U.S. FDA, CDC see early signal of possible Pfizer bivalent COVID shot link to stroke - "A safety monitoring system flagged that U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and German partner BioNTech's updated COVID-19 shot could be linked to a type of brain stroke in older adults"
This article needs to be removed for "misinformation"
China’s zero-Covid policy, botched reopening will puzzle historians for years to come | South China Morning Post - "It has become apparent that mainland China has botched its Covid-19 reopening. After three years of maintaining a strict zero-Covid policy, the surprise at its about-face has been surpassed only by questions as to why such a costly, unsustainable policy was pursued for so long. Economists and historians will spend years trying to find the answers to three mysteries in relation to China’s (mis)handling of the pandemic. First is the question of what the true costs of the zero-Covid policy were, and in particular, whether they were worth paying... An analysis of zero-Covid’s consequences ought to also include direct health costs, especially the excess deaths caused by other conditions not treated as a result zero-Covid restrictions, lost output from economic shutdowns, and the harm caused to people’s lives and mental health as a result of extended lockdowns and the sometimes arbitrary quarantining of millions of people. The second mystery historians will try to solve is why a policy as obviously short-sighted and unsustainable as zero-Covid was maintained for so long and with such ideological fervour. What happened to the much-vaunted pragmatism, scientific approach and long-term thinking that were the hallmarks of the Chinese state in the first 40 years of reform and opening-up? When highly effective Covid-19 vaccines arrived in early 2021, zero-Covid came to represent the antithesis of these virtues in governance... it was likely that zero-Covid had been ideologised and pursued so dogmatically that no major part of China’s sprawling administrative system had the means, or were even allowed, to get ready to transition to living with Covid. The failure in preparing for a transition was not just a failure of cognition or imagination; it was also a failure of policy communication. When zero-Covid was in force, the Chinese propaganda machinery went into hubristic overdrive to play up the dangers of Covid, to denigrate other (especially Western) governments for choosing to live with the virus, and to boast that China’s success with Covid-19 showed that its system of government was morally superior to liberal democracy. This hubris has backfired, and the Chinese state’s communications machinery now confronts an increasingly sceptical, distrustful public. Not only did such policy communication breed overconfidence in zero-Covid, it may also have deterred many older Chinese citizens from getting vaccinated... while the Chinese state is “strong in mobilising public sentiment, in ensuring compliance, and in constructing new infrastructure … it is considerably less capable in optimising between containment and mitigation measures, in sustaining a high level of investment in public healthcare, and in persuading its people to accept that Covid is here to stay.” “These things require capabilities that authoritarian governments usually lack: a respect for diversity and debate in policy choices, and an active citizenry that has the means to check and question the state"... The third mystery that economists may ponder in the future is why a widely anticipated economic rebound, and the resumption of the China growth story after the abandonment of zero-Covid, did not materialise in 2023."
Meme - "CNN World
Europe's loud, rule-breaking unvaccinated minority are falling out of society
At the heart of China's protests against zero-Covid, young people cry for freedom"
Remember When the Left Cheered China's COVID Response? - "The never-ending COVID lockdowns in China have been heavily criticized by the media, public health officials, and western leaders for months. Some of the lockdown measures are truly draconian, like welding the doors shut to apartment buildings and throwing those who test positive in dirty, crowded quarantine centers... All through 2020 and 2021, international organizations like the WHO and the UN as well as the American government and media outlets saw the Chinese COVID response as enlightened and necessary. Yet only a few months before the pandemic was declared, a WHO report on “Non-Pharmaceutical Public-Health Measures for Mitigating the Risk and Impact of Epidemic and Pandemic Influenza” stated that the quarantine of exposed individuals — let alone of the entire population — “is not recommended, because there is no obvious rationale for this measure.”... Zero COVID was all the rage in the salons of western thinkers despite previous studies showing them to be worse than useless. That fact was confirmed in studies published in late 2021 and 2022 that showed countries like Sweden that didn’t follow the lockdown model had lower-than-average excess deaths as well as the collateral damage from lockdowns like the massive increase in global poverty, the worrying rise of teenage mental health problems, and the bullying of free people when authoritarian measures were used to stifle dissent. And then, when people took to the streets to protest the lockdowns, the mandates, and the “vaccine passports,” they were smeared as “right-wing nuts,” “covidiots,” and “threats to public health.” It wasn’t until the videos of the Shanghai lockdown in early 2022 began to circulate that the attitude toward China’s lockdowns began to change. Citizens screaming for help from their apartment windows, people begging for food in the streets, and the filthy conditions in the quarantine camps did much to alter the thinking of many in the west about the efficacy of China’s COVID response."
Zero-Covid leaves China’s hospitals ill-prepared for exit wave | Financial Times - "Hospitals said China’s zero-Covid regime, which has severely restricted movement in the country and depressed consumption, had undermined their financial health and willingness to take on new loans. “We have suffered a slump in revenue in recent years as the zero-Covid policy prevented patients of other diseases from seeing doctors,” said the head of equipment at a hospital based in Changzhou, near Shanghai. “We don’t have an incentive to buy new devices.”... Zhu Weizhen, founder of a Shanghai-based manufacturer of ultrasound equipment who regularly deals with hospitals across the country, estimated that the Chinese healthcare system’s annual income had fallen one-third since zero-Covid began in 2020."
COVID-19 situation in China ‘not transparent,’ officials say as global concerns grow - "China rolled back many of its tough pandemic restrictions earlier this month, allowing the virus to spread rapidly in a country that had seen relatively few infections since an initial devastating outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Spiraling infections have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients. Cremations have risen several-fold, with a request from overburdened funeral homes in one city for families to postpone funeral services until next month. Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up the situation... China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the country before. An AP investigation found that the government sat on the release of genetic information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating WHO officials. The government also tightly controlled the dissemination of Chinese research on the virus, impeding cooperation with international scientists. Research into the origins of the virus has also been stymied. A WHO expert group said in a report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on the how the pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation"
Covid-19 is tearing through China | The Economist - "Most of China’s population has never been exposed to covid and many old people are undervaccinated. So while the Omicron variant of the virus will cause relatively mild symptoms in most people, a large number of Chinese are still vulnerable to severe illness. The country’s weak health-care system is already under huge pressure. At a hospital in Beijing your correspondent saw elderly patients breathing from oxygen tanks on gurneys that spilled out into packed corridors and waiting rooms. Videos circulating online show similar scenes across China. There have been reports of patients being turned away from hospitals in smaller cities owing to a lack of beds. Officials say there are around 10 intensive-care unit (ICU) beds per 100,000 people in the country, well below what is needed. Medical staff are in short supply, too. A health official has warned that some regions are approaching the “critical point” in ICU-bed supply. Drugs used to treat covid are in high demand. Many pharmacies have run out of fever medicine and painkillers. Paxlovid, an antiviral that helps prevent severe sickness, is especially sought after. Prices of the drug have surged; many hospitals are reportedly short of it. Some have sought unauthorised versions of Paxlovid sent in from abroad. Meanwhile, WeChat, a ubiquitous messaging app, has launched a function that tries to connect individuals in need of fever drugs and other supplies with those who have them. According to the government, only 13 people have died from covid so far in December. The real toll is undoubtedly much higher... China’s crematoriums are busy. Police have been stationed outside one in Beijing that has attracted reporters... Three shots of a Chinese vaccine provide reasonable protection against severe illness and death. But, as of late November, only 40% of those aged over 80 had received three shots... China could have done more to prepare for this moment, by stockpiling drugs, administering vaccines with more urgency and producing treatment guidelines. Now officials are trying to spin the situation. They have renamed the disease caused by the virus from the “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to the milder sounding “novel coronavirus infection”... But a hint of how poorly things are going can be detected in the actions of China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping. When the virus was under control, Mr Xi was hailed as the “commander-in-chief” of the “people’s war” on covid. He spoke often about the need to persevere with zero-covid. Since cases began to surge, though, he has remained largely quiet, making only oblique references to the outbreak"
Damn lying Western media!
India Makes COVID Test Mandatory For Passengers Flying From China - "Passengers flying into India from China and a few other countries from Asia and Southeast Asia will now have to undergo a mandatory COVID test before being allowed in. Not too long ago, India relaxed its COVID-related travel rules as cases around the world declined
Weird how so many countries don't believe the vaccines work. It's almost as if covid restrictions are political
Is it still racist if a non-white nation does it?
Biden didn't "fall short" of July 4 vaccination goal — he was sabotaged by Republican trolls - "Of course there's nothing inherently "conservative" about refusing to protect yourself and other people by getting vaccinated. This is only a problem because Donald Trump somehow convinced his supporters that refusing to take the pandemic seriously was central to their identity"
From 2021. So much for the buck stopping at the top. Weird that Trump accelerating the vaccines and encouraging others to get vaccinated but is at fault for low numbers - but then everything is his fault
The Only Covid-19 Book Worth Reading - Freakonomics - "LEVITT: Everybody’s mantra was, “Well, the C.D.C. says this, so we’re going to do this.” Even though the C.D.C. was not making sense. The C.D.C. would say, “Do not wear a mask because masks don’t work, and we need all the masks to be kept for the people who are working on the frontline in hospitals.” Well, it can’t both be true that masks don’t work and that we need them all for the people on the front lines of hospitals. But that was the kind of nonsense that was coming out of there. And everybody was going along with it...
LEWIS: Every other country, when they repatriated their citizens, tested them for Covid when they came back into the country... there was a doctor, who’s in the book, his name is James Lawler who was in Omaha near the 80-something Americans who were quarantining for two weeks in an Air Force base. He got in touch with the C.D.C., said, “We need to test these people.” And the C.D.C. responded quite violently with him. They said, “You’re absolutely under no circumstances to test those people.” And he was just perplexed. Like, why wouldn’t you test them? Some of those people almost surely have Covid, and we’re going to let them off the Air Force base, and we don’t know how long they might be infectious for. And he got back from the C.D.C. word that if he tested those people, he would be charged with performing medical experiments on prisoners...
LEVITT: I think medical ethics has completely lost its way because it’s clear in a pandemic where a million people will die, that you might be willing to sacrifice a few people along the way. Is it so obviously unethical to, say, pay volunteers a lot of money to be part of trials to speed up vaccines that will save hundreds of thousands of lives? And it’s incredibly frustrating to me that medical ethicists have carved out such a crazy polarized position that there’s no room for weighing costs and benefits anymore.
LEWIS: I’m with you on this. There’s another medical ethical question that I’m surprised does not get more attention. It amazes me that, for example, a teacher in Marin County can come into class unvaccinated and decline to wear his or her mask, infect students, and remain anonymous. These privacy issues around disease, I think need to be rethought in a pandemic that you need to know who has the virus. I assume that the legal system will test this at some point — someone’s going to sue someone for infecting them. But the whole attitude in the disease space is that if you have the disease, you have the right to privacy about that. And I don’t get that.
LEVITT: Yeah. This is a war. We’re involved in a war with Covid, and it seems like we should take some of the tactics you would use in a war."
Good luck with "stigma" (see: HIV and how in California it's no longer a felony to intentionally infect someone with it), or proving that someone infected you (and what damages might be)
We saw what happened with the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. Good luck with a military mindset against a bad, but very infectious flu
Meme - TekJansen69: "Now that it's safe to go to the supermarket again, (Thank you, Pfizer and Biden!) I'm no longer needing to tip an Instacart driver 20% for my groceries. So, I'm actually SAVING money, now."
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Partying - "‘It's, it's a profoundly moral occasion. It's not about fun. There is something deeply theological about a party, it is celebrating the gift of life, it's returning the gift of life back to the Creator with joy. I'm a Cavalier, not a roundhead, I'm a Dionysian, not an Apollonian, unapologetically’...
‘What's the moral difference between allowing clubs to reopen right now and waiting a month, maybe two, when more people are vaccinated?’
‘Well, I think to that point, we need to consider what has actually been going on during the pandemic when the clubs have been closed. You know, we know that the reality is that young people in particular aren't going to stop partying, we have seen so many illegal raves happening throughout lockdown. And the unfortunate truth is when you put all of those people in these unregulated situations, there can be serious consequences. You know, we saw acts of sexual violence is happening at these raves or drug overdoses. And had those people been in a more secure environment like a nightclub or a festival, where there are drug checks in place, where there are security guards, you know, those things might not have happened. So I think it's more about finding ways to ensure that we can regulate these nightlife activities, because we know they're going to happen whether they're allowed to or not.’
‘But, you just mentioned something really key which is the difference between an illegal rave and a nightclub is that a nightclub is a professionalized space. So I did bar work for years, and I really liked it. But it's not a job where, if you need time off, employers are always gonna be understanding. It's a really precarious job. There's really high staff turnover. So it's one thing for us to say that individuals got a choice to make about their own comfort as partygoers but isn't it the case that freedom of choice doesn't exist in the same way if you're working there, and you are being made to decide perhaps between your own safety and your own comfort and being able to pay your rent.’...
‘If a third party were to go to a nightclub, or a rave or a party, and they didn't know anyone there, and they were sober, and they weren't into it, and they just observed it, it would be of no moral benefit to them, would it? Whereas if you went to a concert, or a play, or any other kind of cultural thing, even if you didn't, even if you weren't part of the action, you'd benefit from it. And that, to me, is a basic sort of test of why the party is not moral, in a way all those other things are?’
‘Well, I don't think that follows at all. I mean, you can easily go to a concert and get nothing out of it, you can easily go through a play and not understand what anybody's talking about, I think any cultural form, which you know, a participant has kind of no sense of what's actually going on is going to be confusing and disorienting. I mean, to be honest, I think you're just you're projecting the experience to what might be the experience of a stereotypical radio four listener who would be expected to understand the social codes and the cultural conventions governing a concert or a play, maybe not those of a nightclub. So I just don't think it follows at all. All of those different contexts, all of those different cultural forms, have their own, their codes, their mean, their ways of participating’"
Given the tiny risk of covid to the young, apparently it made sense to not give people working in nightlife venues to return to work. Government money is unlimited, after all. And if you can wait another month, why not another year?
GUNTER: The need to hold chief medical officers accountable | Toronto Sun - "it is not just daily bad announcements that has ground down chief medical officers popularity. Exasperation with the length of the pandemic, itself, has a bearing, as does frustration with lockdowns. If you’ve been trapped in your nursing home for the 10th consecutive month or are on the verge of permanently closing your small business because pandemic restrictions forbid you to open the doors, then it’s understandable you might have lost faith in the unelected bureaucrats in charge of your province’s public health response. And therein lies the main reason why it’s a bad idea to make provincial officers of health officers of their respective provinces’ legislatures: They’re not accountable to voters... That’s not such a big deal with a privacy commissioner or chief electoral officer. Those functionaries can’t shut down whole society or economies. The auditor general can’t force your restaurant to convert to takeout, only. Officers of the legislature or Parliament are typically independent so they can hold the government to account, not so they can issue decrees over the whole of the public without cabinet approval... Also, look at how public health officials occasionally cry wolf. Federal public health doctor, Theresa Tam, recently released a chart showing 20,000 or more new cases per day by the end of March if lockdowns were lifted with new COVID variants. Then her officials were unable to explain how they had arrived at those numbers. There are also the moving goalposts on when life can return to normal. At first, public health officials said when 70% of adults had been vaccinated, then 85%. Now it’s 90%. They’re experts, but they’re not infallible. Think about how their advice has changed on mask wearing and travel bans, for instance."
From 2021
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Katie Prescott - "‘What do you think of this idea of a circuit breaker, a sort of short period of complete lockdown?’
'I think your heart sinks when you hear the words like, like circuit breaker because you know, it's sort of based on PR, but it won't, I don't think it'll work. Professor Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University summed it up when he said: lockdowns - and that's a circuit breaker - defer a problem, they don't solve it. So at the end of the fortnight, where are we going to be? In the same position. So there's a lot of good things that can be done. And we've got a serious issue. But I think the Swedish model in the future will be seen to be the best.'"
From 2020. Prescient.
It's interesting how covid hystericists love lockdowns for their own sake and don't acknowledge that they just kick the can down the road. Another example of the 'myth' of the slippery slope - when '2 weeks to flatten the curve' turned (via some intermediate steps) into 'lockdown until everyone is vaccinated'
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'It's taking hours and hours of our time to individually track and trace to ensure that we are keeping school safe' - "It's been really difficult to get good data on this. But there is some encouragement, we're quite confident now that primary school children are probably a quarter to half as likely to become infected, and are also much less likely to pass the infection on. So there's growing evidence that primary school children are not amplifying this disease. And in secondary school children, again, it's less than adults. But it's a gradient of effects such that six formers are probably in about the same risk as adults. But that data is slightly less stable… It's a boat balancing harm. And we absolutely know about the harm of teenage suicide, and the lack of educational opportunity. The real question is, what effect is these groups of children having on amplifying the disease within the community? And if it's showing that it's less than the adults, and if the children themselves are at lower risk of harm, the question has to be should we be making greater efforts to keep children in education, either through improved testing, or protect, potentially, with the primary school children taking them out of testing altogether?"
From 2020
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'We were told we were going into Tier 3, no ifs, no buts. We can either expend energy on that or try and get a better deal' - "‘You have publicly argued against pubs and restaurants closing. Steve Rotherham there [sp?] compared people like you to those who shout at the wind.’
‘Look, first of all, the demography of Liverpool is very different to that of Greater Manchester. I've had regular discussions with Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, and we’ve recognized that there there are those differences. We've had one meeting with government on Friday, they've not been able to show us any data that connects bars and pubs in Greater Manchester with transmission of covid 19 virus, they've not been able to provide any evidence that closing them down will work. Our own data, and we have far more finely grained data collected by our own Directors of Public Health, seems to demonstrate that there isn't a connection between, oh, not a particular connection between bars and restaurants and the transmission of covid’"
From 2020
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'He's a warrior and a fighter' - "[On Trump] ‘I do not feel the President has downplayed it because during, at the beginning of this pandemic, he was able to have one of the largest mobilizations since World War Two, bringing in equipment, whether it was ventilators or personal protection equipment, etc. The President always has had rhetoric about many different things. But I always say with this president, look at his actions. Look at what he's done’
‘Well, his rhetoric last night, just last night, he was saying that the end of the pandemic is in sight.’
‘He is trying to exhibit optimism in this country, which is what people need. They've got pandemic fatigue in our country, indeed your country, indeed worldwide’"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, ‘It was announced in the House of Commons and we were not told beforehand that announcement was going to be made’ - "‘If, just a few months ago, you'd read a novel about a time or a place in which it was illegal to go to the shops, or have a cup or a pint or a sandwich with a friend or a relative, you might have regarded it as completely implausible, or at least seen it as an Orwellian warning of a future that would never actually materialize. That though will be the law, not a rule or a recommendation, in large parts of the northeast of England from tomorrow. People from two households will be banned from meeting up in any indoor setting, private or public’"
From 2020
Vaughan condo killer Francesco Villi had many car crashes, injuries - "A bizarre frequency of car crashes and workplace accidents over decades left Francesco Villi, the 73-year-old gunman in a mass shooting at his condominium north of Toronto, depressed, unable to work as a contractor, and suicidal years before his acrid dispute with his condo board over his apartment’s construction. The frequency of Villi’s strange accidents and a lack of medical proof to back some of them up, left doubts over his credibility, a diagnosis of mental illness, and suspicions he was a malingerer long before be was named as a mass murderer after Sunday’s targeted shootings"
I saw a covid hystericist speculating it was covid brain damage. When your narrative crumbles...
8 teen girls charged with murder in Toronto man's swarming death - "Eight teenage girls have been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of a 59-year-old man in Toronto"
Hilariously, someone blamed this on covid. Well, maybe it was the lockdowns and covid hysteria that made them aggressive
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Mass Migration and the Families Left Behind - "The country as a whole feels different than it did when we lived here eight years ago… More fractured, more remote, more inward looking. For much of the pandemic COVID restrictions have turned the lines on the map that divide the states and territories into rigid borders that could only be crossed with a grant of a permit, paperwork that was routinely denied. Not since the founding of modern Australia more than 100 years ago, has the country been more geographically fragmented. Western Australia, whose borders are still shut, feels like it's declared independence. Queensland has also acted at times, like a self governing fiefdom. The premiers of states have often governed more like Prime Ministers. Absent throughout has been a sense of Australian nationhood. As well as witnessing the fragility of Australia's Federation, we have seen the enduring solidity of its fortress Australia mentality. Early on in COVID, the decision was taken to pull up the drawbridge and shutter the portcullis. The country's international borders only opened up to non citizens in the middle of December. Not only were foreigners kept out, Australians were locked in. The lucky country took on the tagline of the Hermit Kingdom. A country used to what's called the tyranny of distance, suffered the frustration of confinement. 10s of 1000s of expatriate Australians also struggled to make it home, because of caps on the number of incoming flights, and the prohibitive cost of two weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine. Made to feel even more estranged from their distant country, the unofficial expat anthem, the Peter Allen ballad, I still call Australia home, no longer rang so true. Both externally and internally, there's also been a hard heartedness about how Australian officialdom has regulated the movements of its people. When the Delta variant hit, the government threatened to jail its own citizens for trying to return from India. That's quite something, the criminalization of the journey home. Even family members wishing to cross state lines to bid a final farewell to terminally ill relatives have had applications for compassionate travel waivers not back. In at least one state, South Australia, those who were granted access had to make their visits to hospitals and hospices accompanied by the police. They were treated like suspects or potential escapees. For many the long arm of the Australian law became ridiculously intrusive. The Novak Djokovic controversy ahead of the Australian Open, demonstrated the broad power at the government's disposal to grant or cancel visas, which has been likened to a godlike level of authority. But the tough approach that Australia has adopted towards immigrants, especially since the prime ministership of John Howard, and especially since the turn of the century, has also been used against its own citizenry. The Australian Government would cite the country's comparatively low COVID death rate, as proof that its strict policies have been effective, a persuasive claim. But at the federal and state level, officials have faced accusations of bureaucratic overkill and a cruel authoritarianism, with echoes of the penal past. COVID has surely finally buried the myth that this country is anti authoritarian. Arguably one of its most defining characteristics is compliance. Its early success with the coronavirus in 2020, when it was regarded as something of a global exemplar, partly stem from having a bureaucracy used to enforcing a panoply of rules and a population used to obeying them. There have been protests, but they've often looked more American than Australian. Melbourne has witnessed anti lockdown demonstrations where Trump flags were brandished… Australia then seems to have become more vulnerable to another contagion: the American variant of democracy."
Of course, the "American protests have nothing to do with how Zero Covid wrecked Australia. And given the later response to the China Zero Covid protests, this is amusing
Race-Based Rationing of COVID Treatment Is Real—And Dangerous - The Atlantic - "the influence of the cultural left’s worldview goes beyond mere terminology. During the coronavirus pandemic, the instinct to bring crude generalizations about race to the center of every discussion is seeping into public policies about quite consequential matters. What happens, for instance, when in the name of racial equity, membership in a particular ethnic group can make the difference between getting and not getting potentially lifesaving medical care? This might sound like a far-fetched hypothetical. Except that it’s not. In a series of articles this month, The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reported that hospitals in Minnesota, Utah, New York, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin have been using race as a factor in which COVID-19 patients receive scarce monoclonal-antibody treatments first. Last year, SSM Health, a network of 23 hospitals, began using a points system to ration access to Regeneron. The drug would be given to patients only if they netted 20 points or higher. Being “non-White or Hispanic” counted for seven points, while obesity got you only one point—even though, according to the CDC, “obesity may triple the risk of hospitalization due to a COVID-19 infection.” Based on this scoring system, a 40-year-old Hispanic male in perfect health would receive priority over an obese, diabetic 40-year-old white woman with asthma and hypertension. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Department of Health used a scoring calculator that counted “BIPOC status” as equivalent to being 65 years and older in its risk assessment. (BIPOC is shorthand for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.) New York did away with a points system entirely; people of color are automatically deemed to be at elevated risk of harm from COVID—and therefore are given higher priority for therapeutics—irrespective of their underlying health conditions... Under threat of legal action, SSM Health announced on January 14 that it “no longer” uses race criteria. On January 11, Minnesota’s public-health authorities edited out the BIPOC reference, leaving no trace of the previous wording. New York State, however, has not yet altered its guidelines. 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... 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. (I requested comment from the AP about its coverage. A spokesperson responded, “AP does not do editorial commentary, nor does it have an opinion agenda. It is an independent, nonpartisan, fact-based news organization.”) Asserting that reality is not real simply because it is a Republican talking point is gaslighting. Ideas, even good ones, become destructive when they demand that people prioritize advocacy over truth... Democrats and liberals now find themselves under considerable pressure to acquiesce to this way of looking at the world. Going against the norm is simply too costly if you want to remain a member of the tribe in good standing. There is no end to this way of thinking, unfortunately, and we are all susceptible to it. In a zero-sum political struggle, anything that could conceivably undermine morale on your side is perceived as helping the other side. And the other side, the argument goes, is an existential threat. In theory, woke ideology shouldn’t matter that much, but it will matter in practice, including in ways unanticipated just a few years ago. What public-health officials and hospital administrators have done with race criteria, likely with the best intentions, is only the most striking example of how seemingly symbolic positions become all too tangible. As I write this, standardized testing and entrance exams are being rolled back because of the intriguing notion that doing well on tests is a form of white privilege. Crime rates are rising across the country, yet prominent Democrats either dismiss the problem as “hysteria” or avoid talking about it altogether. Addressing crime and protecting those at risk require police, which in turn require funding and resources that progressive elites—but not actual Democratic voters—propose to divert away from law enforcement. Somehow, progressives have fallen under the sway of a set of ideas so off-putting that they threaten progressivism itself. Those of us who are not white are not just “nonwhite.” We are not interchangeable. We are not always and forever victims. We are individuals, first and foremost, not merely members of a group to be patronized by other people’s good intentions."
The left only object that correlation is not causation when they don't like the suggested causation mechanism