The bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel — a prime architect of Obamacare — is the most famous person on the committee. Why is that important? Emanuel made headlines a few years ago by writing in The Atlantic that he wants to die at age 75 — younger than Joe Biden is today — and he thinks we should want that too. From his piece:
Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. 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.
That’s a terrible attitude about the elderly, a denigrating “quality of life” judgmentalism that deems the value of the old as having less importance than that of younger people.
And here’s the irony. Who are most at risk of death or serious illness from the coronavirus? The very elderly Emanuel sees as having lives that are “feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”
Yeah, that’s comforting.
UM… CAN WE START A STAY IN CHINA PROGRAM FOR COMMUNISTSDEMOCRATSREPORTERS INSANE SHILLS FOR TOTALITARIANISM? Good, he can stay there.
And if they’re not in China, we’ll be more than happy to send them there. I’m sure we’ll get lots of contributors to that Go Fund Me. We’ll even send them a nice farewell fruit basket with a pineapple on top, right?
More than just dodging responsibility, the Chinese government reportedly has pushed propaganda that the United States started the virus.
The Washington Post reported last week that China’s communist government was promoting conspiracy theories online about U.S. involvement.
“In recent days, run-of-the-mill mockery of the White House has taken a darker turn as the Chinese internet became inundated by the theory, subtly stoked by the Chinese government, that the coronavirus originated in the United States,” the newspaper said. “The U.S. government, one version of the theory goes, has been covering up mounting cases, and perhaps thousands of deaths, by classifying them as regular flu.”
There have been false internet rumors in the United States about China as well, but there is a clear difference, said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow for Asian studies at The Heritage Foundation.
“The problem here is that this seems to be echoes of Soviet information warfare,” Cheng told The Daily Signal. “America has a free press, from CNN to Alex Jones, The New York Times, and the National Enquirer. China’s press is state run. So these rumors are not random charges.”
The goal of the Chinese government is to define the virus as being as distant from government leaders and the Communist Party as possible, Cheng said.
The Chinese government says calling the coronavirus the “Wuhan Virus” is racist.
Specifically, The Global Times, which Wikipedia describes as “a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper, commenting on international issues from a nationalistic perspective” headlines this: “Labeling China as a ‘disease incubator’ is unscientific and racist: experts.”
“Regionalizing pandemics is not only unscientific and potentially racist, but also ignores China’s contribution of research progress in infectious disease control around the world, they stressed.”
And faster than you can say “identity politics,” CNN abruptly began to toe the Chinese Communist party line. One CNNer after another began saying that, yes indeed, the phrase “Wuhan Virus” or “Chinese Virus” is….racist.
But as the Media Research Center quickly and vividly illustrated — oops! Yes indeed, as this video illustrates, no less than one CNN host after another had been using the very term that suddenly, [all] of a sudden, was now racist. Oops indeed.
Yes, I know. I KNOW. All sorts of people have assured you that Italy’s health care is better than ours. What they’re not telling you is that part of their parameter for “better” is a robust component of government financed and run health care.
And by the way if one more communist democrat tells me that this Xi-Flu means we need single-payer healthcare, I’m going to lose whatever little cool I have left. The only thing government-run health does better than the free market is kill people. In fact, that’s the one thing government does better than the free market always. The more power you give government the more chances of mass graves. They might be filled with grandma’s triaged out of existence, or with political opponents, or with yes, but the more powerful the government the greater chance they exist.
And if like us you’re a rare-stocker-upper (look, I don’t like shopping. I tend to rush in, grab something approximately what I want and rush back out. If it’s the wrong size/color/composition, I then try to make it work, somehow) and have run down on something, look to the bottom wrung discount stores. I understand that they’re now stripped, but we found tp and bleach wipes at Big Lots when everywhere else was cleaned out. They were even having a sale. It’s almost like all this panic is a luxury. Shrug.
Emergency doctors in Italy, the European epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, were this week given guidance on “catastrophe medicine”. As the number of patients requiring intensive care balloons and hospitals run out of intensive care beds, doctors were instructed to “aim to guarantee intensive treatment to patients with the greatest chance of therapeutic success”.
With the grim task of selecting patients unlikely to survive, Italy’s health authorities have pleaded with the countries’ friends and allies for emergency supplies. On Thursday, they finally arrived — from Shanghai. The China Eastern flight brought a medical team and 31 tonnes of supplies including ventilators.
Beijing’s gesture has reinforced a perceived lack of support from Europe, compounded by a communications blunder by the European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, who implied on Thursday it was no longer her job to keep Italy in the euro.
When Italy asked for urgent medical supplies under a special European crisis mechanism no EU country responded. Fearful of its own shortages, Germany initially banned the export of medical masks and other protective gear. 3M, a producer, said the German restrictions had made it impossible to supply the Italian market. Berlin subsequently relaxed the export rules, but then Austria closed its borders to people arriving from Italy unless they could prove they were virus-free.
The rebuffs are nourishing resentment that Italy has been abandoned by its European friends. It is a perception that has taken root over a decade, of a currency union that lacks collective solidarity and stifles growth as Italy confronted migrant flows from Africa and the Middle East. This, in turn, has fuelled the rise of Eurosceptic nationalists such as far-right firebrand Matteo Salvini.
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