Posted by “How much death am I comfortable with?” gasped the Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young in Friday’s COVID press conference. “None! I’m a doctor!”
Yet in mid-September, Queensland Parliament will debate whether citizens of the walled state should have the right to voluntary assisted dying, or euthanasia as its critics call it. If the conscience vote passes, Young will presumably have to get comfortable with the idea that some Queenslanders, whose lives she could have prolonged by weeks or even months, will die.
This is the paradox of voluntary assisted dying in a time of COVID. If the Queensland bill passes mid-month, citizens will be able to make the fraught decision to die by their own hand before they are granted permission to live with their own risks…