For parents and teachers already terrified about being pushed back into in-person classes during a plague, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives Black, Latinx, and Native American families even greater reasons to worry. According to CDC researchers, the majority of children, teens and young adults that have died from COVID-19 are Black, Latinx, or Native American — accounting for 78% of those deaths despite representing just 41% of the United States population. That’s sadly on par with previous research highlighting that COVID-19 death toll is twice as high for nonwhites under the age of 65 as it is for white Americans.
Something tells me the Trump regime not only recognized this disparity early on but seized upon it — making their inhumane plan to coerce in-person classes for students in the middle of the plague all the more evil.
Back in late July, Vanity Fair reported on the Jared Kushner-led effort to come up with a national testing plan to handle the coronavirus outbreak. Those plans were abandoned once it was discovered where the virus outbreaks were mostly relegated at the time. Katherine Eban quotes one source recalling a sentiment expressed by a member of Kushner’s team: “that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically.” The expert added, “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”
Should there be any lingering doubt that it was a deliberate choice: “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out.”
While I understand that Democratic states do not solely translate to Black people (being a native Texan and all), we know what cities at the time were facing the biggest challenges handling the outbreak, and we know which racial and ethnic groups were suffering the worst. That’s why it’s easy to see the choice to push students back into classes without containing the coronavirus is all the more callous once you consider that these people likely take joy in more of us dying.
In an administration full of sociopaths and white supremacists, what’s a few more dead Black, Latinx, and Native American kids to them? These are the very people presently accused of performing hysterectomies on migrants being held at what’s been called “experimental concentration camps.”(Kushner himself is an accused slumlord in Baltimore.)
And in spite of it being revealed that Donald Trump deliberately misled Americans about the severity of COVID-19, Kushner still couldn’t contain his smugness.
Appearing on the Today Show last Tuesday, Kushner argued that Americans ought to be grateful that President Trump has been at the helm of the coronavirus pandemic. “All the different challenges that people were hysterical about, whether it was governors or the media, we worked with them very closely, and again, it was very good to have an entrepreneurial president who doesn’t do things in a bureaucratic way,” Kushner claimed. “He ran to all the different problems…He confronted them seriously.”
When confronted with Bob Woodward’s book and subsequent audio recordings where Trump admits to actively lying to the public about the severity of the disease, Kushner lied himself, saying “the president was very forthcoming with the American people about what he knew and when he knew it.”
These people make me want to believe in hell.
I have never envied parents less and I have never worried about my friends that are teachers more. Fearful because based on what I’ve heard from teachers in states like Texas, their plague safety materials don’t appear to be much more than a few disposable masks, a jug of hand sanitizer, and I suppose prayers if they’re into that sort of thing. I can’t imagine it being much better in other states. Anxious because I know that kids will be kids and will ultimately go home and potentially spread the virus.
And Senate Republicans and the White House will try to rush in and steal a third Supreme Court seat faster than they will to work on a relief bill that helps alleviate many of these concerns.
It’s a shame that Kushner has not really been asked about that Vanity Fair reporting or this new research from the CDC. Last I heard, there was a term for the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group. Someone should ask Kushner about that given that vapid, self-important aspiring oligarch is no less responsible for all of these deaths than his dumb father-in-law. Based on reporting, he’s just as racist, too.
Now that we know that children are dying from COVID-19, and of those, it’s the most vulnerable among the nation, I’d like to think those with platforms will use theirs to speak to this disparity with greater urgency — and to hold those responsible accordingly.