Among the ranks of the forgotten

Much to my chagrin, nobody accused me of jumping the queue when COVID-19 vaccine doses were first offered to “the elderly” at the end of March as the first modest COVAX shipment arrived.

What ever happened to “you does look good for your age” and all that? True, I had myself listened attentively for a precise definition of the designation (“the elderly”) when it was clear that anticipated slow vaccine supplies would invariably require an age/health condition hierarchy for administering such protection.

I had already been through the National Insurance drill which sets parameters involving two milestones – (i) reaching 60 and (ii) realising that you are 65 and should not be working so hard.

No, I am not yet at phase two, thank you. I, in fact, made it to phase one three years ago

But youthful myopia – both as private individuals and as states - has you feeling your time never comes.

There is a parallel with an exchange I had with a politically appointed senior energy advisor some years ago who advised that T&T should not worry about oil and gas reserves “running out.”

“As long as the planet remains viable, we will have oil,” he said.

Then, you reach 60, and the TTARP card you got at 50 is no longer a social media joke and you have worked overseas, and freelanced, and people had your NIS number all mixed up and you realise you are pretty much among those “Scottie” James O’Neil Lewis described as the officially “forgotten”.

“One gets the impression,” the late diplomat told me 21 year ago, “there is a feeling that people are living too long.”

Relatedly, it was my father, many years before this, explaining to me exactly what a late friend of his did professionally as an “actuary”.

As an insurance man, Dad expressed much of this in measures of financial risk. Among the things he told me was that his friend had more than once expressed concern about the eventual “bunching” of both private and state benefits to the elderly.

Sooner or later, he surmised, the country’s ability to sustain largely non and partially contributory support for those who had reached the final phases of their lives would be depleted, especially within the context of a country where there is a widening gap between the young and an increasing number of old people who are tending to live longer and longer.

Such a revelation more than 40 years ago came to mind when I read Raphael John-Lall’s Sunday Guardian interview with gerontologist, Dr Jennifer Rouse.

“The last cohort of the “baby boomer” generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, are due to retire in 2024, followed closely by the Generation X-ers, a significant number of who are contract workers,” the article says.

To locate specific political responsibility for such an oversight is particularly problematic. Current protestations over the inevitability of extending the retirement age to 65, for purposes of NIS benefits, ought not to include a partisan flavour if people are inclined to be honest. Nobody seemed to seriously note what had been happening – multiple studies and seminars later.

An IPS feature published in my name in 1999 points to the fact that 21 years ago there had been concern by people such as Rouse and others that by the year 2005, people over the age of 60 would have accounted for 20 percent of the population – a situation that will eventually bring into jeopardy the ability of the state system to continue payment of benefits, at set levels, to the aged.

Today’s actual statistic for the elderly is closer to 15 percent, but it persists at a time when the stresses of the pandemic period are accentuating the impact of seriously compromised macro-economic conditions, and the fact of an ageing population.

The options remain limited. I can’t see how we can escape an effort to protect the integrity of national insurance as a reliable source of support to the aged. The real issue, though, would be to assure us that “we” won’t be consigned to the ranks of the forgotten.

There is evidence that a measure of forgetting occurs. There are even those who believe some culling during this crisis might well be a blessing in disguise. The words of Dr O’Neil Lewis bear repeating: “There is a feeling that people are living too long.” Are we?