And so, in a situation that’s quickly putting to shame those cheap 1980s Mad Max ripoffs my country produced in earnest, yesterday a local politician observed that over 80% of the latest casualties due to COVID were “very old people” – that, being “outside of the productive activities” were not such a loss, and basically, who cares? The economy must go on, so let the old codgers die.

I am often worried about the fact that time is passing fast and I am now over 50 – not only I won’t get any younger (nobody does), but my health is likely to go downhill.
If the idea of spending my last days in a hospital is scary, the idea of a political leadership that might opt to suppress me like a lame horse because it would save money is the stuff of nightmares.

As luck would have it, over the weekend I’ve been reading a slim little booklet called The Lazarus Strategy, written by an octogenarian doctor and focusing on strategies through which men and women over-50 can try if not to live longer, at least to get healthy to their old age.

The book is interesting, the strategies proposed are quite simple – and I’ve been doing some of this stuff already, thank goodness – and the prospect of staying clear of hospitals and doctors as long as possible is getting more attractive by the day.

The question remains – of all the fine futures that science fiction has imagined and proposed in the last century, why have we decided to let the scripting of our reality to a bunch of no-imagination fascist hacks?