I binge-watched Season 17 of Grey’s Anatomy last week and came away with a different view of the pandemic. For 16 months I read statistics about the numbers of sick and dying and was shocked and outraged.
I was shocked by the Administration’s lies, the theft of PPE by the Trump Family Crime Cartel, the jingoism, the favoritism toward red states and red governors. I was saddened by the statistics about the number of deaths and by the numbers of Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic people who died.
But somehow, the numbers never really landed for me until I watched Grey’s Anatomy. It was as though I’d been looking at a brand new coloring book, all black and white line drawings. After watching just a few episodes the drawings started being filled in with all the shades of people of color and a few white-flesh-colored people.
After spending an hour this morning reading about the numbers of deaths by race and ethnicity I learned that half the deaths were White people, probably mostly old White people. Let’s say 300,000 White people died. What percentage of the White population is that? I don’t know and I’m pretty sure it’s not a very big percentage, unlike the percentages of Indigenous, Hispanic, and Black populations who died.
We are living through an historic event, a world-wide pandemic that is disproportionately killing People of Color and the poor. We will never know for certain how many died of COVID-19 because of faulty reporting but we know it could have been fewer and we know that being white and not poor decreased our chances of dying.
Right. So many layers involved. Like, who do you trust. PBS News just had on a Black mother who repeatedly took her son to the doctor over her concerns that he had covid, and was repeatedly dismissed. The child ended up with a two-week near-death situation. My concern currently is how people are allowed to work or go to the Olympics who have not been vaccinated. If you work in a hospital and have not been vaccinated, you cannot work. Support workers are often minorities, so those people, and their families, should have been vaccinated among the first. It should be a requirement to work, or to go to the Olympics. How is it an infringement on your rights to say if you are in my employ you must be vaccinated. It’s an issue of safety.