Don’t miss the fact that this was published in The Atlantic by a senior fellow at the progressive Brookings Institution, Shadi Hamid:

The racial disparities in COVID outcomes are a matter of record, but to suggest that race causes these negative outcomes is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. This is how facts, despite being true, are misused and weaponized. Rather than race itself, variables that are correlated with race—such as socioeconomic status, health-care access, geography, and higher rates of obesity or diabetes—are what affect a patient’s health. Those who presumably know better, such as the Food and Drug Administration, have contributed to the confusion by highlighting that race—on its own—may place individuals at greater COVID-related risk. …

The rationing rules in New York and elsewhere are not the product of anything resembling conventional political persuasion. No party would support—certainly not openly—the essentialization and instrumentalization of race in medicine. Few are willing to defend policies such as these on the merits, because what exactly would they say? Tellingly, these controversies have received limited coverage from mainstream outlets. Recently, the Associated Press published an article portraying claims of race triage as right-wing propaganda. “Medical experts say the opposition is misleading,” the story declared.

That statement in the AP is a lie, and we all know it’s a lie.  It’s another lie the government-and-information elite will tell us until they think they have the power to be honest and argue that white people should die to make up for the disadvantages that the currents of history have placed disproportionately among minorities.  You can practically hear their inner dialogue:  If white people, with all their advantages, continue to be at high risk, that must be their fault, anyway.

Healthcare is not the first area of public concern in which this mental illness among Western progressives is having real consequences, but it’s a very stark and unambiguous one.  While the tendency of humanity to both surprise and disappoint dissuades me from the making of predictions, I think racist distribution of medical care will be the end of the line.  The anger of those who think mask and vaccine mandates are impositions on their rights is nothing compared with the rage that will swell when it becomes clear that medical treatment is being systematically provided or withheld for racist reasons — in a systemic racism that is codified and clear rather than ephemeral and inferred.

Featured image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.