Friday, December 11, 2020

Which lives matter most?

They've been having quite a time of it out in Alberta with the "second wave," possibly because they came out of the first wave relatively unscathed, leaving an abundance of low-hanging fruit lingering in the long term care homes. In reading up on the pandemic in Alberta I learned that the average age of a covid death in the province is 82, and will typically have at least three co-morbidities, the most common of which is dementia.

Those are the people we've been killing the economy for in order to "save lives." There isn't a jurisdiction in the world where anything remotely resembling lockdown would have been contemplated based on the mortality rates of those under age 65. Deaths globally are massively skewed towards the elderly. 

Ironically, society otherwise doesn't give a whole lot of thought, let alone support, to the elderly. Long term care institutions are systemically underfunded throughout the capitalist democracies, often to the point of criminal negligence. Until the pandemic, nobody much cared.

That's all changed! We gotta get the deadly virus under control! It's cutting years off the wait lists at the long-term care facilities! OMG!!!

LOCK'r DOWN TIGHT!!! MASK UP YOU SELFISH BASTARD!!!... 

So, which lives suddenly matter most in this time of pestilence? 

Not black lives. Not "all" lives.... the lives that matter most are those oldsters lying neglected in nursing homes, who don't know who or where they are, and are oblivious to the fact that their diaper hasn't been changed for two days.


According to the economics of this pandemic, those are the lives that matter most.



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