Thread by @Andre__Damon

In remarks reminiscent of the darkest days of the #eugenics movement, @CDCDirector said that the fact that #COVID19 predominantly kills people who are “unwell to begin with” is “encouraging.”
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#MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy #EugenicsByCDC 1/
wsws.org/en/articles/20…

"The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities," Walensky said, "so really these are people who are unwell to begin with, and yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron."
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https://twitter.com/mattbc/status/1479640367888801797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1479640367888801797%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsws.org%2Fen%2Farticles%2F2022%2F01%2F10%2Fpers-j10.html

Walensky’s comments were condemned by doctors, scientists and advocates for the disabled as an embrace of eugenics by the Biden administration.
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https://twitter.com/mattbc/status/1479726000627982336

Walensky’s comments express the turn on the part of the White House and dominant sections of the US political establishment toward an open embrace of the view that the lives of the chronically ill, the disabled, and the elderly are fundamentally valueless. #Eugenics
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The leading advocate of this policy is @ZekeEmanuel the former Obama administration official and current Biden COVID task force adviser, who is now being promoted in a full court press in the US print and broadcast media.
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theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

On Wednesday, the JAMA published a set of articles by Emanuel and other former Biden health advisors arguing for making COVID-19 the “new normal,” with one article calling on states to “retire” the reporting of COVID-19 deaths.
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Emanuel's articles were praised in the US media. Emanuel was as the unstated surrogate for the White House on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” His call for a “new normal” was hailed by an editorial in the Washington Post, which called it a “sensible strategy for living with covid.”7/

In reality, the call by Emanuel and is nothing more than a recapitulation of the pseudo-scientific Great Barrington. It is a plan for COVID-19 in perpetuity, with wave after wave, variant after variant, taking countless lives each year.
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wsws.org/en/articles/20…

Neither Meet the Press nor the Washington Post editorial mentioned that Emanuel is a leading advocate of reducing life expectancy and slashing the provision of medical care for the elderly and chronically ill.
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https://twitter.com/laurawritesit/status/1325945708218904577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1325945708218904577%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fforward.com%2Ffast-forward%2F458248%2Fjoe-biden-ezekiel-emanuel-rahm-emanuel-coronavirus-aging%2F

Emanuel, in the words of @jennfrey , “thinks of disabled and elderly people as useless and ineffectual; when we run the cost/benefit analysis they cost more than they are worth.” He believes “old people a drain on our resources.”
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https://twitter.com/jennfrey/status/1325857594037112834

Emanuel’s basic precept is that the fundamental determinant of medical care must not be the individual’s rights to decency and dignity, but rather a “cost-benefit analysis” driven by the costs to “society” of extending the lives of the ill and the elderly.
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The medical profession is averse to such cost-benefit analysis because its application to medicine is informed by the legacy of eugenics and the German Nazi Party’s murder of tens of thousands of people with chronic illnesses whom the Nazis branded “unfit to live.”

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"Eugenics Catechism” of the US #Eugenics Scty argues, “It has been estimated that the State of New York... spent over $2 million on the descendants” of one family—the Jukes.“How much would it have cost to sterilize the original Jukes pair?” asked the society: “Less than $150.”12/

“Similar examples abounded in the arithmetic books of German schoolchildren in the 1930s, extending to the cost of keeping institutionalized, handicapped people alive; not long afterward, tens of thousands lost their lives.”
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"The Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against people with disabilities, regularly labeling them “life unworthy of life” or “useless eaters” and highlighting their burden upon society." #Eugenics #EugenicsByCDC
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ushmm.org/collections/bi…

Today, hundreds of thousands of elderly and chronically ill people are dying, not in gas chambers, but gasping for air in America’s hospitals. 75% of those who have died from COVID-19 have been above the retirement age of 65, and 93% have been over the age of 50.
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In 2020, a year in which 373,000 Americans died from COVID-19, US life expectancy at birth fell by 1.8 years, from 78.8 years to 77.0, according to federal mortality data released last month.
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pbs.org/newshour/healt…

The death of the ill, elderly, and disabled from #covid19 is not as @CDCDirector says, “encouraging,” but a horrifying source of guilt and shame, a condemnation of an inhuman society driven by the needs of enriching the few at the expense of the many.
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Scientists and doctors have responded to Walensky’s remarks with the demand that she resign. Their anger is justified. But the fact is that Walensky was speaking not only for herself, not only for the Biden administration, but for the entire capitalist class.
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For years, American think tanks and military strategists have systematically advocated reducing the life expectancy of American workers. The pandemic has created the means by which this policy could be implemented through seeming inaction and incompetence.
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This "malign neglect" is, in fact, a deliberate policy, driven by the diseased reliance of all aspects of American capitalism on the perpetual rise in the markets, fueled by the ever-greater immiseration and impoverishment of the working class.
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Having bled much of the working class dry, the capitalist oligarchy looks to the elderly and the disabled as a source of untapped “value.” The cutting of outlays on Social Security and Medicare is to be accomplished by allowing the pandemic to continue in perpetuity. 21/

This homicidal “new normal” demanded by the capitalist oligarchy is being challenged by a growing movement of the working class to resist mass infection and mass death, from Chicago to New York and San Francisco. #schoolstrike2022

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wsws.org/en/articles/20…

The open turn to #eugenics by the ruling class expresses a fundamental reality: Capitalism is incompatible with the social rights of the great mass of humanity. Securing those rights requires the struggle to end this social order and replace it with #socialism. 23/23