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Wednesday, 20 October 2021 07:59

Covid and Euthanasia

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The NSW Parliament considers granting a right to assisted dying.  To the old and infirm.  We are killing them off already.

 

Who actually needs euthanasia when you have Covid? 

This is a question that should be asked, as the NSW Parliament is now moving very much closer to considering the latest in the wave of “voluntary assisted dying” bills rolling through the Parliaments of Australia.

Now that the Shooters Party – they clearly like killing things, as the name suggests – has signalled its support for killing off the frail aged, because their voters said they wanted it, and now that the brand-new Catholic Premier of New South Wales has felt obligated to grant a conscience vote to Liberals, the passage of the legislation is all but guaranteed. 

The conscience vote is a let-out clause for leaders like The Dom and parties like the Liberal Party who once upon a time might have been expected to be against immoral acts like euthanasia and abortion.  It allows leaders to get away with saying as little as possible on life issues, especially those who do not wish to draw attention to their religion.  It also allows politicians to demand a “respectful” debate, in other words those who respect life from conception to natural death are gagged from calling out those who don’t believe in this.  It lets political parties off the hook.  It makes parliament a coward’s castle. 

Making something a “conscience vote” is also a guarantee that just about every woke bill will pass without demur.  Eventually.  Proponents of death legislation never take no for an answer.  They just keep coming back until they get their way.  In South Australia, they had seventeen goes before they got it through.

So, the Shooters Party did some newspaper advertising and social media vox popping.  Is this how our parliamentary representatives conveniently decide things now?  They don’t normally worry too much about consulting us.  Like making us show our papers in order to get into Big W.  No one asked me for my opinion on that one.  Once it was the role of the representative to make morally backboned stands on things, whatever the punters demanded.  Should we decide everything on popular opinion?  The death penalty, perhaps?  No, there isn’t much evidence at all that this is a “conscience” vote.  It is the worst form of low-information populism dressed up as principle.

Several political theorists have debated the proper role of the parliamentarian.  Here is Edmund Burke:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole—where not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.

In an era when politicians routinely break promises, lie (at times under oath), cover things up, do things without a mandate, a member of parliament “taking soundings” back home prior to forming a view on legislation might be seen as a good thing.  This, as Burke suggests, is an over-simplification of the role of our representatives, and a dangerous one at that.  Every single vote in the parliament should be a “conscience” vote.  No, Mr Shooters Party, putting an advert in the local paper or whipping round a survey is no substitute for deep, principled consideration of such important, indeed existential, questions.  Look where the “focus grouping” of the political process has gotten us.  Look where simply “getting stuff” for our electorates has taken us.  Community grant rorts, anyone?  No, there is a lot to be said for Burke’s formulation, and for thinking that the role of a parliamentarian is a bit larger than simply “delivering” for his or her constituents.

In any case, is there overwhelming popular support for euthanasia?  And at this time, right now?

In his admirable book, To Kill or Not to Kill (Austen Macauley Publishers, 2021), John Fleming has demonstrated that the so-called “overwhelming” popular support for euthanasia is bit of a myth.  There are ways and ways of asking people their views, as we know.  Fleming’s book nails a lot of other euthanasia canards as well.  All those NSW MPs about to wave this through should spend a day or so reading it.  It might give them pause.

As I have argued in Quadrant (September 2021):

Following the passage of the federal same-sex-marriage legislation in 2017, it seems that politicians of all persuasions across the land have felt suddenly empowered to turn open the floodgates in relation to ethical matters thought previously to be well beyond the realms of the achievable. The (dubious) evidence of a number of polls is said to show that a comfortable majority of Australians support this legislation. The evidence from such polling has been used as a key tool by supporters of euthanasia legislation, including Greenwich, to persuade their parliamentary colleagues to come on board.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/09/resisting-euthanasias-culture-of-death/

What of the likely outcome of the vote?

Given the politics of his ascension to the top job, how could Premier Perrottet not allow a conscience vote on euthanasia?  No doubt it was a bargaining chip in the deal-making that characterised his recent elevation to the top job.  Think for a minute who controls the new Premier.  Liberal “Moderates” like the mercifully departing Andrew Constance (though he said once before he was going, then didn’t) will, no doubt, support this vile legislation to a man and woman.  Doubtless, the Nats will roll over en masse as well.  They like this sort of thing too – homosexual marriage, infanticide-on-demand.  There isn’t a woke policy proposal to which the modern Nat does not instantly warm.  Naturally, serial offender Trevor Khan, surely the Nationals’ strangest ever MP with the mostly unlikely (for a Nat) political priorities, will be front and centre in the debate.

Inevitably, the euthanasia bill is being driven by the ubiquitous homosexual activist and green independent, Alex Greenwich.  The Animal Justice Party is on board.  Killing humans is ok but not koalas. 

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Twenty-eight MPs from across the NSW Parliament will support new legislation to legalise voluntary euthanasia, the highest number of co-sponsors to a bill in the history of any Australian parliament.

A rush for the needle.  Needles, indeed, are very popular with the political class at the moment.

Some, including the recently departed NSW Premier, have argued two things.  One, the NSW Parliament recently (2017) debated this legislation, so why again so soon?  And two, debating legislation that will allow the elderly to kill themselves is just a tiny bit off in the middle of a pandemic that is doing its own very effective job of killing off the intended “beneficiaries” of the bill.  Neither of these arguments carried even the remotest of weight with the good souls of the corrupt, mostly non-sitting NSW Parliament.  (Gladys might have mentioned as well the tastelessness of delivering legal suicide at a time of a massive, government policy-induced mental health crisis, a time in which we are all meant to worry about suicide ideation.  She might also have advised anyone in the debate to be cautious in appealing to the notion of “dying with dignity”, in view of the actions of the governments of Australia to deny the dying the opportunity even to see their loved ones.  Not too much dignity for the aged there).

As I said, Covid is doing its own pretty effective job of euthanasia.  Just as the once feared neutron bomb was designed to kill people while leaving buildings intact, the Wuhan virus goes for the old and the sick and conveniently leaves the young and the healthy largely intact.  Most of those who die from Covid – 95 per cent according to Joe Rogan, quoting published research – have, on average, four co-morbidities.  Around two thirds of Covid deaths in most countries are among those in nursing homes or hospitals.  The old and the sick.  We (at least those of us who are paying attention) are aware now that the average age of those who die from/with Covid is at or past their lifespan age.

Since the era of Covid, do parliaments really need to worry about giving those very old and/or in a great amount of pain from a terminal, or indeed a chronic illness, the right to legally kill themselves?  Covid is killing much of this cohort off already.  It isn’t much killing anyone else off.  Even the much-heralded vaccines that are so assiduously being marketed to all of us, especially the young and the healthy, in the biggest propaganda effort in living memory, are starting to kill people.  And I don’t only mean as a result of “adverse events”, which have been reported to have caused around 500 premature deaths in Australia, and tens of thousands overseas.  No, increasingly, as vaccine effectiveness goes off the cliff after a few months (as Alex Berenson, among many others, have pointed out, especially in relation to data on Israel and the United Kingdom), more and more of the vaccinated are dying, especially, you guessed it, among the aged and the ill.  Or look at Taiwan:

According to NTD news there are now 865 deaths linked to the COVID vaccines.
There are 845 deaths linked to the virus.

The vaccines no longer stop death from Covid, including among those who they are most targeted to help.  They are proving to be an admirable form of euthanasia.

Some of our much-heralded leaders have done their bit to help the killing of the aged and infirm from Covid.  Daniel Andrews did his bit, what with the whole quarantine fiasco.  This was industrial manslaughter on a grand scale.  The Guardian reported last year that the Commission of Inquiry into the Victorian quarantine-related deaths heard evidence that:

The failures in Victoria’s “hastily assembled” hotel quarantine are “responsible” for the state’s 768 deaths and 18,418 cases since the end of May [2020].

Just like the unlamented former Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who, through his beyond-negligent moving of Covid-positive people into aged care homes in his State, must be considered among America’s most notorious serial killers of the elderly. 

As was reported in the United States in February:

Outrage over Cuomo’s decisions — first, to require nursing homes to accept Covid-19-positive patients when New York’s hospitals were overflowing, and then, to hide data about deaths of nursing home residents — has engulfed Albany in recent weeks. Court orders, leaks, and investigations revealed that Cuomo dramatically and intentionally understated the pandemic’s toll on nursing home residents in New York.

Respected (until recently, that is) experts like Mike Yeadon, formerly a research scientist and senior executive at Pfizer, no less, have claimed that large numbers of old people in aged care facilities and hospitals have died, not from Covid, but as the result of doses of the anti-viral drug Remdesevir and the drowsy-drug Midazolam. 

https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/11/dr-mike-yeadon-midazolam-remdesivir-do-not-comply/

In the USA, this has the imprint of Anthony Fauci on it.  Also look at the allegations in Australia, reported by The Guardian:

The aged care regulator is investigating [in August 2020] a Melbourne aged care home following reports it used sedatives to manage the behaviour of some residents who had tested positive for Covid-19.

Manage the behaviour?

Or perhaps they were whipped onto a ventilator.  Called out by critics of Covid policy as “deadly protocols”.  Yet, at the same time, those who contract Covid – again, it is mostly the old and the sick – are denied effective (for many) treatments like Ivermectin.  In Australia, denying effective treatments to those with Covid is official policy.  Again, for the aged, this is euthanasia.  I suppose, in view of the appalling attention by politicians to problems in the aged care sector, should any of this come as a surprise?

Then there is the whole debate over disgraceful “do not revive” practices for those with learning difficulties in the age of Covid.  This is eugenics.  It is euthanasia under the cover of Covid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/new-do-not-resuscitate-orders-imposed-on-covid-19-patients-with-learning-difficulties

And it isn’t just those with learning difficulties.  As noted by a British aged care facility manager:

The manager said there had also been cases where residents with 'suspected' coronavirus had Do Not Resuscitate orders added to their files by GPs - without consultation with their families.

The manager added: "Never in my 40 years in the job have I ever seen anything like this."

Here is another report on the UK situation:

About 70% of care home residents have dementia or memory loss, according to the Alzheimer’s Society, which described blanket DNARs as “appalling … effectively denying people their right to life, without permission appropriately obtained”.

Few of these contemptible outrages get mentioned widely in the legacy media in Australia.  In this era of routine government lies, multiple cover-ups and the censorship of dissident views, not to mention very dodgy practices in death counting and attribution, who out there can categorically disprove what Yeadon is alleging?  Who do you believe on these things?  Those who are just about to vote in Macquarie Street to have more of the old and infirm killed off? 

There is another question that should be considered.  Covid is a global euthanasia event.  Perhaps it is a global euthanasia policy as well.  If anyone wished to shrink the world’s population, especially the inconvenient, expensive aged – and many do, like greenies and the whole sustainable development lot – could anyone have thought up a better vehicle than a virus that specifically kills off the old and the sick? 

I wonder what the outcome would be, Venn diagram-wise, of a survey to determine how much overlap there is between rabid supporters of vaccinations against Covid and those who support abortion-on-demand, liberal euthanasia rights, compulsory contraception for the poor, and eugenics.  Not that anyone admits to the last, any more.  My best guess is that there would be quite substantial overlap. 

Just look at Bill Gates, who grew up in a eugenicist household and who is on the record as favouring a culling of the global population.  His views on contraception for the poor, abortion and euthanasia are well known.  His Foundation helps to fund Planned Parenthood.  Of course it does.  Euthanasia?  Is he in favour or what!  As James Corbett has noted:

One of the iconic moments from my Who Is Bill Gates? documentary is the clip of Gates at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival discussing a proposal to increase funding for public education by diverting money from end-of-life care for the elderly and terminally ill.

Lamenting the skyrocketing tuition rates for college students, Gates tells the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson that, “That’s a trade-off society’s making because of very, very high medical costs and a lack of willingness to say, you know, ‘Is spending a million dollars on that last three months of life for that patient—would it be better not to lay off those 10 teachers and to make that trade off in medical cost?’

Then, squirming around in his seat and looking over at the audience, Gates acknowledges that there may be some objection to this line of thinking: “But that’s called the ‘death panel’ and you’re not supposed to have that discussion.”

Economical euthanasia.  Dead is cheap.  No need for a debate on the quality of palliative care and the potential gains for end-of-life cases were an increase in the quality of such care contemplated instead of legalising the killing of the aged and infirm.  The Gates worldview is that such an approach would simply cost us too much.  (One wonders, perhaps, what those inclined to such a worldview think of the cost of vaccinating endlessly – yes, now we are in the era of the third and subsequent “booster” jab – those at no risk of dying from Covid, or even of getting sick from it.  The young and the healthy.  In other words, most of us.  This is all public money hosed up against the wall, in every increasing amounts, in order simply to line the pockets of Big Pharma and to extend the power of the Covid class).

Let us not forget that it is Bill Gates that is driving the global push for mass vaccination, and has been for at least a decade, and who is funding NGOs and media outlets (like The Guardian, of all institutions) globally to push his line.  All of this is on the record.

Given all this, the NSW euthanasia legislation looks like some sort of sick joke.  I suppose there is one piece of good news, at least, for which we should all be grateful. 

Our brave leaders in Macquarie Street won’t actually be forcing old and/or sick people to “get the (final) jab”.  They won’t be denied entry to shops and stopped from seeing their families if they refuse to kill themselves.  Not this year at any rate.  One question, though.  Will those signing up to kill themselves be allowed to see their loved ones before they do the deed?  Probably yes, so long (no doubt) as all parties involved have had their Covid vaccine.  The other jab.  The one we all need to “keep us safe”.  We wouldn’t want people about to legally commit suicide to be exposed to a virus that might, you know, kill them.

Paul Collits

Paul Collits is a freelance writer and independent researcher who lives in Lismore New South Wales.  
 
He has worked in government, industry and the university sector, and has taught at tertiary level in three different disciplines - politics, geography and planning and business studies.  He spent over 25 years working in economic development and has published widely in Australian and international peer reviewed and other journals.  He has been a keynote speaker internationally on topics such as rural development, regional policy, entrepreneurship and innovation.  Much of his academic writing is available at https://independent.academia.edu/PaulCollits
 
His recent writings on ideology, conservatism, politics, religion, culture, education and police corruption have been published in such journals as Quadrant, News Weekly and The Spectator Australia.
 
He has BA Hons and MA degrees in political science from the Australian National University and a PhD in geography and planning from the University of New England.  He currently has an adjunct Associate Professor position at a New Zealand Polytechnic.