• nzodd@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    1 million Americans are dead because of disastrous Republican-lead mishandling of covid. Some have even labeled it as a literal genocide against our countrymen.

    And yet, there is some evidence to suggest that the Trump administration did in fact intend to use COVID-19 to target certain political and racial groups. According to reporting from Vanity Fair, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner shelved a federal COVID-19 testing plan because he believed that the virus would mostly affect Democratic states, and the administration could then blame Democratic governors for deaths. Blue Democratic cities are disproportionately home to Black people and other minority populations. A federal plan to allow deaths in blue states inevitably and predictably disproportionately facilitated the deaths of Black people and other people of color.

    • EchoCranium
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      1 year ago

      It’s not a new thing for the Republic side. Reagan refused to do anything about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, or even speak about it publicly, since he believed it was God’s punishment against the gay community. Before it started spreading and killing his white Christian community too, the administration was fine letting it kill off the people he hated.

    • DarkGamer@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      For the U.N. and international prosecution of genocide, intent is important—there has to be evidence that a government set out deliberately to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. …

      there is some evidence to suggest that the Trump administration did in fact intend to use COVID-19 to target certain political and racial groups. According to reporting from Vanity Fair, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner shelved a federal COVID-19 testing plan because he believed that the virus would mostly affect Democratic states, and the administration could then blame Democratic governors for deaths. Blue Democratic cities are disproportionately home to Black people and other minority populations. A federal plan to allow deaths in blue states inevitably and predictably disproportionately facilitated the deaths of Black people and other people of color.

      Black death rates and Hispanic death rates from COVID-19 were 2.3-2.5 times those of white people, according to the CDC. Indigenous death rates were 2.2 times those of white people.

      Wow, that is pretty damning. The only reason it might technically not be genocide is that he targeted a political group, (which just happens to have the most minority members,) as a proxy for specifically targeting minorities themselves.

      Ironically, their denial of pandemic reality seems to have ultimately led to more Republican deaths than Democratic:

      Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats from March 2020 to December 2021