Biden COVID Advisor: Those Older Than 75 Should Get Vaccines Last
One of Joe Biden’s early actions after corporate media claimed he was president-elect was to name members of a task force to recommend actions about COVID-19. Most of the names were neither famous nor infamous, but for one: Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, whose fame comes from family connections (he’s the brother of former Obama chief-of-staff and former Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel) and the infamy gained from a 2014 Atlantic article, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” . . .
In a Science article in September, in which Emanuel argued for distributing vaccine doses overseas out of “fairness” and argued against “vaccine nationalism” in which countries kept “too much” of the vaccine for themselves, he wrote, “we propose using Standard Expected Years of Life Lost (SEYLL) averted per dose of vaccine as the metric for premature death.”
This method renders the lives of people who have already lived beyond their country’s life expectancy as valueless. In the CDC’s definition, the cut-off is even sooner: only deaths occurring before age 75 are deemed “premature” and counted towards “years of potential life lost.” Yes, the very vaccine priority model Emanuel proposes would exclude those over age 75 from receiving a COVID vaccine, at least until availability is widespread and no shortages exist, globally.
Everyone’s talking about the coming depletion of the Social Security Trust Fund, and whether that will occur in 2035, as forecast before the pandemic, or much sooner. But the Medicare Part A Trust Fund (that’s the hospitalization benefits piece) is expected to be depleted in 2024, according to CBO calculations reflecting the impact of the COVID response.
If you’re doing the math, that’s within Biden’s term in office. And this is not something that can be waved away — it will be necessary for Congress to pass legislation authorizing new money to be spent or costs to be cut, or the federal government will need to run a bill backlog. This means that Emanuel’s status in the Biden administration, and his potential influence, matters more than just his voice in vaccine distribution. (Read more from “Biden COVID Advisor: Those Older Than 75 Should Get Vaccines Last” HERE)
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