Europe’s elderly are abandoned like lambs in a slaughterhouse
Europe’s elderly are abandoned like lambs in a slaughterhouse

It is a question of a dominant mentality, not of a judiciary that now investigates and inspects nursing homes in northern Italy. It is a sort of social euthanasia, of “seniorcide,” of large-scale triage so it is considered wrong to ask to be put on a respirator for oneself if one is “old and sick."

According to a Sunday Times reconstruction of a Boris Johnson government meeting in late March, Prime Minister’s advisor Dominic Cummings exposed the government's plan before “BoJo” fell ill: “Herd immunity, protecting the economy and if that means that some retirees die, too bad” (Cummings later denied saying so). On the one hand there is an informal protocol, whereby the “elderly”, especially those with pathologies, are not treated but accompanied to death with sedatives in nursing homes, as if Covid-19 was a terminal disease for them.

On the other hand there are formal protocols. The latest was released by the Financial Times.

NHS, the British Health Service, assigned patients a sort of “score” to decide who is unfit for intensive care. Age, frailty and previous conditions. Patients with eight points in the three categories must not be hospitalized. A patient between 71 and 75 would have 4 points for age and 3 for the fragility index, bringing the score to 7. Any additional disease, such as dementia, heart disease, lung disease or high blood pressure, will add 1 or 2 points, thus excluding intensive care.

“The elderly are abandoned like lambs in the slaughterhouse”, said conservative Ros Altmann, former minister for pensions under David Cameron and member of the House of Lords. “I have never seen anything like this”. We are abandoning the elderly because we have decided that their lives are not worth as much as those of young people.

Meanwhile, charitable organizations accuse the British government of not tracking deaths in retirement homes. “The official figures are wiping out the elderly as if they didn't matter,” said Caroline Abrahams, director of the charity Age UK.

They are denied treatment, but also a place in victim statistics. As if not only had they lost the right to life, but as if they didn't exist. In a document from the Karolinska university hospital in Sweden (the largest university hospital in Europe) disclosed by the newspaper Aftonbladet, it is specified who remains outside the intensive care unit: who is over 80, over 70 years old and with a significant disease and those with between 60 and 70 and at least two heart, lung and kidney diseases. The idea is simple: the “herd” will survive, but the “weakest” members of society must be “sacrificed”. The famous epidemiologist Marcello Ferrada de Noli who worked at the Karolinska in Stockholm said that Sweden is sacrificing the elderly.

In France, the decision to grant the use of the Rivotril drug at home and in rest homes - and no longer only in hospitals - triggered a debate. Used in palliative therapies for terminally ill patients, Rivotril is now also used outside because in hospitals they cannot cure everyone.

Risk of surreptitious euthanasia? “Have we decided to sacrifice the old?”, asks France Culture. It is not a matter of the judiciary, but of the prevailing mentality, explains Éric Ciotti in Le Figaro: “How can we let such a massacre affect our elderly? They were handed over to certain death, which is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic nation where one life should always be worth another, regardless of age. A society is judged by the way it takes care of its elders. It is a true indicator of civilization.”

Spain has also put it in writing, advising against treatments for those over 80 years of age and with previous pathologies. These are the recommendations of the Catalan Generalitat. Dutch doctors asked the elderly to think twice before asking for intensive care.

This is how we arrived at the data just released by the London School of Economics: half of all Covid-19 deaths in Europe occurred in nursing homes. They call it this, “geriatricide”. And we were very ready for all this.

Not even two months ago, Holland spoke of a pill with which the elderly could commit suicide and in Spain the procedure for passing the euthanasia law had already started. All frozen, for now, there are already enough coffins around. For years we have discussed “quality of life” and “compassion”. When the viral tragedy hit society, all we had to do was raise our hands. Charles Darwin called it “the survival of the fit.”