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White privilege wants you infected

President Trump staged a return to the White House yesterday and then made a video telling you not to be afraid of Covid 19:

The message here is clear: you should risk getting infected with Covid 19, as I did, because I survived and now claim to have recovered.

What’s wrong with that?

There is no evidence that Trump is fully recovered. This video was recorded after the President, loaded with steroids and an experimental antibody “cocktail,” struggled for breath after climbing a single flight of stairs. Symptoms after Covid 19 infection often seem to return after a few days with a vengeance. He is not necessarily out of the woods.

You are not going to get the treatment the President gets at Walter Reed and at the White House. You’ll go to an Emergency Room likely already overwhelmed with Covid and other serious problems, you won’t get the experimental drugs, and you won’t have a team of doctors taking care of you and you alone.

The President simply ignores the risk of death associated with Covid 19. For a 74-year-old, that is 90 times (220 times for a 75-year-old) the risk for an 29-year-old. More than 210,000 Americans have died of Covid 19, and the number of infections per day is still increasing in this country. Even with declining mortality, that means we’ll likely hit 250,000 dead before the end of the year and still be going at about 5000 deaths per week at the beginning of 2021.

The Administration’s aim is “herd immunity,” achieved by a combination of allowing the infection of many millions of young people and distributing a vaccine that has been rushed through the approval process. The notion that older people can be protected from those infected young people is nonsense in the real world, especially the one inhabited by most black and brown people: kids have parents and grandparents as well as teachers and other adults with whom they come into necessary contact in cramped housing. Only the privileged can separate their children and prevent them from infecting adults, and in any event the effects of Covid 19 on children can be devastating.

Trump’s effort to rush a vaccine to approval is dangerous. He will no doubt announce that one is available before the election. But no vaccine at that point will have undergone more than a couple of months of testing. It is impossible to detect longer-term effects in that timeframe. Introduction of a Covid 19 vaccine that proves ineffective or unsafe could do serious harm not only to those who get it, but to America’s prospects of getting its population vaccinated against many other diseases.

Trump’s approach to Covid 19, like his tax cuts and his efforts to destroy Obamacare, are firmly based in the world of white privilege he inhabits. His concerns are about people like him, who depend on a strong stock market and massive amounts of debt to finance their tax-exempt incomes. He wants you to get infected so that he and his ilk can continue to enjoy the fruits of your labors. Don’t fall for it.