There is a gap between America’s scientists and public health professionals. Science is supposed to guide decision-making. But that’s what should happen… not what is happening.
Public health professionals are failing to utilize science as their lodestar. In worshiping at the political altar they are sacrificing their credibility to intersectional politics. It does a disservice to the public they serve.
This year public health professionals have been ignoring obvious dangers. Mass protests over alleged racial injustice were “okay fine.” Many top health professionals suggest the risks of racism in America amounted to a health problem all their own. That, as they say, is male bovine excrement.
Throughout the “pandemic,” public health officials are caving to political pressure. The political incentive was clearly toward overbroad lockdown policies. At the same time, they and their political masters were exempting themselves from the rules. It was the laws are for thee, not for me. That’s tyranny.
We are learning now what public health officials are using as the basis for control of vaccine distribution. They are pushing for vaccine distribution not based on health risk but on racial factors. That would be discrimination… it is racist.
The U.K.‘s Daily Mail reported this week:
“Every US state has been advised to consider ethnic minorities as a critical and vulnerable group in their vaccine distribution plans, according to Centers for Disease Control guidance. As a result, half of the nation’s states have outlined plans that now prioritize black, Hispanic and indigenous residents over white people in some way.”
That’s pretty plain. It is distribution based not on need as determined by science. It is an imposition of racist ideology as the basis for vaccine distribution.
This plan and the activity which will stem from it is rooted in eugenic concerns. According to Dr. Harold Schmidt of the University of Pennsylvania, “Older populations are whiter… Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.” Dr. Schmidt is a public health “expert.”
In other words, a disproportionate number of white people survive to old age; we should, therefore, give vaccines to younger, less vulnerable nonwhite citizens in “essential industries” and let Grandma die. Science and need can both be damned this is public health. Do you understand?
This racist. It also engenders policy that kills more black people in absolute terms. Age is a far better predictor of COVID vulnerability than race. Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe of the New York University Grossman School of Medicine found infected patients die at the same rate regardless of race. That would be a scientific finding.
The result of the plan is predictable. If you give the vaccine to patients based on racial concerns rather than age concerns, the most vulnerable are more likely to die. Older black and Latino populations are going to die disproportionately so that younger blacks and Latinos can receive a vaccine. The ignorant part is we are talking about a disease to which the young are 10 times less vulnerable.
This is a very real price of social justice thinking exacts. Treating people as members of racial groups rather than as individuals is wrong. Prioritizing race above age is against the science. More black and brown people die in absolute terms as a result.
Even if the overall proportion of black and brown deaths drops versus white deaths. This is still wrong. It is still racist. It kills people who did not need to die. “Equitable” statistical outcome has become a higher goal than actually saving lives… and that is evil.
What is going on is about power and control. It is absurd and needlessly tragic. It undermines our trust in our public health officials. We will trust the scientists… when they root their decisions in science. But we are well-advised to doubt them when they start proclaiming they are experts on morality. Maybe they can claim expertise in conformity… for whatever that is worth.