Plagues, epidemics, diseases, viruses and pandemics have been around too many centuries to count or adequately trace. When the “10 Plagues” were listed in the Bible, and executed by God, we would probably call the plagues an epidemic, instead of a pandemic. The world was not as large as it is today. The plagues were localized to Egypt.
In the Bible the plague that appeared to be the most devoid of emotions and caring is #10. None of the other plagues had gotten Pharaoh’s attention, which was God’s intent. All God asked of Pharaoh was that he let the Israelites go free. But Pharaoh was muleheaded. Freedom for the Israelites was not on the table.
God initiated
another plan. According to Exodus, God told Moses and his brother, Aaron:
“I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonder in the land
of Egypt. But Pharaoh will
not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My
people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments”.
Moses and Aaron apparently though that was a good plan, so they fetched their rods and headed to Pharaoh’s fancy abode (Exodus, Chapter 5). Let the magic show begin! Aaron threw down his rod. Wallah! A live snake was suddenly in the house! Pharaoh summoned his crew, as if to ask Aaron: “Is that all you got?” Pharaoh’s crew threw down their rods. Now the Pharaoh’s castle was crawling with snakes!
He
waited for the next rod-throw down. Pharaoh was in for a surprise. Aaron took
his rod to the river, touched the water and up popped frogs, covering all of
Egypt. Pharaoh could not compete with the frog magic. He surrendered, asking
Moses and Aaron to call off the frogs. He promised to let the Israelites go
free. Moses told Pharaoh that he would take him at his word. No more plagues!
But wouldn’t you know it! Pharaoh flipped on his promise. He tried to pull a “fooled you fools” on Moses, Aaron and God. But God was not having any of this. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! After that the contest went all the way wrong for Pharaoh and his magicians.
God hardened Pharaoh’s heart even more. He still wouldn’t let the Israelites go. And then God hit Egypt with a really, really fatal plague. Moses said through God (Exodus 11:5) “And all the firstborn of the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the animals”.
If you are
familiar with the story of how the Israelites finally escaped, you know the
ending to the story. Pharaoh did not win. **A handmill is a stone device used to grind grain
into flour, a chore performed by women in the Bible.
Former President Donald
Trump is comparable to Pharaoh. He hardened his attitude when he learned
that a deadly pandemic was about to hit America. Before he was exposed by noted journalist and author Bob Woodward, Trump understood and knew in advance that COVID19 was dangerous
and contagious. The more doctors, researchers and citizens asked him to save
lives by preparing to fight COVID-19, the more Trump decided
he knew what was best for Americans and their health. He elevated himself to “Physician-in-Chief”,
holding daily press conferences, recommending remedies that would lead to death and bodily harm rather than a cure.
On November 3, 2020, voters threw down their rods in voting booths, denying Republican Donald Trump another four years in the White House. Voters opened the door for a new president—Democrat Joe Biden-- to step in and attempt to deliver Americans from the life robbing virus.
Black health care compared to White healthcare
Throughout history
Black folks have been denied adequate healthcare compared to White folks, As an African American woman, I have experienced medical
discrimination more than one time. White doctors tended to spend more time with
White patients, advising them about choices of treatments, offering a variety of medical opinions, and medications.
While sitting in a
thin-walled waiting room, waiting for the doctor to come in, I overheard a
conversation between him and a White patient. When the doctor talked with me,
the time was quick, and lacked information regarding my condition. I was not told
of choices, either in medications, second opinions or treatments. No follow-up
date was scheduled.
Black folks have
always had to make-do with inadequate medical care. In earlier years hospitals were
segregated. White doctors refused treat Blacks in need of medical care, no
matter their age or condition. There were no African American owned hospitals, or hospital sanctioned clinics
they could go to. In the event of a catastrophic illness or outbreak of a
disease in the community, they were treated by whomever knew the most about
healing, relying on homemade remedies. It did not matter if that individual was
a family member or neighbor.
During the
onslaught of the polio epidemic, Black folks did not receive the same medical
care as Whites. Because the face of polio was basically all White, it appeared
that only Whites contracted the disease. There was a concept that “Negroes”
were less susceptible to contracting polio. In photos and news reels shown on theater
screens, you only saw Whites locked in the Iron Lung aka the Tank
Ventilator aka the Drinker Tank. To keep the image pure and separate,
the March of Dimes sponsored a polio unit at the Tuskegee Institute for the
“colored race” in Alabama.
“The Tuskegee
Institute opened a Polio Center in 1941. The center’s founding was the result
of a new visibility of Black polio survivors, and the growing political
embarrassment around the policy of the "Georgia Warm Springs Polio
Rehabilitation Center", which Franklin Roosevelt founded in the 1920s, before he
became president. It had a Whites only policy of admission.
“This policy,
reflecting the ubiquitous norm of race-segregated health facilities of the era,
was also sustained by a persuasive scientific argument about polio itself: that
Blacks were not susceptible to the disease. And, therefore, research and
treatment efforts that was focused on Black patients were neither medically
necessary nor justified”.
George Draper, an
expert on polio, believed that eugenics played a key role in polio’s
epidemiology. As proof of his theory, Draper postured that a child’s susceptibility
to getting polio was due the “constitutional makeup” of Blacks and Whites. He
argued that “well-grown, plump White, native-born children with widely spaced
upper front teeth and ‘delicate’ teenagers who filled hospital beds and
doctors’ offices during polio outbreak, was proof that Blacks were less
susceptible to contracting the disease.
“White physicians
studying Blacks--the syphilis-soaked race-- concluded that Blacks were
more vulnerable to syphilis; less susceptible to contracting polio. Both theories
were touted as evidence that they were “enlisted to establish the pathological
and alien nature of the Black body”. Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm
Springs, Tuskegee, and the March of Dimes, 2007.
In 2020 White
physicians and medical staffs still look at African Americans as alien bodies, incapable
of experiencing pain, explaining the location of their pain, or voicing what they
suspect is causing the pain. Years ago, I had such an incident. I had eaten some
bacon. Hours later I began to feel dizzy, my tongue felt as if it was getting
thick. My speech was slurred. I was vomiting. I developed a slight fever. I had a headache and stomach pains. Afraid,
not knowing what was happening to me, I went the emergency room. I was taken to
a room, where I began vomiting again.
I am not an actress, so I could not fake my
symptoms. The nurse took my temperature. She asked what I had eaten. I told her
a couple slices of bacon. I told it must have been spoiled when I purchased it.
And then she asked a question that had nothing to do with my reason for being
at the hospital. She wanted to know if I was married! I told her I was happily
divorced.
The nurse and the
doctor talked among themselves, and concluded that I was lonely, and seeking
attention! They discarded the reason I came to the emergency room. They were
stuck on me wanting attention. They asked if I was depressed. I told them no. I
have friends and family. I was finally given a prescription and sent home. I
had contracted a mild case of salmonella. Had it been more severe I might not
be alive today.
Blatant disrespect; equal knowledge be damned
Recently an African American woman, Susan
Moore, a medical doctor from Indiana, fell prey to COVID-19. She was admitted
to the Indiana University North Hospital. Dr. Moore said in a Facebook video that she was not getting adequate
treatment. Her symptoms consisted of a “high respiratory rate, high heart rate,
high fever and coughing up blood”. She said the doctor “downplayed her pain”.
Dr. Moore told the
attending physician that she was in pain. She told him that she could not catch
her breath. He did not believe her. She
said on the video, “I just put forth and maintained, if I was White I wouldn’t
have to go through that. She said, “This how Black people get killed, when you
send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves”.
Dr. Moore said
initially the doctor refused to give her some pain medication. “All I know is I
was in intense pain”, she said. She begged for the antiviral drug Remdesivir,
which she did not receive. Dr. Moore said the doctor made her “feel like a drug
addict, and he knew I was as physician”.
Nonetheless, she pleaded with the doctor, trying to convince him that
she was having trouble breathing, and seriously ill. She was finally sent to
the lab to get a CT scan. The scan proved her right.
She was discharged
and sent home. Dr. Moore was home less
than 12 hours when her temperature spiked, her blood pressure dropped, her
heartbeat slowed. She was rushed to a different hospital, where she received proper
care. Unfortunately, the change of hospitals and medical care came too late.
Dr. Moore’s condition worsened. She died three weeks after her coronavirus diagnosis,
November 29, 2020.
Dr. Susan Moore
said in the video the previous doctor never apologized to her.
Another similar
incident occurred in 2016, in a West Chicago suburban hospital. The patient’s
name was Ron Wyatt, 61, an African American. He entered the hospital with a 104
fever. His story was told by Michael O. Schroeder, staff reporter for US
News. He wrote that Wyatt’s ordeal began with “a nurse telling his wife,
who had power of attorney, that Wyatt would have to provide his own information,
despite his wife’s request that she’s able to do so, because he wasn’t feeling
well”.
The nurse said “No”,
telling Wyatt “to sit right here” next to her. She took his temperature. Afterwards
she said, “See! It’s only 99.6. OK? Wyatt had just taken a Tylenol to bring down
his fever. At some point he began to have chills, his temperature rising above
100 degrees “before the visit ended”.
The nurse tagged his information, letting him know that the doctor was ready to see him. “She
walked off, not with me, but in front of me—she never looked back”. Wyatt meets
another nurse in the exam room. She treated him somewhat better than the first
nurse. Another person comes into the room to get his insurance information. She
pulled up the wrong name on her computer. Wyatt told her that was not his name.
She insisted that the name was his. Wyatt laughs and says, “No, that’s not me”.
She asks for his ID, which he showed her.
A doctor comes
into the room. “After a less than thorough exam and never looking” at the
patient’s face, he ordered IV fluids, telling Wyatt that his labs are” mostly
normal”. He had to press the doctor for more information.
Wyatt said what “struck
me most was he held one foot in, one foot out of the door”. By now his
temperature was up again, above 100 degrees, “and the nurse made it clear to
the doctor that more should be done.” Wyatt overheard the doctor say, “Tell him
he can just take some Tylenol when he gets home”. The patient never saw the
doctor again.
Dr. Ron Wyatt, the
patient, was a Patient Safety Officer and medical director in the Division of
Healthcare Improvement at the Joint Commission, an organization that accredits
and certifies health care providers throughout the country. Yet, he was treated
with disdain and total disrespect by staff at the hospital, where his skin color determined the kind of care he
would receive, and how he would be treated.
Times change but taught attitudes remain the same
During the slave
era in America, enslaved women were subjected to human experimentations
conducted by Dr. J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology. He
performed his butchery on the enslaved women without anesthesia. They could not
refuse his “treatments”, or any atrocity he wanted to perform on them. He assumed
that Black women did not feel pain; therefore, no anesthesia was needed when
operating on them.
Vanessa
Northington Gamble, a professor at George Washington University said that
between 1846 and 1849, Sims operated on at least 10 enslaved women without
anesthesia. One woman, Anarcha, endured at least 30 painful surgeries.
Gamble said after Sims practiced his methods on Black women, he moved to New
York City to open a women’s hospital in the 1850s. He started treating White
women, but with anesthesia. (USA Today, 2020).
There had been no
changes in medical attitudes when the 1918 pandemic hit America. Black folks
were denied adequate care. The usual enemies and reasons manifested themselves:
poverty, segregation, racism, discrimination. Blacks that fell prey to diseases
had to fend for themselves. If they received care in a segregated hospital, they
were “hospitalized” in dark, damp basements.
Soraya Nadia
McDonald, during an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, talked
about medical treatment for Blacks during 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago. “It
should be understood overall that there wasn’t necessarily great medical care
for the flu, period. . . .the standard of treatment for the flu would be
like lots of fluids and stay away from other people. But even within that
framework, Black people, during the 1918 flu pandemic, are still at a
disadvantage, and most of those reasons have to do with structural racism”.
In an article she
wrote, titled “In 1918 to 2020, Race Colors America’s Response to Epidemics”,
McDonald stated, “[E]ven in death, Black bodies were neglected by White public
infrastructure. In Baltimore that year White sanitation department employees
refused to dig graves for Black flu victims after the city’s only Black
cemetery, Mount Auburn, could not accommodate any more graves.
“The War
Department sent 324 Black soldiers . .
. to do the task, which is very much in
keeping with the way Black soldiers were treated by the Army in the war. In
Chicago the 1918 flu was blamed on Black people by Dill Robertson, the city
commissioner of public health”.
Mistrust of White doctors and vaccines still lingers among
African Americans
Researchers and
doctors experimenting on patients probably goes back centuries. History reveals
that Blacks and Whites have been subjected to secret experiments conducted by
researchers and doctors without their knowledge or consent. They were available,
unpaid guinea pigs from mental institutions, poor and uneducated, prisoners,
prostitutes. Even pregnant women and babies were snagged in the research traps.
The U.S. military
conducted thousands upon thousands of experiments in and out of America on
military personnel. Thousands upon thousands of them did not know they were human lab rats. Some
the experiments were so horrific that you wonder how the researchers and
doctors (and cooperating nurses) called themselves human.
When cases of
racism, disease and health care are discussed among Black folks, the most mentioned incident is
the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted between 1932 into 1972. It was labeled: “The Tuskegee Study of
Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”. It took place in Tuskegee, Alabama; conducted
by the U.S. Public Health Service. Eunice Rivers Laurie, an African American
nurse, coordinated the experiment. She worked for the state of Alabama. None of
the participants were informed about the reason for the study. When a penicillin was
discovered and used as a cure in 1974, the infected men were not treated. Their
suffering continued until their deaths.
Approximately 600
Black men, primarily sharecroppers, were recruited in Macon County, Alabama to
participate. They were enticed with free meals, rides and promises of free medical care. None of the men had ever been cared for or treated by an actual
doctor. They were sorted into two groups: 399 had latent syphilis; 201 were free
of syphilis. They were all treated for “bad blood” an old Southern term used to
describe a number of illnesses.
The Public Health
Service (PHS) did not tell the men they had syphilis, leaving them untreated.
Jumping ahead of the long study, some of the men, “by 1972, died of the
disease; 100 died from complications relating the disease; 40 spouses were
diagnosed with the disease, which was passed onto 19 children at birth”. (History Channel)
In 1973 Congress
held a hearing on the Tuskegee experiment. A decision was made that the
participants and the heirs should receive a $10 million out-of-court
settlement. President Bill Clinton, in 1997, apologized for what happened to
the Black men in the name of a deceptive medial study.
Another syphilis
experiment took place in Guatemala in South America, from 1946 to 1949. The
project was created to discover if penicillin could cure, treat, or prevent
syphilis. U. S. government researchers infected 700 men, prostitutes, prisoners,
soldiers and mental patients with syphilis and other diseases. None the victims
were aware that they were being subjected to a deadly venereal disease.
In Africa, human
experiments are constant and continuous. The country is poor and Black Africans
do not have access to medications to eradicate diseases that have been wiped
out in America. Because they are impoverished, Africans tend to fall prey to
pharmaceuticals that regularly test experimental drugs on them. If the
experimental drugs are used on White Africans, there is no data testifying to
their participation.
Every disease
under the sun finds its way to Africa. Even diseases that have been declared
cured in Africa, seem to pop up time and time again, causing epidemics, serious
health issues and death.
Listwand explains why pharmaceuticals do their
dirty deeds in African countries. Companies rush to initiate clinical trials
because Africans are a “fast growing, treatment naïve population; largely
illiterate and uneducated public; large pools of diseases within populations;
lower costs for conducting trials; no official national laws on clinical
trials”.
Less than two percent
of the drugs used in Africa are produced there. Pfizer’s experimental drug,
Trovan, was used in a clinical trial in Kano, Nigeria, without consent from the
government, or the parents, whose children were targeted. In 1996 there was an
epidemic of meningitis in Africa. As a result of the experimental drug, 11
children died, five after taking Trovan, six after taking an older antibiotic
used for comparisons in the clinical trial. Some of the children suffered
blindness, deafness and brain damage. Except for the children and their family no one paid a price for destruction of human life.
Another syphilis
experiment occurred in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. The syphilis experiment was
backed and led by the United States. It was executed during Harry Truman’s
presidency, with the cooperation of President Juan Jose Arevalo and the
Guatemala health ministries. Like all “human experiments” the selected guinea
pigs were plucked from prisons, mental institutions, poor communities, and
soldiers. Prostitutes were used to infect men. The experiment’s purpose was
to see if penicillin prevented contracting syphilis, or if cured it and other
sexually transmitted diseases.
As usual, none the victims knew that their
lives and health was in danger. None of them consented to be guinea pigs. Of the 1,500 victims, 83 died. The experiment
was led by Charles Cutter, who later participated in the Tuskegee Syphilis
Study in its later stage.
In 2010 President
Barack Obama apologized to Jose Arevalo by telephone for the atrocity committed in
the name of U. S. medical research.
America’s 1918 pandemic in 2021 America
In a book written
by journalist Bob Woodward, then President Donald Trump revealed that he knew
about the coronavirus, aka COVID-19, but did not want to tell Americans about
it. He did not want to “create a panic”, so he chose to “play it down. I still
like playing it down”, he revealed to Woodward. Trump said there were only five
cases of the coronavirus in America in January 2019. He hoped that
“everything’s going to be great”.
Trump said at a January
30, press conference, “Hopefully, everything is going to be great”. Everything
did not turn out great. Trump dropped all of his presidential responsibilities
to concentrate “winning” an election that he had already lost to contender Joe
Biden. He stopped pretending to care about COVID-19, and the mounting deaths. He did
not acknowledge the dead. He never appeared on TV, sending condolences to the
families and friends of the deceased. He has never voiced sorry for his inaction.
For reasons that
have not been explained by physicians and medical researchers, the virus seems
to be a bigger enemy in African American and Latino communities, compared to
White communities, where it is assumed that all White folks are healthier in
comparison. The media postured that African Americans have more “preexisting
conditions” than Whites, making them more susceptible to contacting or dying
from virus. They did mention that preexisting conditions were the result of inadequate healthcare.
Harriet
Washington, medical scholar and editor, was interviewed in 2007 in by Democracy
Now reporter Amy Goodman about her book “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History
of Medial Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the
Present”. Washington talked about disparity in medical treatment of Black folks. She touched on the differences between two folders that she discovered, one for a
Black patient and one for a White patient. At the time she was a medical
undergraduate at the University of Rochester.
“The White
gentleman’s file was thick and full of testament of his loving family, his
insurance support, his determination to live, and detailed a really Herculean
attempt on the of the medical personnel to procure a kidney for him.
“The file of the
Black gentleman was very thin. The word ‘Negro’ appeared on every page of it,
and somebody had underlined it on a social profile right above the single line
that indicated the medical staff’s plans to help him prepare
for his imminent demise.
“The White
gentleman and the Black gentleman were very similar in their profiles, but they
were treated differently, and I wanted to know whether this was a consistent
feature of medical care or just an anomaly”.
COVID-19 vaccines: who is getting shots, who is
not
If you have money
or access to people with connections and influence, then you are guaranteed a
fat chance of getting two COVID-19 vaccine shots immediately. An ABC News
headline told the story of who was pushed to the head of the line. “Wealthy
residents got a disproportionate share of vaccines in Texas county”. The county
was in Dallas, Texas.
“Of the 3,071
doses given out at the Fair Park vaccination site, 461 doses went to people in
three high-end income zip codes. People from zip codes with the highest number
of COVID-19 infections received a total of 59 doses”.
In Miami wealthy
residents were put at head of the line. Neighborhoods that cater to minorities are
being flooded by vaccine hunting Whites. Using their computers and cell phones,
they track areas where vaccines are being administered, the dates and times.
Usually, these same Whites say there are afraid to venture into those “violent”
communities by accident, let alone on purpose.
The Seattle
Times reported that “three
medical systems in the region gave special vaccine access to big donors or
foundation members. Two of the hospital organizations acknowledged they made a
mistake in prioritizing influential people”.
Philadelphia is 44
percent Black, but only 12 percent of Blacks have been vaccinated; in Miami-Dade
county only seven percent of the 17 percent Black population have been
vaccinated; Whites in New York received nearly half of the vaccine doses. Black
and Latinos were “starkly underrepresented based on their share of the
population”.
There is no reliable
data stating why minorities are getting less of the vaccines, except what the
media reports. Nonetheless, the media are broadcasting daily, hour after hour,
that African Americans and Latinos are skeptical about getting vaccinated due to past experiments, in which Blacks and Latinos were used as guinea pigs.
President Joe
Biden has vowed to equalize distributions of the vaccines, making sure the
vaccines are getting to the communities hit the hardest by COVID-19. In a year’s
time, well over a half million Americans have died from the virus. Thousands
who survived the virus are experiencing physical and mental issues of all kinds. The vaccine works differently for some people. Black and Whites and other folks have reported similar symptoms.
It’s true that African Americans are reluctant to get vaccine shots. However, Blacks are still willing to get the shots to thwart the coronavirus, that has branched off into four other viruses. Accessibility to the vaccine is not as convenient in Black neighborhoods as in White neighborhoods. Even with the convenience, Whites are also leery about the vaccine. They do not trust the government, or the efficacy of the vaccines. Whites, more than minorities, believe that COVID-19 is a hoax, or just a case of the flu, as Donald Trump told them.
In none of the thousands, perhaps millions of medical experiments conducted in America, poor, and third world countries, United States researchers and doctors did not offer available medications to cure the men, women and children they infected with diseases and infections. They allowed victims to die in pain and agony, humiliating their humanity.
