Professor Nina Kohn’s Important Op-Ed in the Washington Post

Syracuse Law Professor Nina Kohn (currently a visiting professor at Yale Law), has an important Op-Ed in the Washington Post, in which she tackles the not so subtle ageism that accompanies response to COVID-19 — while making it clear that the issues are much deeper than a single disease.  She writes:

Of course, older adults are at heightened risk, even though covid-19 strikes younger people, too. But across America — and beyond — we are losing our elders not only because they are especially susceptible. They’re also dying because of a more entrenched epidemic: the devaluation of older lives. Ageism is evident in how we talk about victims from different generations, in the shameful conditions in many nursing homes and even — explicitly — in the formulas some states and health-care systems have developed for determining which desperately ill people get care if there’s a shortage of medical resources.

For more, read The  Pandemic Exposed a Painful Truth:  American Doesn’t Care About Hold People.  The subtitle?  “We speak of the elderly as expendable, then fail to protect them.”