For months, now, the messaging around Covid-19 has lumped “the elderly and the vulnerable” into one faceless mass.

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that so many on social media have forgotten that they’re talking about real people when they call for them to be locked away. When they casually remark that the virus is far more dangerous to some than others. When they suggest that the UK government should fall back upon their controversial “herd immunity” tactics.

What they’re really doing, though, is suggesting that our parents, our grandparents, our elderly neighbours should remain shuttered up inside their homes for… well, forever. Or until a vaccine is found, at least.

It feels as if they’re suggesting, too, that all those who have survived cancer, organ transplants, autoimmune diseases, and more should be – for want of a better word – sacrificed for the greater good.

Because that’s what herd immunity actually means, doesn’t it? It means allowing the virus to run free, or at least partially free, so that enough people get it, overcome it, and become immune.

Sure, it would eventually (hopefully) mean that Covid stops spreading through the population. But just think how many lives would be lost in the process. Just look at the UK’s coronavirus death tally from earlier on in the year. That stark number is exactly why the government halted herd immunity plans the first time around.

Lockdown: The elderly aren’t expendable, so why do we talk about Covid as if they are?