in the same way as my forebears were grateful to the flower of British youth mown down at their insistence by the German machine guns of the Somme.
I too will try not to forget.
Collapsing the economy to extend my life for a few weeks in unbelievably altruistic, swapping my death for their deaths is a saintly act. When the Russian economy collapsed like ours is now doing, life expectancy dropped by 10%. That will translate to about 8 years off the average person’s life in my country. I can never repay such an action. That sacrifice, worthy of the Aztec, will be spread over a decade, so sadly no one will be writing headlines, but I still recognise the price people will pay and respect them for freely giving it. I will not suffer this myself because I’m a boomer and have some money and not among the poor that will donate their lives to me on the inescapable altar of economic depression.
Meanwhile I will look on the bright side. Deflation comes next and that will increase the value of my saving, then inflation follows which will boost the value of my home. How caring of the common people to take such hardship so I can live my comfortable life just a little bit longer.
Please understand I did not want to take the lives and prosperity of the young, I didn’t ask them to throw their futures away for me, it is a gift and I accept it as heart felt. In my final twilight days I most likely won’t be able to recall these sacrifices, so I thank you all now. Those distant month will mean a lot to me and I know they mean a lot to you because you have lost your jobs, your prospects, your prosperity and soon your social care system, its health care infrastructure and the countries solvency to protect me and extend my last flicking days of life.
“So to you who are about to die, I salute you.”