Tweet thread

Question, if Black people were dying at these numbers why was it "increasingly unimaginable " for white people to die at these numbers? The weirdest part of the story unless I missed it is it skips past the research that says white people were fine with covid protocols until they learned covid was mostly killing poc. Then they pushed for open up protests.

Put simply: it's not surprising that white deaths surpassed Black death because many white people literally thought they were superior to poc and that covid- an incredibly contagious respiratory disease - wouldn't come for them. They thought they had a biological advantage when what they had was a systemic advantage and then behaved in ways that eroded that advantage

And they can't back down because backing down means acknowledging maybe they're not better than Black people. And they can't do that because their conception of self is based on that. The piece reads funny because stating plainly these realities in a national US paper would not fly. I'd put a small amount of money that the reporter didn't insert that sentence - an editor did.

That was on my screen. But she edited her thread tweet

White covid deaths increasing in U.S., surpassing death rate of Blacks

  • nine_leven [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Researchers at the University of Georgia found that White people who assumed the pandemic had a disparate effect on communities of color — or were told that it did — had less fear of being infected with the coronavirus, were less likely to express empathy toward vulnerable populations and were less supportive of safety measures, according to an article in Social Science & Medicine.

    I guess the anti-lockdown folks who these researchers found are even stupider than the ones who know how to use websites other than Facebook, because I have never seen that rationale come up.

    I've been an immunological data scientist for a while, throughout the pandemic and until now I've become incredibly jaded. That frustration, similar to what I imagine most here feel when seeing MSM talking points about Russia re: Ukraine, lead me to following online anti-lockdown/mask/vaccine argumentation/discussion/disinfo, just to see if any of them could be corralled to the "right" reasons why the big pharma medical products suck. And while I'm sure a lot of those folks are racist I never once heard any of them attribute biological supremacy as the basis for the disparity. When the disparity between health outcomes did come up, they usually focused on how much better Jewish persons fared than white people and pointed to the higher number of people of color in "essential" work and that they have worse health outcomes in general, due to economic inequality. So they're not too off the mark, I really don't think many of them were motivated by a belief that COVID was literally less dangerous for White people due to a biological constant. Most just didn't consider it that dangerous, some acknowledged it was very dangerous for the aged or those otherwise at greater risk due to a health condition.