Over the past two and half months, honest American citizens have been arrested for paddle boarding, playing with their kids at a park, and going to houses of worship because these activities violate draconian coronavirus lockdown rules. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering why people can’t get a haircut or earn a living but it’s okay for scumbags to loot stores and burn down cities. As it turns out, there’s a perfectly good explanation: Health experts says the riots are fine because racism is far worse than COVID-19. Okay, maybe that explanation sucks.
1,288 public health professionals and infectious diseases professionals signed a letter in support of the nationwide riots in spite of the potential for a spike in coronavirus cases.
White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
The theory here is that white supremacy is more lethal to black people than coronavirus so if black people are dismantling white supremacy (AKA rioting) it’s actually healthier. There are more than a few problems with this theory and the first is pointed out by the letter writers: Black people have a higher rate of death from COVID-19. I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, doesn’t that mean blacks should quarantine themselves instead of looting Target stores?
The same question applies to the letter writers assertion that black people are more likely to be killed by the police. If black people are more likely to die from coronavirus and cops, the least healthy thing black people could do is riot, where they’ll be in contact with thousands of other, possibly infected, people as well as police officers. Duh.
The biggest problem with this theory however is that there is no institutional racism or white supremacy power structure in this country. Burning and looking stores wouldn’t dismantle racist institutions if they existed, but since they don’t, it’s a literal impossibility.
Again, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering why when white people were protesting the coronavirus lockdown it was a major threat to public health but now that black people are setting entire cities on fire, it’s no longer dangerous. Luckily these health “experts” had an explanation for that too:
On April 30, heavily armed and predominantly white protesters entered the State Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, protesting stay-home orders and calls for widespread public masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Infectious disease physicians and public health officials publicly condemned these actions and privately mourned the widening rift between leaders in science and a subset of the communities that they serve. As of May 30, we are witnessing continuing demonstrations in response to ongoing, pervasive, and lethal institutional racism set off by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many other Black lives taken by police. A public health response to these demonstrations is also warranted, but this message must be wholly different from the response to white protesters resisting stay-home orders. Infectious disease and public health narratives adjacent to demonstrations against racism must be consciously anti-racist, and infectious disease experts must be clear and consistent in prioritizing an anti-racist message.
Are they trying to say that protesting with an anti-racist message protects black people from the coronavirus? It sure seems like it. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, democrats have said we have to listen to the experts and follow the science. As you can clearly see by this letter, that’s a dumber idea than voting for democrats.
