Hospice Workers Should Be at the Front of the Vaccine Line Too
NY Bill Would Hospitalize Infectious Sick Forcibly without Hearing
D.C. to Legalize Vaccination of 11-Year-Olds Without Parental OK
Progressives think the state is better at raising children than parents. For example, in California and some other states, children can obtain abortions without parental knowledge. Now, Washington, D.C.’s uber-leftwing city council has passed a bill permitting children down to age 11 to obtain vaccinations–i.e., medical interventions–without parental knowledge or consent. From the Epoch Times story: Bill 23-171 would allow for children as young as 11 to consent to all vaccines on the government schedule. At the same time, the school, health care provider, and the parent’s private insurance would conceal the child’s vaccination from parents or guardians—who would have no knowledge of the vaccination unless the child told them. The bill states that the minor must be “capable of meeting the informed consent standard,” which would be determined by a physician. The law expands the existing scope of schools/doctors ability to impose medical interventions on children without parental participation beyond sexual matters: Under existing D.C. law, minors over the age of 12 can consent—without parental permission—to health care and medical procedures including mental health, contraceptive services, prenatal care, and abortions. However, the existing law is almost exclusively related to sexual issues and is narrow compared to what the new bill would open up, said Dawn Richardson, director of advocacy of the National Vaccine Information Center, which tracks vaccine-related health issues. The arrogance could choke a dinosaur. By definition, an 11-year-old is incapable of informed consent. Good grief, getting a vaccine wouldn’t even be these children’s idea. The only means of escape for parents would seem to be private schools or homeschooling. Unsurprisingly, progressives are implacably opposed to those approaches to education too when generally unfettered by the state, and I suspect would move to ban home schooling if they thought they could get away with it (as has been done in a few European countries). Progressives can’t stand it when parents decide on what is best for their own children if it conflicts with progressive agendas. In short, progressives insist on control. The bill must have a second reading and pass one more vote, expected on November 10.
Autonomy or Abandoning the Mentally Ill?
More Evidence of ‘Organs on Demand’ System in China
China has been repeatedly and credibly accused of organ harvesting the Falun Gong and other political prisoners, usually for the black market, in which rich foreigners needing a transplant travel there and buy their lives at the cost of ending someone else’s. It is an evil trade, and one for which China should be shunned by the international community. Now, we have even more evidence that China has the ability to obtain organs on demand. A Chinese woman living in Japan was flown there for a heart transplant and was able to have four made available for transplant in ten days. From the Epoch Times story: “The question is: who is the source for these 4 hearts,” said Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of the medical ethics advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. In the United States, patients generally waited for around 6.9 months for a matching heart donation, according to the latest government data from 2018. At this rate, to get four matching hearts for the same person—meaning four people who donated their organs after they died at the ICU or in fatal accidents—may take around two years, he noted. One expert opined that the speed by which four compatible hearts were found for the patient indicates that the country can obtain organs on demand: What happened to Sun “is possible, though quite unusual, even within any well-functioning voluntary organ donation system,” said Jacob Lavee, a professor of surgery and heart transplantation department director at the Tel Aviv University in Israel. But within the context of China, he said, “such a cluster of organ donors within a few days raises high suspicions as to the nature of these donors.” It “rather follows an ‘on demand system,’” said Trey, calling Sun’s case “beyond explanation.” Beyond explanation, that is, if China had an ethical organ procurement system. Ethics, schmethics. The leaders of a despotism that eschews the sanctity of life, engages in forced labor/slavery to run its industrial manufacturing sector, and crushes religious minorities, aren’t going to worry about (to them) petty limitations such as morality and basic human decency. That’s on them. What’s on us is that we allow them to get away with it.
National Council on Disability Decries Hickson Death
Deadly COVID Discrimination against the Elderly in Sweden
Peter Singer Endorses Medical Discrimination Against Elderly in COVID Crisis
What If We Ignored Those Most Vulnerable to COVID-19?
“We locked down America with relative speed in March and we avoided all the worst predictions of the potential impact of the coronavirus, but we struggled to reach consensus anywhere on how to responsibly open back up.” If we had to write the one sentence history of the COVID-19 pandemic today, that would be something like America’s version. We don’t know how things will continue to play out, but what’s clear at the moment is that state and local leaders appear to be paralyzed. Unfortunately, those bearing some of the greatest costs of this ruling class paralysis aren’t likely the first to come to our minds. Their story is not told in the TL/DR history of this time. We’re witnessing the failure of the managerial bureaucracy when leaders like New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo direct that COVID-positive patients be placed amongst not-yet-infected vulnerable populations. This failure to protect our elders, owing at best to incompetence and at worst to willful indifference, is not limited to New York. Gregg Girvan and Avik Roy of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FROEPP) report on the truly grim national impact of COVID on our elders: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5.1 million people live in nursing homes or residential care facilities, representing 1.6% of the U.S. population. And yet residents in such facilities account for 40 percent of all deaths from COVID-19, for states that report such statistics. … On the flip side, it would appear that elderly individuals who do not live in nursing homes may be at a somewhat lower, while still significant, risk for hospitalization and death due to COVID-19. States and localities should consider reorienting their policy responses away from younger and healthier people, and toward the elderly, and especially elderly individuals living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. FROEPP is providing vital perspective on a policy failure that risks becoming an elder abuse crisis, insofar as our political leadership continues to fail in repurposing resources to protect those populations most at risk. On Twitter, Avik Roy addresses New York’s apparently low numbers: “A lot of people are speculating that NY state’s numbers are so low because NY counts as a hospital death a nursing home resident who dies in a hospital. We haven’t confirmed that this reporting approach is unique to NY. … But for those who are debating the merits of continuing full lockdowns, it’s worth considering the fact that 39% of #COVID19 deaths are occurring at self-contained residential facilities that host 1.6% of the U.S. population.” It’s worse when looking at the city level rather than the state level. ABC7 in Los Angeles reports that “51% of COVID-19 deaths in LA County were residents in ‘institutional settings’”. Instead of focusing like a laser on this aspect of the pandemic and how best to mitigate it, and instead of allowing all who feel able to do so to return to their businesses and their jobs, California’s political elite spent a significant portion of this week dealing with Alameda County mandarins attempting to keep Tesla, the state’s only automaker, shut down. We’re wasting this precious time. To the degree that lockdowns remain necessary, this time should be spent formulating plans to protect those populations most vulnerable for the foreseeable future. It should be astonishing that our political and media elite — so eager to lecture, so eager to tout their bona fides, so eager to proclaim the need to “believe science” — are ignoring what we know to be true about the populations most impacted thus far, and thus most deserving of our focused response. Dr. Charlie Camosy, author of Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People, gets it: How can we credibly speak about human dignity and the rights of marginalized peoples internationally when we fail to protect our own most vulnerable peoples at home? We must do better in living up to our principles. This virus is not going away. If you have a loved one in a nursing home or institutional care setting, consider sitting down at the kitchen table with your family to determine what it would take to bring your loved one home. I’d wager that many persons for whom institutional care once made sense no longer belong there. There likely will come a point at which the burdens and risk of such care will outweigh the benefits. Especially for those who may already have limited time left, wouldn’t it be better to share that time together and as a family, than leave them to die alone? When it comes to the failure of our political ruling class, we can only stare in amazement. But when it comes to the options available to us in our own lives to care for those we know who are most vulnerable, now is the time to act.