90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Fun Fact:

Biden's Coronavirus Advisor Wants Old People To Die, He Told the Elderly to Avoid Flu Shots, Vaccines

Former Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic nominee — may not openly support full-on socialized medicine, but his choice of advisors on a new Public Health Advisory Committee is very suspicious. Biden announced the committee as part of his plan to fight the coronavirus, but one of his advisors, Ezekiel Emanuel, published an op-ed in The Atlantic saying he wants to die at age 75 because life simply isn't worth living after that point. The op-ed isn't just personal, either — it attempts to convince the reader that death may be preferable to living in advanced age.

In fact, Emanuel's op-ed goes on to advise the elderly to refuse life-saving medical care — the exact kind of care needed to combat the coronavirus. Given the fact that the coronavirus poses the greatest risk for the elderly, Biden's choice of Emanuel is troubling — if not downright terrifying.

"Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss," Emanuel writes. "It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."

Ouch! Try telling older voters that their lives are not worth living in November — see how that will go over at the polls. Yet Emanuel's op-ed is not just insulting to the dignity of the elderly — it actively encourages them to avoid medical care.

Biden's coronavirus advisor actively encourages the elderly to "think of an alternative to succumbing to that slow constriction of activities and aspirations imperceptibly imposed by aging."

What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs.

Yes, Biden's coronavirus advisor encouraged people over 75 to avoid flu shots. Joe Biden himself is 77. Yet Emanuel's advocacy against basic health treatments extends further:

Hayward: China Threatens to Cut Off Medicine, Throw America into ‘Mighty Sea of Coronavirus’

An article in China’s state-run Xinhua news service last week threatened to impose restrictions on medical exports so the United States will be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus.”

The Xinhua piece, published on March 4 and entitled “Be Bold: The World Owes China a Thank You,” was largely composed of standard Chinese Communist Party propaganda about how the world stands in awe of China’s amazing response to the coronavirus outbreak. Naturally, it neglected to mention how the virus ran wild in the first place because of Chinese bureaucratic incompetence and cover-ups.

The Chinese have become as determined to wipe the first months of the coronavirus from the pages of history as they are to keep anyone from remembering Tiananmen Square. The Xinhua article made a point of noting that China has leverage over the U.S. and Europe because it can restrict the supply of medicines that were unwisely outsourced to China in the heyday of globalism.

The Chinese paper explicitly threatened to do so if Americans and Europeans continue criticizing its response to the coronavirus or act too slowly to lift travel bans and other restrictions the Chinese government dislikes, but then cushioned the threat in the Communist Party’s usual creepy way by insisting China is filled with so much “love” for the world that it would never harm the people of other countries, or even “insult” them the way China has been “insulted” during the coronavirus epidemic.

One of the insults harped on by Xinhua was Walter Russell Mead’s February 3 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” a piece that prompted Beijing to expel Wall Street Journal reporters and begin complaining incessantly that Mead’s piece was insulting and racist. According to Xinhua’s March 4 editorial, Mead, his column, and the entire Wall Street Journal publication are now “infamous.”

Although most commentary has focused on the “mighty sea of coronavirus” threat, the Xinhua piece is also interesting as an early example of the Chinese Communist propaganda crusade to portray the coronavirus as originating in the United States and claim it was brought to Wuhan by the U.S. Army. Xinhua muttered darkly on March 4 about Americans “returning from Wuhan, China” right before the outbreak exploded and complained it was therefore hypocritical and insulting for the U.S. to...