‘Expert’ Argues Against Elderly Population Receiving Vaccine Priority Because They Are ‘Whiter’

While there’s been some questions about reporting cause of death, CNN’s death tracker says that there have been over 300,000 Covid-19 deaths. And the CDC clearly shows that the overwhelming majority of those deaths occurred in the vulnerable elderly population.

But there are too many old people who are white, so ‘experts’ say it isn’t racially sensitive to prioritize them.

Yes, this is real life.

The CDC is recommending the vaccine be given to essential workers before the elderly, even as they acknowledge that this choice will result in more deaths. Why? Because the elderly are less racially diverse.

Ideas have consequences.

— Coleman Hughes (@coldxman) December 18, 2020

It makes sense that if we have an effective vaccine, the most vulnerable should be first in line, right? That’s what we’ve been hearing for months. Vaccinate those who are most vulnerable and healthcare workers who are in direct contact with the sick and vulnerable. But as the vaccine rollout begins, experts are apparently facing a new problem.

Do we vaccinate the elderly to lower deaths or do we vaccinate healthy young adults to slow transmission? And more than just science and numbers play into this argument. Ethics also has to be considered. And you know what’s being considered as part of ethics? You guessed it. Race.

According to The New York Times article “The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?,”

“It’s a question increasingly guided by concerns over the inequities laid bare by the pandemic, from disproportionately high rates of infection and death among poor people and people of color to disparate access to testing, child care and technology for online schooling.”

Hmm. This sounds a little like progressive social justice language. That’s a little frightening, that progressive social justice language might play a part in a scientific and statistical decision-making like this.

Well, it gets worse. This article references an “independent committee of medical experts that advises the C.D.C. on immunization practices” that will soon cast a vote regarding recommendations for the second phase of the vaccination process. Apparently, last month’s vote had all members of the committee voting to prioritize essential workers ahead of older and high risk individuals, and the next vote is expected to go the same way.

“Historically, the committee relied on scientific evidence to inform its decisions. But now the members are weighing social justice concerns as well.”

Ah, there we go. They said the quiet part out loud. So who would be considered an essential worker? It’s more than just frontline medical workers, who are certainly being prioritized for vaccination. The C.D.C. definition of “essential workers” encompasses almost 70% of the American work force and the Department of Homeland Security “essential workers” list is 23 pages long. Think of all the businesses that have been allowed to remain open despite COVID lockdowns because they are considered “essential.” Car dealerships. Fast food joints. A strip club here and there.

University of California, Los Angeles Pediatrics professor and committee member Dr. Peter Szilagyi said,

“To me the issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers among essential workers.”

So he’s saying that the ethics favor essential workers, not because the statistics indicates a greater need for vaccination or because the science indicates they a greater need for vaccination, but because they are a more racially divers group of people than the elderly and high risk demographic.

But they can’t really be saying that the elderly and high risk demographic, despite the fact that they are at overwhelmingly greater risk and contribute the overwhelmingly majority of deaths, simply aren’t diverse enough to be prioritized for a vaccine, can they?

Actually, that’s exactly what they’re saying.

Harald Schmidt, apparently an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, supports the idea of prioritizing “essential workers” before older and vulnerable adults.

“Older populations are whiter. Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”

I honestly wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t read it myself. The following tweet is what tipped me off to this story and I was skeptical that it was real. I thought this was surely something exaggerated or fabricated or taken out of context. But I was wrong.

This is ghastly. https://t.co/zU3J9HTgAi pic.twitter.com/co9ca2J1UO

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) December 18, 2020

Older populations are too white and therefore shouldn’t be prioritized, despite their overwhelmingly increased risk of death. Instead, we should prioritize “essential workers” because there is much more minority representation within that demographic. That way we can “level the playing field.” Translated into less politically correct language, we can kill off some of the old white people who are hindering the advancement of the progressive liberal social agenda.

Schmidt wants the C.D.C. to incorporate a “social vulnerability index” created from census data, aimed at identifying and reducing inequities, in order to decide who should be prioritized.

But despite all the interesting jobs deemed “essential,” most of the country agrees that teachers fall squarely into the “essential” category. But that’s not good enough for Marc Lipstich, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Lipstich says that teachers should be disqualified from the priority “essential workers” in the interest of social justice and health equality.

“Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees. Off course they should be treated better, but they are not among the most mistreated of workers.”

So not only are people arguing for the incredibly broad category of “essential workers” to be prioritized over the extremely vulnerable elderly population, but also they are arguing for a hierarchy of “essential workers” based on racial and social justice.

But when you have progressive socialists influencing decision-making, I guess this absurdity is not out of the realm of possibilities.