I sat in the ICU and watched my grandmother die while she was hooked to a ventilator. 

It was many years ago. She was already struggling with a long list of physical ailments when she had a heart attack. In the emergency department, when the doctors asked her if she wanted to be ventilated, she said yes. 

I returned to the ICU the next morning. My mother, who had been a nurse for many years, pointed out all the indicators that my grandmother was dying. I looked to my aunt, who was also in the medical profession. She nodded her concurrence. 

By a stroke of luck, I was alone with my grandmother when her specialist of many years arrived for his morning rounds. I listened as he reviewed charts with the ICU staff. “What, she’s still alive!?” I heard him exclaim. “Shut off the ventilator.”

My heart stopped and my blood ran cold. My only salvation was that none of her children were present to hear those words.  

She fought bitterly against death until the very end. As her skin turned grey and her lips blue, she kept throwing both hands up in the air, as if to say, “I can’t believe this is happening!” But I’ll never know because she could not speak with the ventilation tube down her throat.

Though for some time I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone what had happened, I was not angry with her doctor. For years the medical system and her will to live had kept her alive. But it was completely unrealistic to have such expectations that the medical system should still be expected to do so. While we never have to forget, at some point, we need to let go. 

• 

I cannot help but draw parallels between that personal family situation and the macro global expectations of sacrifice demanded today. 

The overwhelming majority of people who contract COVID-19 recover without any need for hospitalization, or even medical treatment. Twenty-five to 50 percent of people who become infected may never even develop symptoms, or become only slightly ill. Yet people have been required to stop working, to stop their schooling, to just stop. Everyone has been ordered to put our lives on hold for an unknown duration to protect only a small number that are really at risk. 

Why do we continue to accept actions equivalent to a machete swipe when a precision cut with a paring knife would be more reasonable?

Mandatory isolation and work stoppages could be applied to those most at risk. There may well be grumbles about the arbitrariness of targeting some but not others, and yes, there would be a greater risk of serious illness or death. But at some point, we need to say stop. We need to accept that the cost of trying to save everybody is not just too great, it is unrealistic. 

Governments are spending trillions of dollars on aid to mitigate against the devastating economic effects that their unfocused gambits are having on their citizens. They are borrowing this money, ballooning the national debts that must be borne by future generations.

We’ve all heard of the sandwich generation: the group of adults that are the financial and medical caregivers to their elderly parents while simultaneously also being the caregivers to their minor or adult children. 

I feel a different generational pressure. As we take extreme measure to protect older generations at all costs, we place a crushing debt on younger generations. 

Does this sound familiar? It should. My and older generations have polluted air, land, and sea to the point that the earth’s ability to host current and future generations is in serious jeopardy. Despite the cries of younger generations, we haven’t stopped.

Now, with governments incurring trillions of dollars in debt to compensate for the unfocused approach we have taken to COVID-19, we are bestowing upon younger generations an economic calamity, just as we have bestowed upon them an environmental crisis. 

Just how much do you expect your grandchildren to bear?