Death in Old Age : How a Pandemic Makes Us Rethink Mortality

The book examines the issue of old age in death in contemporary Western societies in the pre-Covid-19 period and during the recent pandemic. It aims to prompt rethinking of societal obligations to the aged and to reflect on ways of handling death in old age. By exposing which values and orientations towards death in old age have been reinforced and which have been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic, the book offers a platform to debate society’s responsibility to old people and to reflect on the legacy of the pandemic for the quality of the end of life care. It raises ethical and philosophical implications of the normalization the idea that during health crises some lives need to be prioritised over others. The book, by drawing from an extensive literature, from sociology, psychology, philosophy gerontology to death studies, throws light on the cultural values by which we understand mortality. Whilst the book’s focus is on the UK, its argument, that the marginalization of death in old age impacts on the quality of the end of life care, has enormous implications for other cultures in terms of how old age tends to be ignored and how they were neglected during the pandemic.