Why Can The Elderly Choose Euthanasia But Not The Risk Of Getting Covid?

There’s a cognitive dissonance among progressives in their belief about what an individual should have the right to do or not do concerning their health that has been exposed by the lockdowns. Many who are in favor of the lengthy lockdowns claim to care about “saving lives” above all else, even though their methods for doing so are causing a lot more damage than good.

Your Rights vs. the Value of Life

Progressives believe that we should have safe injection sites for drug addicts to safely take drugs because it’s their right to take harmful substances if they wish. These same people think women should be able to have abortions on demand because it’s “their body, their choice,” and they believe the elderly should be allowed to euthanize themselves because quality of life is more important than length of life. But should a person decide to risk getting COVID by not wearing a mask, visit their family, or open their business, they have broken some holy dogma concerning the value of life. 

Any person who is concerned with catching the virus is responsible for their own wellbeing.

Progressives will make the argument that by breaking COVID restrictions, you’re endangering others, which is why it’s immoral. This is simply not the case. People who are at higher risk due to co-morbidities can easily isolate themselves while the rest of us healthy people carry on with our lives as usual. The same measures of restricting movement and interaction don’t need to be placed on everyone equally when we aren’t all dealing with the same level of risk. In fact, a recent international study found that more restrictive lockdowns had "no clear, significant beneficial effect...on case growth" in the 10 countries analyzed.

Any person who is concerned with catching the virus is responsible for their own wellbeing and can protect themselves by staying at home, wearing masks, and practicing social distancing, regardless of what anyone else is doing or not doing. If a person is in quarantine, then they should have no contact with others who are potentially breaking these guidelines. Only people who are also unafraid of catching the virus will be put at “risk,” which appears to be minimal. This is the truth about the failed logic that’s supporting the absolutely inhumane living conditions forced on everyone who has had their lives and businesses interrupted by forced social isolation.

The Elderly Can Choose Euthanasia but Not To Leave Isolation

Furthermore, it appears that the long-term isolation people are experiencing is causing much more suffering than it’s preventing. It’s important to remember that solitary confinement is one of the harshest forms of punishment that criminals are given in prison; it’s a legitimate form of torture. For elderly people, the mentally ill, and single men and women who are already lonesome and disconnected from wider society, these lockdowns are a literal death sentence.

It’s known that when elderly people have robust social networks it gives them a sense of purpose and joy that can lengthen their lives. Studies show that social interaction can improve elderly people’s cardiovascular health, reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s, and even lower blood pressure. 

When you take away social networks from the elderly, they stop having a reason to live. The will to carry on leaves them, and as a result, reports of people losing their elderly family members early due to the extreme measures of social isolation have increased. 

The elderly can choose euthanasia because they want a quality of life, but they can’t choose to risk getting COVID.

It’s a strange world we live in where people will make arguments with a straight face about how euthanasia is ethical because people deserve to live with a quality of life in their golden years, but letting our grandmothers and grandfathers wither away from loneliness and die alone is the right thing to do so they can avoid getting COVID. 

Why can the elderly choose assisted suicide because they want a quality of life, but can’t choose to risk getting COVID because they want a quality of life? This is the question we need to be asking ourselves. If quality of life was really so important, then we would give people the option to choose what risks they’re willing to take.

The horrifying situation we find ourselves in now is that people are actually choosing euthanasia over spending more time in isolation. A 90-year-old woman in Toronto recently chose medically assisted death, which was promptly given to her, over enduring another Canadian winter in isolation. Welcome to hell world. 

Our Governments Value Death More Than They Value Life

These nightmarish stories don’t end with the elderly either, I’m afraid. Young men on the west coast of Canada have been dying in greater numbers since the lockdowns began, and it’s not because of COVID. Reports of men over-dosing and committing suicide have skyrocketed from May to October of 2020 as a result of existing mental health issues being intensified in isolation.

Abortion services have been deemed “essential services” and have continued uninterrupted by COVID-19 in Canada, while fertility clinics have closed. The undue suffering, stress, and valuable time lost by hopeful couples is unquantifiable. We have the right to end lives, but we can’t create lives. Despite the constant pandering in the media about “saving lives,” it seems that our governments value death more than they value life. We have the right to die as we choose but not to live as we choose. This is tyranny. 

We have the right to die as we choose but not to live as we choose. 

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of all of this is not the suffering and unjustified deaths that have plagued us due to the lockdowns, but the widespread compliance among so many of the draconian measures imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. No matter how ridiculous or obviously stupid these measures are, out of fear of public confrontation or being tattled on to the police by our neighbors, people are willingly submitting and handing over more and more of their freedom in exchange for the illusion of safety.

Things Will Never Go “Back to Normal”

Where will this all end? It’s hard to say. It appears that our governments have seen an opportunity to enforce new kinds of limitations on personal liberty and autonomy, freedom of movement, and small business as a result of the pandemic. Winston Churchill once said, “Let no crisis go to waste,” and it’s clear that our elites are making the absolute most of the virus. Some believe that if we only comply a little longer, give up a few more of our freedoms, and obey a few more asinine rules that we will get to go back to the lives we were living in 2019. 

“Back to normal” is the new carrot dangling from a stick that’s leading us down a dark and shadowy path towards authoritarianism. Just like the measures that took away more of our freedoms after 9/11, that were for our “safety,” never went back to normal, we have no reason to assume that these new COVID measures will go away either. 

“Back to normal” is the new carrot dangling from a stick that’s leading us towards authoritarianism.

While small businesses barely manage to keep their doors open, Amazon and Walmart have pulled record numbers in profits. Furthermore, Big Tech has seen significant gains as a result of the world resorting to going online to remain in business, in touch, and in school. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Netflix are all big winners while the rest of us struggle to cope. 

Replacing Liberty with Screens

The further we slip away from doing things in the real world and get used to interacting solely through our screens, the more these oligarchs profit. They can control us more easily when our every interaction and purchase is traceable through the internet. We become predictable and acquiescent.

Human beings are social creatures, being close to one another and engaging with each other in public and private places is a human need that is essential for our mental and physical health. The cure can’t be worse than the disease, and right now it’s hard to say that spending your final days slowly dying alone without family, overdosing due to depression and hopelessness, or spending months and months on end without meaningful work or friends is better than the potential for getting a virus with a very high recovery rate. 

The more we get used to interacting solely through our screens, the more these oligarchs profit.

We find ourselves in a situation not unlike the frog sitting in a pot of water which is gradually getting closer to a boiling point. Big Tech and the government have much to gain from prolonging the lockdowns in terms of actual profits and more control over the public. We must draw the line somewhere. It’s likely that those in power never thought it would be so easy to get us to comply with increasingly absurd rules, but since we’ve put up little to no resistance they continue to push the boundaries to see how much we will accept.

Freedom is not a right that we simply get handed to us, as history shows. It’s something we must fight for and constantly defend once we have obtained it. Every time we hand over a little bit of our liberty for safety, we find ourselves in shorter and shorter supply of both. We risk falling deeper into a world that’s not governed by truth or reason, and we lose touch with what it really means to be human.

The more of us who are courageous and call out and stand up against these absurdities, the sooner the message will be received by those in power that we will not live our lives through screens indefinitely. We will not leave our loved ones to waste away and die alone because someone in a lab coat says we must. We will not put our lives on pause forever.

Closing Thoughts

I will leave you with a quote that summarizes how many of us who oppose continuing these lockdowns feel. It’s not from a place of not caring about our community or recklessness that we believe they should end. Mark Twain said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Some of us simply do not fear death nor do we fear life — we desire to live fully and that can’t be achieved in quarantine.