Very sad to hear of his death.
However he is one who falls (along with, say, Des OâConnor) into the category âgosh, was he still alive?â
He was only 94âŠnot 124.
Iâm sorry, I am not being ageist but âonlyâ 94? Really?
If he was a healthy 94 heâd have another 3-4 years life expectancy on average, had he not contracted Covid.
Iâm with Jane on this one. Natural lifespan with optimal health is 120 years. Unfortunately almost no-one has optimal health, they are just barely ânot sickâ most of the time.
If he was a healthy 94 maybe heâd have survived?
âCoronavirus: Cheers as 94-year-old recovers from COVID-19 in Spain | World News | Sky Newsâ https://news.sky.com/video/coronavirus-cheers-as-94-year-old-recovers-from-covid-19-in-spain-11968369
Maybe 110, but thereâs a lot of genetics involved.
I donât know dâEstaingâs state of health but it does not follow that because he succumbed he was unhealthy. Elderly people with health problems have survived, healthy individuals (of all ages) have died.
As to maximum longevity - there is debate what the limit is but I suspect that it is not 120 years - certainly not for everyone. Even if you donât smoke, donât drink, keep your weight down and take plenty of exercise you can still fall to cancer, dementia and any number of other ailments which are genetically âprogrammed inâ for some people.
Ah, but I would question what is meant by âhealthyâ. Most people these days lead far from truly healthy lives.
We have lost all sense of what an optimal weight for a human being is.
Fitness is now an optional extra / hobby which people pay for and wear strange clothes doing.
Our diet is calamitous. Even if we believe we are eating âhealthyâ foods they are hugely depleted in vitamins and minerals and trace elements.
We have poured harmful chemicals into our environments and our unborn children.
We live in a soup of EMR.
We lead appallingly stressful lives where anxiety, depression and anger are now the norm and we seek addictive and medical solutions for the suppression of these emotions.
No wonder our immune systems are compromised and seemingly healthy people die. âHealthâ at best, in our modern world, is absence of pain and sickness. That is not health.
Maybe I am being thick,but if thatâs the case why are people living longer than they did years ago,when there were less environmental factors affecting longevity?
Because weâve learnt to manage the childhood diseases so far fewer people die young (bear in mind these statistics are averages) and weâve learnt to keep people living longer without any thought for the quality of their lives. My MiL spent her last eight years in a nursing home after a bad stroke following a routine hip replacement op. The kindest thing for her would have been a good dose of pneumonia, but of course we donât let that happen anymore.
On the whole, in the western world at least, working conditions are greatly improved. (Look at the statistics for deaths in salt mines in earlier times - you donât have to go back far.)
Fewer people smoke.
We have medicalised long life, so people are kept alive who have/have had cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, etc etc. What we have not learnt to do is to live healthfully and optimally so that disease is kept at bay.
and sometimes not helped by doddery old nonagenarians and centenarians who claim their secret to eternal life is a tot (or two) of risky whiskey before going to bed 
Yes Sue you described our world
The only fly in the ointment, The Rolling Stones 
And that may well be true - the key thing in all of this is our mind - if we believe we will live forever on that nightly tot of whisky we probably will.
This was in response to paul saying âwas he still aliveââŠit was only a couple of years ago that he was leading a programme to re-imagine Europe so was still in the news. And even more recently for fondling a journalistâs bottom, but thatâs much less laudable.
It was supposed to be in jest you know 
I hadnât noted that he was in the news recently - but, then, that is probably something to do with the British mediaâs lack of interest in European affairs.
Our 94 year old neighbour still runs his own sheep farm⊠does his own laundry (and irons it)⊠mostly does his own cooking and has a wonderful sense of humour⊠he seems ageless 
Yes, but they are not 124 - they just look 124 