“We are told over and over again that 98% of patients affected by coronavirus recover” said to Le Figaro French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. “If economic logic reigned supreme, our societies would have chosen to let it go. The majority of the population is said to have been infected and immunized. The oldest, the most vulnerable would be dead, ‘useless mouths’ in short." "We didn't want this natural selection. And if the confinement becomes more and more strict, it is to avoid the congestion of hospitals and to have to sort through the patients: this one no, he is out of breath; that one yes, he is in the prime of his life. Perhaps the war will force us to these practices of prioritization, as we learn to say." "But they horrify us. The life of an old man is worth as much as a person in full possession of his faculties. The affirmation of this egalitarian principle in the turmoil we are going through shows that nihilism has not yet won and that we remain a civilization”. In Israel, for example, 4200 elderly people are being taken away from Bnei Brak to hotels in order save them and a facility for mentally challenged patients has been opened. This is the cultural point of this tragedy. Coronavirus brought us closer to the Judeo-Christian culture of life. However, the danger is here. Nine levels, from "very fit" to "terminally ill". The seventh also includes those suffering from "cognitive disorders". These were the first guidelines to help British doctors decide who should receive treatment first during the Covid-19 epidemic. Nine levels, from "very fit" to "terminally ill". The seventh also includes those suffering from "cognitive disorders". These were the first guidelines to help British doctors decide who should receive treatment first during the Covid-19 epidemic. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has been threatened with lawsuits for including patients with autism and other intellectual disabilities. Julie Newcombe, founder of Rightful Lives and with an autistic son, called the guidelines "frightening". The idea makes its way among bioethicists. Peter Singer, who had previously judged the life of the disabled unworthy of being lived, writes in the Sunday Morning Herald : “What about the quality of life?”. In the New York Times , bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, an advisor of Joe Biden for coronavirus, writes that priority should be given to health workers, police and firefighters. A leaked document from Catalan's health department has just revealed it is advising against sending coronavirus patients aged over 80 to Intensive Care Units in hospitals. Some US states, says ProPublica, have discriminating guidelines: in Tennessee people with spinal muscular atrophy are left behind; in Minnesota, cirrhosis of the liver, lung disease and heart problems and in the state of Washington, states such as New York, Utah, Colorado and Oregon, "general physical and intellectual ability" is evaluated. In Alabama, reads the document "Scarce Resource Management", "the mentally disabled are unlikely candidates for breathing support". And again: "People with severe or profound mental retardation, moderate to severe dementia or catastrophic neurological complications are unlikely candidates for support." Professor Michael Bérubé, professor of literature at Pennsylvania State University and with a son with Down syndrome, told me: “I suspect that when the peak reaches the United States and our Healthcare workers will be overwhelmed, medical professionals will have to make heartbreaking decisions and I wouldn't be surprised at all if people with disabilities become low priority patients. I will be happy to be wrong.” A few months ago, the Dutch MP of the Greens Corinne Ellemeet proposed to introduce "expectations of quality of life" for access to surgery for those over 70. Now, “doctors in the Netherlands have been advising elderly patients to think twice before agreeing to COVID-19 treatment in hospital intensive-care units, drawing criticism that they are attempting to ration scarce ICU beds”, explains the New York Times. The abandonment of holiness and equality of life in the West is a form of horrific nihilism. It will lead to the abandonment of the weak and vulnerable. It is already happening. This epidemic will be a great test to understand if the Judeo-Christian vision still has vitality in the West. The risk is to surreptitiously delegate to the virus the task of euthanasia and eugenics, a virus that has been around for a long time in the West.
The last known man to see retired FBI agent and CIA contractor Robert Levinson alive in Iran now says that Levinson, who disappeared in 2007, was definitely detained by Iranian authorities and is almost certainly still in Iranian custody if he remains alive, according to the Christian Science Monitor . Levinson disappeared in March 2007 during a business trip in Iran while he was supposedly working as a private detective looking into cigarette smuggling. Dawud Salahuddin, an African-American convert to Islam who met with Levinson on Iran’s resort island of Kish in 2007, told the Monitor in Tehran that they were detained at the Maryam Hotel on March 9, 2007, by six plainclothes policemen and then separated. "They took me away, and when I left – we were down in the lobby – Levinson was surrounded by four Iranian police,” says Salahuddin, who spent that night in jail. When he returned the next day, Salahuddin spoke to the Indian manager of the hotel, who told him Levinson was gone: “He told me that, and without saying a word let me know that the guy did not leave on his own accord, that he was in custody. But he didn’t have to say it out loud for me to know that. And he wouldn’t have said it…. I understood that something was wrong.” Salahuddin, whom the Monitor describes as “a fugitive who has lived in Iran since carrying out a 1980 murder in Maryland on behalf of Iran's revolutionary regime,” says the flurry of publicity and revelations about Levinson's CIA connections could be a sign of an impending release. For years, the US government insisted that Levinson was only a private citizen working for a private client. Last week, the Associated Press revealed that Levinson was in fact part of a rogue CIA operation seeking to collect intelligence on Iran's financial dealings and nuclear program. He had told his CIA handlers that he was trying to cultivate Salahuddin as a source who had deep contacts in Iran. Last month, the White House publicly called on Tehran to release Levinson , along with two other US citizens held by the Islamic Republic. On Sunday, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif restated Tehran's official position, telling CBS News that Iran has “no trace” of Levinson, and if he were still in Iran, he was not under government custody.