The term MAID is a new one on me. It stands for ‘medical assistance in dying’. It’s been legal in Canada since 2015. Its first year of operation was in 2016 when there were 1,018 recipients of MAID. Since then, it’s increased rapidly. In 2021 there were over 10,000 cases, 3.3% of all deaths. In British Columbia, 4.8% of all deaths were via MAID. The total for 2022 looks like being over 13,000.
If you’re interested in any aspect of MAID can I recommend this Canadian Government report – after all, I suspect it’s only a question of time before it comes to the U.K.
Canada’s not alone. In the Netherlands there are over 7,500 assisted suicides per year, more than 5% of all deaths. Assisted suicide is also legal in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, parts of the U.S., Colombia, New Zealand, Spain and Australia. It looks like it will also soon be possible in Germany, Austria and Italy.
Personally, I’m not opposed to assisted suicide; it looks to me like a rather more attractive proposition than many of the alternatives. I think it was John Mortimer on being asked why he didn’t stop smoking replied: “There’s no pleasure worth giving up for an extra year or two in an old-people’s home.”
(Incidentally, Canadian retailer Simons has been in the news this week for using assisted suicide as a promotional tool in an advertisement ‘All is Beauty’. I’m genuinely at a loss to know where this would stand in light of the Government’s proposed Online Harms Bill – is it promoting suicide or beauty products, or both?)
In the Canadian Report, the profile of MAID recipients, while skewed heavily towards those terminally ill with cancer, still bears a remarkable similarity to that of Covid victims. Recently, the controversial category ‘non-RFND’ (non-reasonably foreseeable deaths) has been added to those eligible for MAID. It includes people with mental health conditions such that they wish to end their own life. It remains to be seen how this will impact on the numbers in the future.
By the end of 2022 the cumulative total of MAID deaths since 2016 seems likely to be 45,000, with about 13,000 in 2022 alone. By comparison, by the end of 2022 the cumulative number of Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic will be about 50,000 with 13,500 deaths in 2022 alone.
Figure 2 shows cumulative Covid deaths against cumulative MAID deaths.
According to Our World in Data, Covid deaths in Canada in 2020 were 15,736, in 2021 there were 14,584 Covid deaths and in 2022 they’re likely to finish at about 19,000. That’s an interesting statistic on its own. 34.2 million Canadians have been vaccinated – over 92% of the population – and yet Covid deaths are higher in 2022 than in either of the prior two years.
At the current rate of growth, by 2023 or 2024 the number of MAID recipients will be higher than the number of Covid deaths in any of the past three years.
Last time there was a debate in the U.K. Parliament to legalise assisted dying it was defeated 330 votes to 118. However, if I was a betting man, I would put money on it getting through in the not too distant future. Figure 3 shows how, if the U.K. were to follow the rate of progress observed to date in Canada, we could expect to see about 60,000 medically assisted deaths per year within 10 years.
I’m not trying to make a point about the morality of assisted dying. The issue for me is the paradox at the heart of the pandemic response in virtually all countries. The Canadian Government will have spent billions of dollars supposedly saving the lives of exactly the same demographic of people they’re routinely killing off.
In the U.K. we’ve used the concept of QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to try to objectively quantify whether the taxpayer should fund medical treatment. A few years ago there were frequent newspaper headlines about whether we should fund some new wonder drug, invariably an ill child was featured and the minister of the day was pilloried for not spending X millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to save little Johnny. Either the minister backed down or a celebrity stepped forward and saved the day. A QALY was generally set at about £30,000.
How the QALY is applied depends largely on the age and condition of the patient – there are no hard and fast rules. The life of a 1 year-old child with 85 years to live could justify the expenditure of £30,000 x 85 = £2,550,000. Conversely, we’d probably begrudge the expenditure of £30,000 on an 85 year-old with one year to live.
The National Audit Office’s (NAO) Covid Tracker website reports that we taxpayers have run up a bill of £376 billion to June 2022 supporting all manner of largely pointless pandemic response measures. Of course, this £376bn ignores the costs in terms of reductions in tax receipts due to reduced turnover and profits and losses to individuals and businesses. Be that as it may, let’s accept the NAO June figure and just see how many QALYs we might have expected such an investment to save.
£376,000,000,000 ÷ £30,000 = 12,533,333 QALYs
We know the average age of Covid fatalities is about 82. We also know that the vast majority have comorbidities, but let’s be generous and assume that the average Covid fatality would have gone on to live another five years. If we then divide the number of QALYs by five we can see how many saved lives our £376bn should have got us:
12,533,333 ÷ 5 = 2,506,666 lives
Let’s go back to March 2020, when we thought we were trying to save the 450,000 lives Ferguson said were at risk. In the event, nearly three years later, we’ve now reported just over 200,000 Covid fatalities. Let’s, for the sake of argument, accept that the pandemic response saved 250,000 people. That still looks like we spent more than 10 times per life than the QALY approach would recommend.
Personally, I suspect that the pandemic response will prove to have cost lives rather than to have saved them, but I suppose someone might persuade me that 25,000 lives were, if not saved, perhaps prolonged for a while. In which case the tax-payer spent 100 times more per life saved than might have been the case following a QALY approach.
Are these different cases or have the Canadians, the Dutch, the Belgian’s etc. got their moral compass hopelessly messed up? Governments are spending 10 to 100 times more than they should trying to save, essentially, the same cohort or old, infirm and vulnerable people, that they’re offering assistance to bump off through programmes such as MAID. You may argue that assisted suicide is a personal choice whereas a Covid death isn’t. But you have to admit, it’s an odd way to spend vast amounts of money.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I feel there’s a certain level of naivety surrounding Trump and his promise to challenge the status quo, it’s just not going to be a walk in the park… the Deep State is far too powerful and I see similarities to JFK
I don’t think Trump will make it to Inauguration, tptb have too much money to lose, as this article highlights…
Eisenhower warned that the MIC was getting too powerful all those decades ago.
I think Trump will be assassinated, I sincerely hope iam wrong..
Tried to up vote you but the thumbs up button is misbehaving? You’re right to be concerned but my take is, if you are right, this will only make things worse for the deep state. It will expose their agenda even further. The game is up for now.
Do you think they care if their agenda is “exposed”…it’s all out in the open and has been for a long time …
After all they hold so much power ,they are untouchable….
People just don’t see it or want to see it
I suspect there are a lot more “conspiracy theorists” in the US than here. Can you imagine an “anti-vaxxer” being a star turn on the platform of an election winning party here, and being given responsibility for health in the administration?
Well we have Andrew Bridgen, and that makes your point.
Sadly true
Shunned by his own party and in the end by his constituents
But at least the electors had the last laugh on the dreadful Penny Mordaunt who described Bridgen as a conspiracy theorist for setting out the science regarding the covid injections which injured him.
That nasty baggage is gone from Parliament.
Too big for her own britches although her Poundland uniform suited her very well for the coronation – cheap.
Indeed
I wish I had a better memory – who was the MP who shooed everyone out of the chamber when Bridgen was due to speak. Tory I think. Despicable.
Andrew (plebs) Mitchell
Ah yes. Sadly still an MP.
I was shocked at that Bridgen result at the GE. Its now emerging that some odd things happened in connection with election oversight/counting etc. I don’t recall the details but as the Americans say ‘go figure’.
Yes I remember reading about that. I think it’s plausible that the result does not reflect who people actually voted for, but equally or maybe more plausible that most voters just vote for a party and the “right leaning” vote was split between him, the Tories and Reform, and just as elsewhere lots went over to Labour.
I used to nod absent mindedly when people in the UK went on about how terribly polarised and uncivilised the US political scene was. I now suspect what those people mainly meant was that there was real opposition to the Uniparty there – an idea they didn’t like.
They may be about to get exposed in a major way.
About what exactly?? ‘
The corruption has been blatent for decades..
What makes you think Trump is naive and underestimating the opposition against him? How would things look different if, in your opinion, Trump wasn’t naive and wasn’t underestimating the opposition against him?
I used to think Trump was stupid, I don’t think so any more. And I think he has learned a lot from his first Presidency when he was understandably naive.
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, not Trump but the general public, media et al
The MSM is in its death throws, it least I hope it is.
Throes
I have exactly the same fear myself – with the difference that he has assembled a great looking (especially Tulsi!) team which will caryy on the good fight in his name if the worst were to happen.
He has doubled up by pairing Elon with Vivek. Smart.
I am pretty sure we have witnessed an important turning point.
Moderator here. Uptick button is working normally for me?
I, too, find it increasingly hard to imagine that all this will come to pass.
However, should by some miracle Trump and all his team do get to enact their agenda, I am worried that we are going to spend our time being distracted by all the shiny things that get thrown out on JFK, UAPs, Covid etc, whilst in the background, the technocracy ploughs on underneath with biometrics (‘think of the border’) and trackable stablecoin.
Could this be the beginning of the end for Big Pharma’s magic bullet approach to health care? It would be wonderful if it is. While he’s at it I hope RFK Jr closes down all Biotechnology warfare labs conducting Gain of Function research that Fauci funded. He should also instigate a moratorium on all Genetic Modification of plants and animals (and humans) until long term research establishes absolute safety and efficacy. It’s anti life and and the only motivation is money and control.
Absolute safety? No. If we take no risks then we will not progress at all.
Efficacy at what? Pest resistance? Nutritional content? Crop yield?
The downsides are many but there are upsides too. Downsides include lock-in to corporate supply and control, monocultures, as well as the Frankenstein fear.
Absolute safety? No. If we take no risks then we will not progress at all.
This is a false dichotomy. That progress is only possible by taking risks doesn’t mean that any risk-taking will lead to some sort of useful progress. Especially, it doesn’t mean taking the risk that the Nature’s far too benign! Let’s try to make more dangerous viruses! madmen and -woman could eventually succeed will lead to anything useful.
Ah well, no discretionary rise in my tiny Pfizer pension for now…
Oh wait. No, they already announced that months and years ago. The Trustees asked for a discretionary rise while Pfizer was riding high on the markets after 2021. Pfizer said no then.
The real powers that be won’t like that one little bit.
All power though to RFK probably mankind’s last hope in preventing bigpharma’s maiming and killing.
We must return to a more holistic approach re health.
No profit in that though.
yes although hopefully the profit will instead go to the organic small family farmers themselves now selling healthy food direct to the public . and herbal remedies.
rfk jr is a hero is amazing after all he has gone through to finally be able to do this and so glad i got to vote for trump nd rfk jr!
Oh yes, focus on prevention once again. Jubilant cheering of the anti-smoking and anti-drinking crowds despite — according to their own claims — none of their measure have done anything to improve public health in any way so far, sigh of relief from the vaccinators as vaccination is, too, a prevention instead of cure measure.
A preventive health system is necessarily one which dicates how its victims are supposed to live their lifes instead of helping then with actual problems. And this despite our knowledge of most health issue which affect us is less than puny. Otherwise, we could cure them.
I share your concerns. If RFK manages to make the relationship between “Public Health” and Big Pharma a good deal less cosy, I think that is a positive, but I would not want my tax money spent on trying to stop people eating doughnuts or whatever.
Agree. What we want is a healthcare and food supply system that is transparent so that we can decide what we put in our bodies – good or bad. At the moment we have a system that lies and coerces us into consuming more and more unhealthy foods and drugs. The processed food manufacturers and drug industry thrive by corrupting research, political and media oversight. Ultimately our consumption of addictive junk food and drugs is unsustainable. We have to reign back on that, insisting on transparency and accountability.
I’ve just eaten a bowl of salad composed of
Nobody on this planet could give a comprehensive list of the kinds and relative quantities of chemical element atoms in this bowl, let alone about the chemical reactions which have occurred among them before I started eating this.
Wrt to “health”, I think it’s important to keep in mind how extremely limited our scientific understanding about the world around us still really is and that If in doubt, be extremely conservative regarding what you eat or otherwise ingest
is a very prudent piece of advice.
When it comes to healthy eating I go along with the idea of studying what our ancestors ate and hence what we are likely to tolerate if not thrive on. Also studying the diets – and associated health and well-being – of various indigenous peoples around the world can be very informative. I’m always wary of dogma, i.e. when people say with certainty that something or other is “good for you”.
Reminds me of the Amish community, When asked in 2020 how they beat Covid, the reply was along the lines of….We have no Television!
I hope RFK will put a stop to their persecution, because their alternative app free lifestyle is a threat to their Globalist agenda. I hear they are persecuted in Canada too.
ivermectin too the wonderful amish farmers i buy from know about ivermectin . i read the amish voted some for first time and helped to win pennsylvania and alot thanks to rfk jr. some farmers had been persecuted by the democrats , of course!
“… to a preventive healthcare system that tries to stop diseases emerging in the first place.”
Such was the premise of the NHS in 1948. Prevent diseases, reduce need for medical intervention… save lives, save money. And so we are where we are.
Most disease is the result of the aging process: diabetes, dementia, arthritis, chronic renal disease, cardiovascular disease, cancers.
Saving someone from disease A means they live on to get disease B, and so on. Save granny from CoVid, granny dies a few months later from something else. We bankrupted ourselves over this ignorance and addled thinking.
A good start would be to get the State out of medical care, stop freebies like the NHS, Medicare and Medicaid, so that people buy their own insurance (not company schemes) or pay direct.
I think everyone will be amazed at how few people need medical care and how quickly people improve their lifestyles to avoid having to seek it.
I hope he starts investigating the rise in autism and whether the multiple v seperate jabs might be the cause.
Not one of the childhood vaxxes in the US have been subjected to placebo-controlled trials – and there are no long term safefy data collected. Even the “father of vaxxines” Stanley Plotkin has now admitted this. If I were a parent I would not allow my child to have any jabs until there is full testing and transparency.
Speaking to BBC’s Newsday programme, APHA executive director Georges C Benjamin says Kennedy has no health background and has “already caused great damage in health in the country”, referring to Kennedy’s scepticism of vaccines.
And what is the health background of Bill Gates in vaccines and agriculture, because I don’t remember the BBC complaining about him, but they wouldn’t when he gave them a bunce of millions.
Who cares what the deep state/big pharma delete as appropriate say?
That is the whole problem- the abrogation of knowledge to a corrupt establishment.
All RFK Jr has ever asked for is the evidence: the data that shows vaxxination are a net benefit to society. During the 1980s there was some public discussion about safety but nowadays people questioning the vax programme have been pilloried and gaslit.
It seems commenters did not appreciate that I was exposing BBC bias.
Make no mistake, God sent President Trump
RFK Jr is one, very significant, reason why I’d have voted for Trump if I was American. If he really goes after Big Pharma he will have done the world a huge favour.