The Associated Press “outcry” over coronavirus racial data was journalistic malpractice of the worst kind (“Outcry over racial data grows as coronavirus slams black Americans,” April 8, TribLIVE). While the entire world struggles to overcome endless challenges and devastating heartbreak, AP sowed racial division in a 1,200-word screed including charts and graphs. It claimed “alarm over what they see” as the virus killing African Americans at a disproportionate rate. Killing at a higher rate than what exactly? Were Italians victims of racism as the virus ravaged Italy?
Racial implications in this crisis resonate from lies, damned lies, and statistics mistaken for a Rorschach test. Agenda-driven interpretations by NAACP officials and “associate” professors of social work, cherry-picking coincident indicators, and conflating correlation for causation should not be confused with disciplined statistical analysis. Everything looks like a nail to the man with only a hammer in his toolbox; climate change zealots blame fossil fuels and CO2 emissions for Wuhan flu instead of Chinese wet markets.
Comorbidity is the simultaneous presence of two or more chronic diseases, and physiologically responsible for determining victims’ outcomes to covid-19. As for “systemic racism,” also recently espoused by Pittsburgh City Council, type it into your Google search bar. The No. 2 result takes you to an article titled “7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real” — from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream! In what is not a paid ad, the ice cream makers want to assure it is real?
What’s real is the fight to defeat this invisible, colorblind enemy has nothing to do with race because (dare I say it), all lives matter.
Joe Schmidt
Lower Burrell