“Eating at the table with the whole family is no longer possible. Lola has a hyperfocus on eating sounds and gets completely frustrated and furious when she hears us eating. Last year she reached a limit. We were having dinner and Lola lost it. She started screaming and crying that our eating noises were driving her crazy and that no one understood what it was like for her. That evening we searched the Internet for “going craxy over noise” and we found the condition misophonia.”

It must have been late May when I saw a brief interview on BBC World News with British historian Simon Schama about his latest book, Foreign Bodies. The book deals with the history of the development of vaccines. In the interview, he mentioned that he came up with the idea for the book during the COVID-19 pandemic. The widespread skepticism regarding the developed vaccines against the coronavirus made him wonder if this distrust was specific to this era. Foreign Bodies shows that since the inception of vaccines, people have been wary of them.

In the Dutch province of Drenthe, only 14 percent of all people over 70 had made arrangements for the final phase of their life. This prompted the launch of a special project. Now, half of all vulnerable people over 75 have discussed with their general practitioner what they want and particularly what they don’t want as the end approaches.