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Glenn Greenwald: New York is Using Race to Determine Access to a Limited Supply of Life-Saving COVID Treatments
Related: gear, gears of the machine, Glenn Greenwald, health, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, vaccination
re: COVID
re: Glenn Greenwald
Welcome to the brave new world of political prosections, prosecutions (or not) by the color of your skin... and now explicit racism in the application of medicine.
Glenn Greenwald: New York is Using Race to Determine Access to a Limited Supply of Life-Saving COVID Treatments
2021-12-31. Emphasis added.
The rationale for prioritizing some races over others for access to COVID medications crumbles upon close examination.
...Before determining priority schemes, it must first be determined which groups of COVID patients are eligible at all to receive these potentially life-saving treatments and which from the start are declared ineligible... Then there is an additional requirement that makes intuitive sense: the COVID patient must “have a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe illness.” It makes sense that the government would seek to prioritize those who are at higher risk for developing severe illness.
But the policy then states that anyone who is non-white — regardless of age, health or underlying medical conditions — is automatically deemed to have met the requirement that one must have “a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe illness" in order to receive this treatment (“Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor.")...
This policy was first flagged by New York journalist Karol Markowicz, whose Twitter summary described it as “white people need not apply.” That summary is not accurate. White people who are sick from COVID can still be eligible for antibody treatment, but only if they first demonstrate that they have “a medical condition that increase[s] their risk for severe illness.” But non-white people have the significant advantage of being automatically eligible without having to demonstrate that, since their non-white race is deemed to inherently constitute an increased risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19. In other words, when determining eligibility for life-saving treatments, New York state is explicitly prioritizing some races over others.
...That document sets forth five different categories of patients who are entitled to priority when it comes to limited COVID treatment. The more risk factors a patient has, the higher priority they are assigned. As one would expect, COVID patients who are older, immunocompromised, and with "risk factors for severe illness” receive priority in the event of treatment shortages. But the priority scheme also directs that race be used as a critical metric: “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor, as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
...The factors which the CDC cites immediately make clear how warped it is to prioritize some racial groups over others when it comes to access to life-saving COVID treatments...
...
For all of 2021, the prevailing argument has been that the unvaccinated are reckless, immoral, diseased and dangerous, and deserve punishment and restrictions. But that is exactly why it was necessary to create a false narrative about who the unvaccinated population is: pretending that they are composed only of White Trump supporters while erasing the large percentages of Black and Hispanic Americans who remain unvaccinated...
The key point to all of this is clear: race is irrelevant in these medical determinations. Regardless of why Black Americans are getting vaccinated at lower rates than other racial groups, the relevant risk factor is vaccination status, not race. Based on the CDC's premise that “COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of COVID-19 and its potentially severe complications,” then a vaccinated Black person, all other factors being equal (age and health), would be at less risk for severe COVID complications than an unvaccinated White person. So it makes absolutely no sense to prioritize racial groups for treatment access based on vaccination disparities among racial groups.
The same is true for every other factor cited by the CDC to explain racial disparities in COVID outcomes. The CDC states, for instance, that “underlying medical conditions that increase risk for severe illness from COVID-19 may be more common among people from racial and ethnic minority groups.” The examples the agency provides: “common underlying conditions among those who require mechanical ventilation or died included diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, chronic kidney disease on dialysis, and congestive heart failure.” It notes that “a study in New York City found that non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic or Latino people had higher obesity rates and higher COVID-19 mortality rates compared with non-Hispanic Asian and non-Hispanic White people
WIND: racist woketards are now running our medical system, courtesy of the feckless CDC. This is pure political science, vicious racism, a grotesque corruption of medical science. Just examine the patient as an individual without preconceived bigotry! Only that respects a human being, not dehumanizing political and class tribal warfare that reduces someone to their perceived “race”.
What is “race” anyway? It’s not a legitimate scientific construct, but a social/political one. What “race” are my daughters (my wife is of Mexican origin (mixed blood), I am a caucasian mongrel). What “race” is Barrack Obama (half “black”, why not half “white” or “other”). Intellectual bankruptcy at work. To apply such artificial politicized constructs to medicine is outragous.
