You can obviously depend on the NY Times to provide lots and lots of hot takes on the backs of people getting sick and dying. You have this one
Healthcare Workers Are Begging For Masks. Is The President Listening?
The country that spends the most in the world on health care doesn’t have nearly enough protective equipment.
It’s an op-ed with a video, 2:50 seconds of medical folks saying they don’t have enough while the Times interspersed heavily edited cuts of Trump speaking, without full context. Interesting that no one mentions that the Obama administration failed to refill the N95 masks and other supplies for the Strategic National Stockpile. I won’t blame Obama for that: a president can only do and know so much. Heck, was he even aware of this? Did someone bring it to his attention at some point? Or, for real this time, did he first read about it in the news recently? Anyhow, no one in the video offers any ideas as to what President Trump is supposed to do. Not one idea.
And other hot-takes. But, let’s go to Charles Blow, who’s always good for a race baiting one
Social Distancing Is a Privilege
People like to say that the coronavirus is no respecter of race, class or country, that the disease Covid-19 is mindless and will infect anybody it can.
In theory, that is true. But, in practice, in the real world, this virus behaves like others, screeching like a heat-seeking missile toward the most vulnerable in society. And this happens not because it prefers them, but because they are more exposed, more fragile and more ill.
What the vulnerable portion of society looks like varies from country to country, but in America, that vulnerability is highly intersected with race and poverty.
Early evidence from cities and states already shows that black people are disproportionately affected by the virus in devastating ways. As ProPublica reported, in Milwaukee County, Wis., as of Friday morning, 81 percent of the deaths were black people. Black people make up only 26 percent of that county.
Maybe Charles should be blaming China for coming up with Bat Soup Virus. He also notes the same problem in Detroit and Chicago. So
If this pattern holds true across other states and cities, this virus could have a catastrophic impact on black people in this country.
And yet, we are still not seeing an abundance of news coverage or national governmental response that center on these racial disparities. Many states haven’t even released race-specific data on cases and deaths. The federal government hasn’t either.
This is the kind of thing race baiters look for, rather than worrying about everyone.
Partly for this reason, we are left with deceptive and deadly misinformation. The perception that this is a jet-setters’ disease, or a spring breakers’ disease, or a “Chinese virus†as President Trump likes to say, must be laid to rest. The idea that this virus is an equal-opportunity killer must itself be killed.
Perhaps it’s not helpful that the Democratic Party has held blacks down in slums in Dem run cities, making them utterly reliant on government?
Staying at home is a privilege. Social distancing is a privilege.
See? Social distancing is white and rich privilege! Of course. It’s so simple.
If you are sheltering in place in an ivory tower, or even a comfortable cul-de-sac or a smartly well-appointed apartment, and your greatest concern is boredom and leftover food, please stop scolding those scratching to survive.
That’s an interesting final paragraph, because so many of us, who are apparently privileged, have been advocates of not shutting down the economy, yet, the Democrats and the media pushed for this hard. Go figure.
