Joe Biden, the candidate, guaranteed us he would follow “the science” when it came to beating back COVID-19.
But his strategy to distribute the vaccine shows more left-wing politics than actual science – as illustrated by the latest virus news.
To begin with, the Centers for Disease Control – the government’s actual scientists – could not be clearer in its assessment.
They note that 80 percent of people who have died from the coronavirus are over 65.
As the CDC website says, “People in their 50s are at higher risk for severe illness than people in their 40s. Similarly, people in their 60s or 70s are, in general, at higher risk for severe illness than people in their 50s. The greatest risk for severe illness from COVID-19 is among those aged 85 or older.”
Couple that with the fact that the Trump administration laid $10 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money on the table to incentivize drugmakers, and the formula seems simple: the first people to receive a vaccine should be Americans over 65.
President Donald Trump promoted this idea, as did the CDC and the National Academy of Sciences.
Fox News reported last November that the Trump administration “had said that the U.S. will share any coronavirus vaccine it develops with other countries after American needs are met and that the U.S. will not coordinate with the World Health Organization (WHO) on distribution.”
President Biden, however, has thought otherwise.
He has surrounded himself with SJW-types who practice inoculation gerrymandering to promote some misguided “equity” above all else, especially science.
This history starts with Dr. Zeke Emanuel, one of Biden’s top advisers on the virus, who in news accounts from last November rejected the idea of “vaccine nationalism.”
Emanuel was most renowned for writing a 2014 essay entitled, “Why I hope to die at 75.” His argument was essentially that one’s quality of life declined after that point so that life was not worth living.
As Fox News reported last fall, Emanuel wanted the U.S. “to distribute vaccine globally before it’s available to all Americans.” Further, he argued that “prioritizing seniors at higher risk would mean sending a disproportionate amount of vaccines to wealthier countries, where average life expectancies tend to be longer.”
A month later, after Biden secured the Electoral College vote, a CDC committee sensing the change in direction urged that the vaccine distribution, according to Reason magazine, should “mitigate and racial and ethnic ‘health inequities’” by prioritizing “essential” workers.
Translation: “Older Americans are disproportionately white, whereas the essential worker category includes a larger percentage of racial minorities and low-income people.” In short, elderly white people must go to the back of the line, even though that same policy would also imperil millions of elderly black Americans.
Then last week, The New York Times reported, “The Pentagon has decided to offer coronavirus vaccines to detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, possibly starting next week.”
Whereas, according to the Times, “The Trump administration had declined to say whether prisoners would be vaccinated,” Biden believed that the 40 prisoners at Gitmo, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on America, were more entitled to COVID prevention than 40 Americans.
Now, we come to the latest tidbit of Biden’s America Last plan.
CNSNews.com reported Tuesday that King Joe was expected to sign three more executive orders on immigration, “including one that would allow for illegal immigrants to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as they cross the border.”
The outlet cited a Department of Homeland Security statement that said the federal government fully supports “equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine distribution sites for undocumented immigrants.”
“It is a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine. DHS encourages all individuals, regardless of immigration status, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once eligible under local distribution guidelines.”
Appearing on Fox News, Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana noted that Biden is saying “that people who came here illegally can jump ahead of other Americans who have been waiting to get the vaccine on that prioritization.”
“I thought we were supposed to be looking out for hard-working families,” Scalise continued. “We’re trying to get our economies opened. We’re trying to get our schools safely reopened, and you do that by vaccinating everybody who wants to get the vaccine.”
But, he added, “Clearly not everybody who wants to get it has been able to get that vaccine, and now President Biden’s gonna allow people who come here illegally to get the vaccine before some Americans who have been waiting for months. It’s mind-boggling that this is his plan.”
We’re two weeks in, and already Biden’s divisions are starting to add up.