The Politics of Life and Death in the Time of COVID-19

From bare life and necropolitics to a feminist care ethic: ageism in the COVID-19 pandemic and future directions

“…Robertson and Travaglia (2020) and Travaglia and Robertson (2021) extended the work of Mbembe (2003) and Waring and Bishop (2020) , examining the necropolitical assumptions made in decisions of who got treatment and who did not during the pandemic. They called into question social-cultural assumptions about the value of different groups of lives in times of crisis ( Robertson and Travaglia, 2020 ).…”

“…This is where ‘need’ is assessed based on the overall benefit to society and the extent to which existing chronic health conditions will impede clinical benefit ( Robertson and Travaglia, 2020 ). However, during the pandemic, life and death decisions were based on age as a proxy measure for population health, without considering the social implications, human rights, and dignity of groups at the receiving end of intersecting structures of inequality ( Colombo, 2021 ; Travaglia and Robertson, 2021 ). What follows are examples of how a state can implement modes of exception, determining who can live and who can be left to die.…”

“…They have reduced and rationed health resources, when there would be significant clinical benefit, and when, on average, someone over 80 with no co-morbidities, without contracting COVID-19, may have lived for a further 7 years on average ( Hanlon et al, 2021 ). Nevertheless, as Travaglia and Robertson (2021) state, the utilitarian medical philosophical conceptualisation of ‘need’ is not just based on the individual assessment but on the overall benefit to society, and age has been used as a blunt proxy measure for health. The Equality Act ( HM Government, 2010 ) legislates for age as being a protected characteristic, like gender, disability, and ethnicity, which cannot be used to discriminate.…”

“…Although arguably the spatialised control of populations-enabling conditions inferring on people the status of the 'living dead' (Mbembe, 2003)-is relevant to the 'care' conditions that some older people found themselves in during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, particularly those in residential care settings. Robertson and Travaglia (2020) and Travaglia and Robertson (2021) extended the work of Mbembe (2003) and Waring and Bishop (2020), examining the necropolitical assumptions made in decisions of who got treatment and who did not during the pandemic. They called into question social-cultural assumptions about the value of different groups of lives in times of crisis (Robertson and Travaglia, 2020).…”