KEVIN NORQUAY

‘‘Old age is worse with predators and pandemics lurking. At the time you might want to relax after a long working life, you must be more careful than ever.’’

Old age is meant to be all life On Golden Pond, relaxing in your twilight years as family frolic around you, only now the pond has gone dry, as Covid joins loneliness and insecurity as a frolic-killer.

Old age was always tough financially, mentally and physically as money and faculties ran down. Now it’s even worse with predators and pandemics lurking.

At the time you might want to relax after a long working life, you must be more careful than ever. As Covid restrictions come off, it’s time to pay tribute to the resilience of those who had more to fear than most.

Covid first: US statistics gathered even prior to Delta showed those aged 65 and older were 80 per cent of hospitalisations, with a 23-fold greater risk of death than those under 65. Those odds make you fret as a mask-less man approaches, or deter you from public outings altogether.

But wait, that’s not all. Visit the Age Concern website, and you’ll find links to waves of research on elder abuse, loneliness and social isolation.

If you’ve found Covid restrictions tough in 2021, imagine how badly older people have been affected. It’s been hard for most. If you’re older and alone, it’s harder.

Social networks have been severed. No family visits, no social shindigs in retirement villages. You’re bombarded with bleak news, with only the phone or Zoom as an outlet for your troubled mind.

And as you wonder who to trust, in gallop the untrustworthy.

Maybe they swoop rather than gallop, as they’re human vultures, scammers who target the vulnerable.

Police this week reported a ‘‘spate of telephone scams’’ aimed at older citizens in Waikato. Offenders convinced victims they were after a bank staffer suspected of wrongdoing, and it was safest to transfer money into Australia-based bank accounts. And that’s goodbye life savings. Elderly women, one in Thames and the other in Waihi, lost $46,000, while a Whitianga couple lost $25,000. One gave scammers uninterrupted access to banking and personal details.

Banks never ask for that type of help by phone, but people of a generation once lived in a different, more-trusting New Zealand, one where you could leave the house unlocked when you went out.

To some, internet banking is baffling and terrifying. Let’s not stop at banking. Life in general is hard work, with once-simple tasks now anything but.

A supermarket trip involves a mobile (or signing in), a mask and – at times – self packing, thanks to Covid procedures. When your shoulders and hips gave up the ghost a decade ago, that’s off-putting.

Some retirement villages absorb these tasks, rolling up much of the cost of living into regular bills, laying on transport and a ready-made community, so life is easier.

And yet not all is On Golden Pond there either; Parliament is considering if the law (enacted in 2003) around villages favours them too strongly over tenants.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is looking at a review, after Minister Poto Williams agreed it was warranted. More than 45,000 people live in retirement villages, with the average age 81. The industry is burgeoning as the boomers arrive in Super Gold Card land.

Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson urged the review, with villages largely opposed.

More than 40 per cent of residents have superannuation as their sole income, yet many have no say as to how much the village raises the fees or when money is returned after they exit.

They want better legal protection. It’s tricky for residents; complaining about a facility when you live in it is stressful.

Villages saw it differently, in their response to the Retirement Commissioner in March. Operator submissions were 92 per cent against a full review of the legislative framework saying ‘‘it was not warranted’’.

And so, a battle for the aged looms.

Now it’s even worse with predators and pandemics lurking. At the time you might want to relax after a long working life, you must be more careful than ever.