Of course Joe will probably use this group to second guess everything Trump does and label it as wrong or bad or insufficient. Given that Joe is already been pretty negative about the travel bans which experts say have significantly helped Americans it's clear that he's more concerned about scoring political points that protecting your health.
What's interesting is that Joe Biden has chosen Ezekiel Emanuel to be on the committee.
Emanuel has written an article in the Atlantic where he says he wants to die at age 75 and that we should want to die at that age too.
The first obvious point is that according to Ezekiel Joe Biden should have died 2 years ago. Not particularly the message that Joe wants to project one would think.
But what's worse is that Emanuel clearly believes in the old Nazi idea of a life not worth living. That is human life is not intrinsically good and valuable but only good to the extent that it is pleasant and/or serves a purpose.
To be clear Emanuel isn't saying we should kill the Jews or political dissidents, like Hitler and Stalin did, but he is saying that the old should die.
He acts as though all people 75 and older are falling apart and incapable of doing anything. He writes:
"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."
We all know elderly people who are in fact less capable but we also know those who are fully capable. In fact if Emanuel were right it would be a compelling reason to declare that neither Bernie or Biden are acceptable Presidential candidates since they're both looking at their 75th birthdays in their rear view mirrors.
Oddly Trump would be acceptable to Emanuel since he's a youthful 73 years old.
But of course while Biden might be suffering from mental problems due to age we don't see that in Bernie or in most elderly people.
In my own life one of my aunts lived on her own in her own home until she was 94 and she was perfectly lucid and competent until the day she died. A neighbor of my parents also lived in her own house and ran her own affairs until she was in her 90s. My father died at 78 being fully competent and walking into the hospital for his heart surgery.
This malevolent idea that all the elderly are drooling simpletons is absurd but even if it were true it wouldn't mean we should deny basic care to them.
But that's what Emanuel is calling for:
A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.
While it's true that Emanuel is talking about what he will supposedly do--though we'll see if when faced with death he'll actually cling to life--he's also encouraging us to do the same.
Dying in one's sleep is relatively painless; dying from an infection that wracks you with pain and slowly chokes you to death is not. Yet Emanuel has no problem saying that people should die decades earlier than they need to.
He says he'll eschew machines keeping him alive which is fine but his real message is that the elderly aren't really human and can be killed via neglect.
Given that the primary people at risk from corona virus are the elderly the fact that Joe Biden as picked Emanuel to advice him on how to deal with the virus is telling.
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