Earlier today, my colleague Bonchie posted about the feeble effort of talentless grifter Charlie Three Wives to dunk on a [sorta] conservative woman who was refusing to have her life controlled by the irrational fear of a virus that causes no symptoms in most people which it infects and which has a survival rate of about 99.97%, see Insufferable Grifter Tries to Dunk, Gets Nowhere Near the Rim.

So how many grandmas have died since this tweet? Is it too much to expect any regrets, apologies? @bethanyshondark

And spare me the usual bad faith arguments and personal attacks … (if you are capable of that) https://t.co/NCZGM4LfuZ

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) December 18, 2020

Well, there is someone out there to kill your grandmother, and you, if you are white and over 65. It is the Mengeles-in-training at the CDC.

I’ve been watching this for some time. Back in September, an article appeared in the top-tier Journal of the American Medical Association titled Fairly Prioritizing Groups for Access to COVID-19 Vaccines. One of the authors was “medical ethicist” Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm and the guy who was at the center of the “death panels” controversy. This is how the authors of this article describe the thought process for allocating the Wuhan vaccine.

First, prioritizing in-person health care workers and staff, as NAM and others suggest,1,5 prevents direct harm to workers and indirect harm due to spread of SARS-CoV-2 in health care facilities. It also indirectly prioritizes disadvantaged groups because reducing disease spread facilitates the provision of treatments such as hemodialysis and chemotherapy, which disadvantaged individuals need more often.

Second, prioritizing people engaged in essential high-risk activities, such as in-person education, childcare, and food supply work, would also prevent direct harm and reduce disease spread. Additionally, in-person workers are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged than those able to work remotely. Prioritization among these workers should consider indirect benefit: if vaccination of those involved in education can contribute to reopening schools, this should precede vaccination of those involved in reopening other less beneficial venues, such as bars. Similar factors also support prioritizing people in congregate housing situations, such as assisted living, where community spread is more likely.

Third, the World Health Organization (WHO) and NAM suggest prioritizing individuals whose medical conditions increase their risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes if they become infected.1,5 This prioritizes disadvantaged groups because these conditions constitute medical vulnerabilities and correlate with socioeconomic disadvantage, and prevents harm. However, nearly 200 million individuals in the US have a high-risk condition.1 Limited vaccine supplies will require prioritizing among these individuals, with attention to evolving data about how conditions affect COVID-19 risk and vaccine efficacy.

Today we got a glimpse at the CDC guidance with some context provided. View the entire presentation here

Download the presentation as a PowerPoint.

Now let me resort to some tweets to highlight what exactly is being proposed.

This is based on the slide pack below.

This takes for granted that healthcare workers will be first-in-line. The question is whether the next group should be other essential workers, the over-65s or adults with high-risk conditions.https://t.co/r9QDsMZt5E

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

First, Science.

The authors rely on modelling of the deaths prevented by prioritising each of the three groups, for both a "disease-blocking" and an "infection-blocking" vaccine scenario.

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

Despite this, the authors conclude that the "Differences among 3 strategies is minimal" (sic). Each strategy is thus awarded 3 out of 3 marks.

Implementation is considered easier for the elderly than the other two groups, resulting in the scores below: pic.twitter.com/DpQwiu72Rd

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

Keep this next one in mind; we’ll come back to it.

Other considerations that seem important are:

i) adults with high-risk medical conditions must have been diagnosed which implies that they have access to healthcare (which counts against them)
ii) essential workers are unable to work from home

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

This is translated to a mark of 1/3 in the overall assessment, meaning that Essential Workers pip the elderly to the post by one mark.

What drama! pic.twitter.com/ZPGJaax3Hc

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

This seems to me a clearly wrong decision and is out of line with what the UK, for example, is doing.

I am also sceptical of the modelling results given the vastly greater risks faced by the elderly (the below graph showing this is also from the report). pic.twitter.com/uKcMqvOVnt

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

Bureaucracy is too important to be left to the bureaucrats.

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 17, 2020

Worth making clear that the views in the slide pack are not just those of the author.

The recommendation to prioritise "essential workers" was unanimously approved by the 14 voting members of the relevant CDC committee (ACIP). pic.twitter.com/9ZtfkGArfy

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 18, 2020

A reminder that states are perfectly capable of messing this up without the help of the CDC:

Nevada, New Hampshire and Wyoming are including cops in the very highest priority group, alongside healthcare workers.https://t.co/7WVJQS4UBr

— David Algonquin (@surplustakes) December 18, 2020

A little earlier today, you had this making the rounds. A couple more “ethicists” are basically crowing about using the virus as an excuse to kill off elderly white folhttps://twitter.com/coldxman/status/1339832253766103040ks.

Later in the piece another doctor, named Marc Lipsitch, explains that teachers should not be considered essential workers for the purpose of being given priority vaccines by the CDC because, and I quote, "they are often very white." pic.twitter.com/FIiEvy6kLD

— Jason Compson (@JCompson_III) December 18, 2020

My colleague Bonchie covered that in his post titled Hot Take: Old People and Teachers are Too White for the Vaccine.

There are two critical points here. First, these people are criminals. We hanged Nazi doctors for some of the same behavior. When given a choice between saving lives and being good little SJWs, the ideology wins every time. By their own data, they will kill, actually physically eliminate, several thousand elderly for the sake of “essential workers” who are, by definition, going to be a minority and low income. Never mind that the only danger the essential workers are in, again according to their own data, is an inconvenience.

This brings me to my second point. They are not ashamed of killing off the most vulnerable in our society for the sake of making a social justice statement. They are proud of it. They put this slide deck on the internet so everyone could see their wokeness and be in awe.

These people are dangerous. They are out of control. They should not be allowed to make decisions on the brands of toilet paper purchased much less on matters of life and death.

In fact, it isn’t even clear to me that health care workers should get the first round. They are virtually all below the age of risk and mostly free of comorbidities…except for the fat nurses I always seem to get.

This is a preview of coming attractions. With no voice at all in the White House for the cause of life, all of us are potential sacrifices to please whatever Moloch that needs to be appeased.

Of course, maybe those being shunted to the back of the line are the fortunate ones…

Nurse faints immediately after taking experimental Covid-19 vaccine.

Rushed experimental biological agents like this should not be mandated upon anyone. Meaning airlines, employers, schools, nor the government can ever tell anyone else they must take an experimental vaccine! pic.twitter.com/UIelzjE6Sh

— Dr. Simone Gold (@drsimonegold) December 18, 2020