What to do about the elderly is an age-old question, yes, a pun. However, when Yale assistant professor, Yusuke Narita, remarked that elderly Japanese residents should essentially commit seppuku (the honorable method for dishonored samurai to commit suicide--I had a dream about this a long time ago which became a Huffington Post article), he outraged the world.
He is 37 years old with an economics PhD from MIT, previously taught at Stanford, and is obviously of Japanese ethnicity, so the issue has relevance and ire. This euthanasia discussion actually had first occurred with a group of students two years ago about a scene from the Swedish film, Midsommar, in which a cult sent out one of its oldest members to jump off a cliff. He then said:
Whether that's a good thing or not, that's a more difficult question to answer. So if you think that's good, then maybe you can work hard creating a society like that.
Narita in the past also suggested that the public might want to discuss making euthanasia mandatory in the future. He did more recently say that his comments had been taken out of context, and what he was referring to was the need to push older people out of leadership positions in politics and business. While this matter only now has reached the popular media, he said he stopped using these words last year.
What has occurred, though, is that disaffected youths in Japan believe their economic progress has been stymied by the elderly power. There were numerous distractors and supporters in that country, and Newsweek Japan columnist Masaki Kubota was quoted to say that he believed old people should just die already and social welfare should be cut.
Back in 2013, then-Finance Minister Taro Aso said the elderly should "hurry up and die" to spare the nation the cost of their medical care. Last year there was a 2022 dystopian movie by Chie Hayakawa called Plan 75 (Rotten Tomatoes 93%/93%), where salespeople would offer senior citizens incentives to commit suicide and no longer be a burden to society. The film was Japan's entry this year for Best International Film, and the Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 11. And interestingly enough, surveys in Japan have suggested that a majority of the population supports legalizing voluntary euthanasia. Note, there is a whole lot of difference between mandatory and voluntary.
Changing locations, I have been searching for why relatively few of China's elderly actually received COVID-19 vaccinations. Here is one article that suggest that it made sense for the younger generation to get them first, for early on vaccines were scarce. But they later became more available and it was reported that 82% of those 60 and older were vaccinated a year or so ago. However, the older you got, the less you were protected, as only 50% of people aged 80 and over got vaccinated. In contrast, countries like South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia showed percentages close to the very high 90's for those 60 and over being boosted.
So does China have a policy to prevent the very old from getting shots? Maybe the question should be, why China, knowing that this group of citizens dominates the death statistics, is not compelled to get vaccinated. There is definitely intense pressure this dictatorship has placed on students and government employees to get vaccinated. China and Japan are among those countries beginning to feel the pressure of the older retired generation syphoning off tax moneys for their welfare, without today contributing towards building the economy.
How is the U.S. doing on this issue? ONLY 40% OF THOSE 65 AND OLDER IN THE USA HAVE RECEIVED THE LATEST BIVALENT BOOSTER. I know there is no government policy to sacrifice old people in my country. But why so low?
Was this Pfizer/Moderna bivalent booster shot efficacious? It was recommended on an experimental basis only last fall. With a $5 billion price tag, researchers seem mostly satisfied that this latest campaign worked. Without question, those bivalently-boosted were far less likely to be hospitalized or die. For example, there were 31% fewer emergency room visits for anyone who got the latest booster, compared to those who only got the monovalent shots. And get this, for Americans 65 and older, those who got the latest booster had 73% fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations. Even better in Israel, for this same comparison saw reduced hospitalization reduced by 81% and deaths by 86%. And this does not even bring into the discussion those few who never got vaccinated, who fared worse.
If watched the Super Bowl, you now know that Kansas City beat Philadelphia 38-35, and QB Pat Mahomes won another MVP award, largely playing on one leg. The better player was Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, but his team lost. If you wondered why at halftime Rihanna seemed so chubby, yes, she is pregnant.
I celebrated by making a Japanese meal of the Kansas City strip steak, but only as a brunch prelude of fried beef with onions and eggs over rice plus tsukemono, before leaving for golf. The plan was to have the complete steak dinner after the Super Bowl.
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