I have followed so many debates and discussions about assisted dying and euthanasia that I had almost begun to get the impression that there was a sort of death-wish among certain sectors of society. We looked with dismay at events in Belgium and the Netherlands where, it seemed, doctors were permitted to end life because a person was depressed, or considered life not worth living to an advanced age. But the advent of this coronavirus emergency has revealed something much more positive: that there is an overwhelming, general instinct to preserve and protect human life. Some older commentators have suggested that people over 70 need not be protected at all costs. Matthew Parris, the Times columnist and former Conservative MP, is one of the writers who has been making this point: he feels he is entitled to do so as he is now in that demographic himself. Those past the three-score-years-and-ten are moving towards the departure lounge anyway: should the economic future of younger generations be sacrificed to spare some oldsters, who are evidently more vulnerable to the infection? (Most of those who have died have been over 70, or have underlying health problems.) Yet social media like Twitter and Facebook have been full of text messages about older people being valued and loved, and how deeply unjust and callous it would be not to give them every possible protection and care. Especially around Mother’s Day last Sunday, floods of messages appeared saying how ardently elderly mums and grannies were cherished. I have been genuinely touched by how often that view has been expressed – and it’s a counterpoint to the creeping death-cult in the assisted-suicide discourse. Actually, if it does come to stark choices about medical care and facilities, I do think that younger people should have priority. They have more responsibilities and their vigor and energies will serve the common good more widely. But that is the language of priorities, not the pessimism of deliberately bringing life to an end.