The elderly need food deliveries

The argument

Elderly people are among those most at risk during the coronavirus pandemic, and many have responded by taking precautions — chief among them avoiding supermarkets, where the combination of crowds, enclosed space and unavoidable contact turns an ordinary errand into a real hazard. The precaution is sensible, but it removes the way most people obtain food, and the need it leaves behind does not go away. Food delivery is what fills the gap. Meals on Wheels and comparable services already existed for people who could not shop or cook for themselves, and they are now seeing a marked increase in the use of their services as a much larger group turns to them. These organisations were sized for the caseload they had rather than the one they now face, and the result is that they are stretched thin: more recipients, the same vehicles and kitchens, and in many cases fewer of the volunteers they depend on, since the volunteer base itself tends to be older and is taking the same precautions. That combination is what makes the need specific and actionable. The problem is not a shortage of food, or of organisations able to distribute it, but a shortage of people to carry it the last distance. Volunteering at a local Meals on Wheels or an alternative food delivery service relieves exactly that constraint, and the help reaches people with no straightforward alternative — someone who cannot risk a supermarket and has nobody to shop for them depends on the service arriving. Among the ways of helping during the pandemic, this one is concrete, immediate and matched to a gap that has actually opened. Because the elderly need food deliveries and the services providing them are under strain, helping the elderly is where effort is most usefully directed.

Context

The elderly are at increased risk of medical complications and death resulting from COVID-19. Food delivery organizations are seeing an uptick in the use of their services as old people attempt to avoid public spaces.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The elderly have already had their time in the spotlight as it were. From both an economic and moral perspective, we should be channelling resources to help the younger segments of the population. Their survival generates more economic returns (they have more working years ahead of them) and more years of life. If we are able to prevent two old people from catching coronavirus and dying, we may grant them two more decades of life. If we are able to prevent two young people from dying, together, we may be able to grant them more than a century of lived experiences that they would never have had.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] We should help those that provide the largest return on investment.