American Eldercide - How It Happened, How to Prevent It

A bracing spotlight on the avoidable causes of the COVID-19 eldercide in the United States. Twenty percent of the Americans who have died of COVID since 2020 have been older and disabled adults residing in nursing homes-even though they make up less than one percent of the overall US population. Something about this catastrophic loss of life in government-sponsored facilities never added up. Until now. In American Eldercide, activist and scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette investigates this tragic public health crisis with a passionate voice and razor-sharp attention to detail, showing us that nothing about it was inevitable. Gullette argues that it was our collective indifference, fueled by ageism, that prematurely killed this vulnerable population, compounded by our own panic about aging and a bias in favor of youth-based decisions about lifesaving care. Walking us through the decisions that led to such discriminations, revealing how governments, doctors, and media reinforced ageist