"The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating, white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics”
What is the origin of this blatantly false statement - the falsity of which any New Yorker can attest?
It may have its origins in this December 27 advisory statement to healthcare workers by the New York City Department of Health titled 2021 HEALTH ADVISORY #39 COVID-19 ORAL ANTIVIRAL TREATMENTS AUTHORIZED AND SEVERE SHORTAGE OF ORAL ANTIVIRAL AND MONOCLONAL ANTIBODY TREATMENT PRODUCT.
The FDA has recently approved treatments which are in short supply. The Advisory is to prioritize for oral anti-viral treatment patients who meet ALL of the following criteria:
• Test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a nucleic acid amplification test or antigen test; results from an FDA-authorized home-test kit should be validated through video or photo but, if not possible, patient attestation is adequate • Have mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms o Patient cannot be hospitalized or receiving oxygen therapy due to COVID-19 • Are able to start treatment within 5 days of symptom onset • Have a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe COVID-19 illness.
o Consider race and ethnicity when assessing an individual’s risk. Impacts of longstanding systemic health and social inequities put Black, Indigenous, and People of Color at increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes and death.
It is the advice to "Consider race and ethnicity when assessing an individual's risk" tha has led even responsible conservative observers like The Constitutional Vanguard to allege unconstitutionality because the statement allegedly prioritizes by race, rather than individual need. But a fair reading is that in making an individualized assessment it is appropriate to consider race and ethnicity. Because the "impacts" of long term inequities put some people at increased risk. Surely true.
But does that mean that because a patient is white they are being de-prioritized, or denied treatment? No, not if you read the document. It is well known that the Bronx - and its overwhelmingly non-white population is the least healthy county in the State of New York. There is an understandable fear that the more articulate, and affluent patients are more likely to be informed about the treatments available and to demand the newly available methods of treatment.
- GWC 1/120/2017
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