Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
Is it important to have racial or sexual diversity in our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic? Heather Mac Donald suggests that some think it might be in her City Journal article “Should Identity Politics Dictate Vaccine Research?” The funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control suggests that they think diversity is an important input in making headway in the fight against the coronavirus. On April 20, NIH and CDC announced the availability of grants to increase the “diversity” of biomedical research labs.
For example, academic virology researchers studying respiratory failure could receive hundreds of thousands more taxpayer dollars if they could find a woman or a minority to add to their project. High school students and college students are eligible for the program even though they cannot contribute anything of value. No scientific justification for the new diversity hire is needed. The scientists must promise to mentor the new hire, which will take time away from their research with no offsetting gain.
Mac Donald has written another article on academic insanity “The Therapeutic Campus” bearing the subtitle: “Why are college students seeking mental-health services in record numbers?” Many colleges have created safe spaces where students can be sheltered from reality and not have their feelings hurt by others exercising their free speech rights.
Yale University has created a safe space that would be the envy of most other universities. They have named it the Good Life Center. Mac Donald says it has “a sandbox, essential oils, massage, and mental-health workshops,” and that “the center unites the most powerful forces in higher education today: the feminization of the university, therapeutic culture, identity politics, and the vast student-services bureaucracy.”
George Mason University has a Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, headed by a chief well-being officer. At George Mason, well-being refers to social justice and “building a life of vitality, purpose, resilience, and engagement,” the Center’s chief well-being officer told The Chronicle of Higher Education. By the way, a George Mason University student can minor in well-being as a part of his college education.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in justifying his draconian coronavirus measures, said during a press conference: “This is about saving lives. If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”
Cuomo knows that many Americans buy into such a seemingly caring statement that would be easily revealed as utter nonsense if one had just a modicum of economic knowledge. If one looked at only the benefits of an action, he would do anything because everything has a benefit. Prudent decision-making requires one to compare benefits to costs. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that in 2019 36,120 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes.
Virtually all those lives could have been saved with a mandated 5 mph speed limit. Those saved lives are the benefit. Fortunately, when we consider the costs and inconvenience of setting a 5 mph speed limit, we rightly conclude that saving those 36,120 lives isn’t worth it.
There are other news tidbits about politicians drunk with power that we Americans have given them. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told city residents who disobeyed her stay-at-home order: “We will arrest you and we will take you to jail. Period. We’re not playing games.” Meanwhile, in violation of her own stay-at-home order, Lightfoot slipped out and got her hair done. She explained her decision, “I take my personal hygiene very seriously.”
Ventura County, California, health director Dr. Robert Levin said that his department would forcibly remove COVID-19 infected people from their own homes and put them “into other kinds of housing that we have available.” Facing stiff criticism, Levin later explained: “I either misspoke or it was misinterpreted. I’ll take the blame of having misspoke.”
The biggest casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing to do with the disease. It’s the power we’ve given to politicians and bureaucrats. The question is how we recover our freedoms.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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I have not heard it yet but I fully expect that the CoroNOviurs will be injected with racism suggesting that the White race unleashed this on the black race because it has hit them proportionally hard due to their skin color’s lowered ability to process vitamin D from the sun. Mark my words the race war is coming. It is just a matter of time.
If passing Laws and Court Rulings can’t get rid of Affirmative Discrimination after 55 years, then a Race War is probably needed.
ABC News devotes a nightly segment to “the racial divide” with respect to this virus. Can’t believe you have missed all the racist BS coming from the MSM and virtually every mayor, etc. of color. While they haven’t blamed whites for the virus yet, or claimed that it was designed to target blacks, they are playing the race card with regards to “access to better food,” “access to better medicine,” and other BS. But the ONE THING they AREN’T mentioning is the VITAMIN D CONNECTION. Which more points to the criminal complicity of the MSM, black “leadership,” and black physicians. They could easily be encouraging more time in the sun without sunscreen for blacks, vitamin D supplementation, zinc supplementation, etc. but they say NOTHING….even when directly asked (I watched a black doctor from Atlanta lie through her teeth in saying that “nothing helps”…except “being healthy…..so you need to be healthy…” Seriously, that’s what she said.
Next up, Diversity Czar for any and all things related to Covid-19. Lifetime position, pays more than it should, wonderful retirement benefits for life(if you don’t get cv-19 and die) and only accountable to those who think you are doing a great job. What more could we ask for during these wonder times of challenge and chaos?
You must remember that the narrative is all that matters. Nothing gets in the way of the narrative of white people bad, white men bad, men are racists and rapists, rich people bad, Christians bad, hell, everyone is bad except for minorities (they comprise most of the population but remain ‘minorities’) ghetto negros, queers, transgenders, illegals, democrats and leftists.
The virus is merely another vehicle for pushing said narrative and they WILL NOT QUIT until everyone in opposition to their perversion either submits or is destroyed.
I had the most unusual dream that I saw people at the mall and they were not wearing masks. It was all so old-fashioned and unreal.
Not sure if it has anything to do with race, but I know that western countries giving $ millions to “scientists” in third world countries for experimenting with viruses is not a good idea.
Old Trump said this would be over by April, he didn’t anticipate that the virus would be politicized and require newly infected to sustain the elected. I’m thinking about going legit and converting my meth lab into a virus lab.
Pure and utter nonsense. It boggle the mind that anyone of sufficient innate intelligence to undertake serious study at the university level could possibly think otherwise. Then again, non-STEM “serious study” hasn’t been a feature of universities for quite some time now.
Some people are never satisfied. Considering the fact that the corona virus is neither male nor female, the recent month have been a great success for diversity. Its spread has dramatically increased the representation of asexual life forms. The so-called epidemic (a derogatory anthropocentric smear used to vilify another life form) certainly was a big victory against multicellular oppressor species which exhibit this hideous tendency toward sexual reproduction. The corona vira (neutrum plural please!) being more or less equal exhibit a form of social equality that humans with their supposably higher intelligence will never achieve. My suggestion: if you are a member of a multicellular oppressor species and want to promote diversity, stop wearing that stupid mask and support Corona in their fight against T-cell fascism!