A Harvard study concluded that if the U.S. had paid every black person in America $250,000 in reparations for slavery, the death rate from COVID-19 would have been substantially reduced.
Harvard Medical School assistant professor Michelle E. Morse, one of the study’s authors, said reparations “could have been as effective as a vaccine.”
Cockburn explains the “methodology.”
To reach its conclusion, the study compares coronavirus infection rates in Louisiana with the country of South Korea, where coronavirus was largely quashed. Now, Cockburn can think of many differences between South Korea and Louisiana — he has never thrown up into a garbage can in Seoul, for starters — but for all their PhDs Harvard’s experts are remarkably simpleminded on the topic. The paper says nothing about South Korea’s conformist culture, its intense xenophobia, its high education levels, or its low obesity rate. No, it’s the equity, stupid: South Korea is more equal than Louisiana. It didn’t have slavery. So a few hundred thousand in reparations and Louisiana would be just like South Korea.
But we were told that wearing a mask would reduce infections. And social distancing. And lockdowns. The Harvard scientists pooh-pooh those remedies because they didn’t take account of “racial justice interventions.”
She said the failure of the U.S. to implement this compensation highlights the long-standing injustices within the country.
“I think the fact that the U.S. has skirted its responsibility and avoided reach for reconciliation in a meaningful way for hundreds of years is why we keep seeing the same pattern of racial injustice play out over and over and over again in this country,” Morse added.
The study suggests a foundation for future key implementations in the realm of racial and social justice and public health.
The study doesn’t stop at telling us to pony up to prevent COVID deaths. We need to totally transform our society so we don’t deliberately kill black people as they did in the Tuskegee experiment in the 1940s.
The paper’s scientific pretensions fray towards the end, when its authors collectively turn toward the reader and tell them that, if they want to reopen the country without erecting socialism, they might as well bring back Jim Crow:
‘Since reparations have not been enacted, however, “reopening” American society early (after coronavirus-forced shutdowns) had a disproportionate adverse mortality effect on Black people, an effect that was predictable. Therefore, de facto, it resembles a modern Tuskegee experiment, since massive wealth redistribution could have averted these deaths, just as penicillin to treat syphilis would have averted deaths in the nearby state of Alabama.’
The future looks bright for social scientists posing as doctors. Before too long, we’ll be going to see our local sociologist for what ails us.
“One of the ways that we improve in medicine is by bringing in more social science, instead of only focusing on the biomedical model,” Morse said. “In the health community and the health professions, we need to continue to seek out collaborations with the social science disciplines.”
Yes, the biomedical model has had its day. Maybe we can start sacrificing virgins or appeal to the gods for intervention to prevent illness and death. Doctors are so 20th century.
If this study is any indication, medical science will soon take a back seat to incantations and burning incense. It certainly will have little to do with “science.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member