"Race" Kills

I just read another article, this one from the NY Times, decrying that social distancing is a "privilege." We are literally losing our minds along with our lives and the real killer here is "race." It is not a killer just because it is misused by some for their advantage, but in this case, because it makes people believe things about themselves that are not true, e.g. as the notion that "blacks" were immune from Coronavirus because of the melanin in their skin. How does the person who said that feel today? "Race" created that idea.

REVIVING 'RACE'

I thought that the Coronavirus had for the most part put to rest the mistaken notion that we were all different "races" since we saw that not only were American citizens under attack from the deadly virus, but all citizens of the world were also struggling to fend off the deadly disease. That didn't last and like the flu that seems to come back every year, bolting back into our lives is the virus that has killed more than any flu ever did; the virus of "race."

After some "people of color" publicly touted last month that the Coronavirus would not affect them because of their melanin, the numbers started coming in and people of the darker persuasion began to have friends and family members contracting the disease and then dying and now this is our reaction. Quite quickly the media, people, pundits and politicians went to our favorite "go-to excuse," our good old standby excuse for everything in our society that ails us, "race."

THE RACISM OF CORONAVIRUS

We just couldn't help ourselves. With the introduction of our decades-long familiar excuse of "race" we will now divest ourselves of the energy and effort to access a real cure and instead, try to fight the "racism of Coronavirus." If you can't see me, yes I'm shaking my head.

There are so many issues intertwined here that I'm not quite sure where to start. First of all our society segregates based on skin color. We then have a contagious virus that hits one of those segregated communities and immediately it defaults to “viral racism.” Was it “racism” when it afflicted and killed many elderly people in Washington state? No it was all of the people who fit the profile. Was it “racism” when it afflicted those with compromised immune systems? No it was everyone who fit the profile. So the question should have been, what was the profile here? Oh yea, but we only know how to profile "racially." How about profiling logically. Wouldn't it make sense to track the habits of those who contracted Corona and those who eventually died from it? Or is it simply easier to scream "viral racism" and not have to come up with the real cause? Logically it would seem to me that densely populated areas would be more affected due to Coronavirus being a contagious disease transmitted more easily based on proximity. So perhaps urban areas of our country where citizens are packed into a small area, like New York, New Jersey or Chicago might have higher rates. Not surprisingly they do.

Remember the kids on spring break at Florida and we found out that some of them contracted Coronavirus because of their bad decisions while on break. Why was that not "racial?" The answer is because we first logically decided to see what caused the problem unlike what our media did with the blanket statement of "black" as though the virus was looking for "black" skin. Ridiculous.

ARE HURRICANES RACIST TOO?

If you didn't get any of that then here is a simple analogy. In every city there is a more wealthy part of town and a poorer part of town. If a hurricane blows through the city, it often demolishes the weaker structures in the city, which is probably the poorer part of town The hurricane was not "racist," and it is not a given that the anyone in the city is, though the poor were disproportionately impacted.

So the bottom line is that we've decided that the Coronavirus, which we have no answers for at present is too hard to figure out so we're using the most popular scapegoat in our arsenal; the weapon of "race." Let's scream "racism" and see if that will heal anyone. I don't think the Coronavirus cares.