Ageing and death in the time of covid
During the Covid-19 pandemic death has entered the lives of everybody every day. Has it changed how we think about death? Has it become more familiar or more terrifying?
Main content
The first objective of many governments during the pandemic was to prevent deaths rather than, for example, reduce suffering. Was this the right priority? Many people have died in hospitals and care homes without their friends and families because of government rules. Were these the right rules? Increasingly death, a normal part of life, has been medicalised. Is this progress? Many people, including many health professionals, think that we have an unhealthy relationship with death. Might advanced care plans or assisted dying improve the relationship? The webinar will cover many aspects of aging and death, and reflect on how experiences under the shadow of covid may impact a society’s relationship with these components of life.
To attend, please register at the Zoom registration link. All welcome.
5.00 Welcome: Fiona Godlee (editor BMJ)
Session 1:
Chair: Fiona Godlee
5.10 An account of two deaths during the pandemic - Kate Clanchy (writer and academic)
5.20 Age and dying from covid-19: an international perspective - Danny Dorling (University of Oxford)4.30 Compression of morbidity. Fact or fantasy? - Carol Brayne (University of Cambridge)
5.40 Death alone in intensive care. The ultimate Illichian death - Seamus O’Mahony (retired gastroenterologist and author of “The Way We Die Now”)
Session 2:
Chair: Allyson Pollock (Newcastle)The “denial of death” hypothesis in the age of covid - Laura Tradii (University of Cambridge)
6.00 Terror management theory and the pandemic - Sheldon Solomon (author of “The Worm at the Core”)
Death in care homes - Bettina Husebø, (University of Bergen):
The Kerala Experience - Suresh Kumar (Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kerala)
Session 3:
Chair: TBA
6.30 Inequalities in care for the dying: the world's biggest global divide? - Felicia Marie Knaul, (University of Miami, lead author of the Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and the Relief of Suffering)
6.40 Are all deaths equal? - Richard Smith5.50 A Chronicle of deaths not foretold - George Davey Smith (University of Bristol)
Session 4:
Questions/discussion: Chair: TBA