Associate professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Associate professor, EPI@LUND (Epidemiology, Population Studies, and Infrastructures at Lund University), Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
J Aging Soc Policy. 2021 Jul-Oct;33(4-5):359-379. doi: 10.1080/08959420.2021.1925042. Epub 2021 May 6.
The Swedish response to the COVID-19 pandemic included age-based recommendations of voluntary quarantine specifically for those 70 years of age or older. This paper investigates the experiences of a sudden change of policy in the form of an age restriction that trumped the contemporary active aging ideal. A web-based qualitative survey was conducted in April 2020. Through manual coding of a total of 851 responses, six different ways of relating to the age-based recommendations were identified. The results show that age is not an unproblematic governing principle. Instead, in addition to protecting a vulnerable group, the age-based recommendation meant deprivation of previously assigned individual responsibility and, consequently, autonomy. It is shown how respondents handled this tension through varying degrees of compliance and resistance. Findings highlight the importance of continuously tracking the long-term consequences of age-based policy to avoid negative self-image and poorer health among older adults.
瑞典对 COVID-19 大流行的应对措施包括针对 70 岁及以上人群的基于年龄的自愿隔离建议。本文研究了一种突然改变政策的方式，即年龄限制推翻了当代积极老龄化的理想。2020 年 4 月进行了一项基于网络的定性调查。通过对总共 851 份回复的手动编码，确定了六种不同的与基于年龄的建议相关的方式。结果表明，年龄并不是一个没有问题的治理原则。相反，除了保护弱势群体之外，基于年龄的建议还意味着剥夺了之前赋予个人的责任和自主权。研究结果表明，受访者是如何通过不同程度的遵守和抵制来处理这种紧张关系的。研究结果强调了持续跟踪基于年龄的政策的长期后果的重要性，以避免老年人出现负面的自我形象和更差的健康状况。
