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Should the elderly in Texas and Japan be willing to die for the sake of the economy [1]

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Date: 2023-02-24  

(2020) Dan Patrick, Texas’ Republican lieutenant governor... suggested that he and other grandparents would be willing to risk their health and even lives in order for the United States to “get back to work” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

www.nbcnews.com/…

Japan.*

*Large elderly population, late to begin vaccination, obsessive mask wearers. The entire country of Japan has had less Covid deaths than the state of NY (or Florida or Texas or California).

Yusuke Narita is surfing the Zeitgeist of an ageing, sclerotic society which is fraying at the edges.

In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

“I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

Last year, when asked by a school-age boy to elaborate on his mass seppuku theories, Dr. Narita graphically described to a group of assembled students a scene from “Midsommar,” a 2019 horror film in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.

“Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” Dr. Narita told the questioner as he assiduously scribbled notes. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

www.nytimes.com/…

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