Unlike suicide doc Jack Kevorkian, who was a grim presence, Ezekiel Emanuel is a charming guy, with a big bright smile.  Despite his Hippocratic Oath (the one about doing no harm), he's trying hard to convince Americans that they should off themselves when they hit 75.  Emanuel's latest mission, assuming that Biden manages to totter into the White House, is to get Americans to get last dibs on the vaccinations their taxpayer dollars funded.

Emanuel, in a now famous article, explained how useless and miserable old people are and how they should be denied all life-saving treatments.  In the same article, he made some statements that are eerily apropos of the upcoming Wuhan virus vaccine (emphasis mine):

What about simple stuff [for treating old people]? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs. A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don't want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.

Joe Biden, a frail, incipiently senile, 77-year-old man who Emanuel thinks ought to lie down and die as soon as possible, has placed Emanuel on his Wuhan virus task force.  Think about that: the Wuhan virus is most fatal for the elderly, and one of the premier people on the task force believes that the elderly should not get vaccinations or treatments if they are ill, but should be left to die.  That's going to be a task force that inspires Americans with confidence.

It turns out that Ezekiel doesn't just think the old should be prey to the virus.  He seems to think all of us should suck up our potential virus victimhood.  Instead, in the name of global fairness, we should take the vaccination, for which Americans have already paid $2 billion, and hand it out overseas:

Emanuel, who served as a key architect of the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration, co-authored a paper in September in which he encouraged officials to follow the "Fair Priority Model," which calls for a "fair international distribution of vaccine," rather than what he and his co-authors characterized as "vaccine nationalism."

The model allows the country that produces the vaccine to hold onto enough of a supply to reach a threshold for herd immunity ("Rt below 1"). Beyond that, the model supports distributing the vaccine internationally, which means giving away or selling doses of the vaccine before it's available to every citizen in that country, Emanuel explained to Scientific American.

"Reasonable national partiality does not permit retaining more vaccine than the amount needed to keep the rate of transmission (Rt) below 1, when that vaccine could instead mitigate substantial COVID-19–related harms in other countries that have been unable to keep Rt below 1 through ongoing public-health efforts," the Science magazine article titled "An ethical framework for global vaccine allocation" argues.

No — just no.  We paid for it, so we get it first.  Then, as we always do, we start saving the rest of the world.  Think of it like the instructions you always hear when you're in an airplane: in an emergency, an oxygen mask may drop down from an overhead compartment.  Be sure to adjust your own mask securely before assisting others.

America is the world's ballast.  As Louis XV said about his death (which eventually occurred in 1774), "après moi, le déluge."  He was correct, too, for the French Revolution began only 25 years after his death.  If America goes, the déluge will happen in much less time than 25 years.

Image: Ezekiel Emanuel vaccination policy.  YouTube screen grab.

Correction: It wasn't Emanuel who attributed Obamacare's passage to the "stupidity of the American voter"; it was Jonathan Gruber.  The error has been corrected.