Yes, Considering Race in Covid Treatment Rationing is Racist

An Associated Press article by Todd Richmond takes aim at opposition to new health guidelines that allow doctors to consider race in treating Covid patients. The reason given is that Covid treatments are in short supply. In New conservative target: Race as factor in COVID treatment

Richmond writes:

Medical experts say the opposition is misleading. Health officials have long said there is a strong case for considering race as one of many risk factors in treatment decisions.

It’s true that race can be a legitimate factor. After all, a person's race -- i.e., genetic makeup -- can affect how or if a particular disease can affect people. So it makes sense in the medical context to consider race when diagnosing and treating certain illnesses. But is that how race is being used to determine covid treatment options?

JP Leider, a senior fellow in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota who helped develop that state’s allocation criteria, noted that prioritization has been going on for some time because there aren’t enough treatments to go around.

“You have to pick who comes first,” Leider said. “The problem is we have extremely conclusive evidence that (minorities) across the United States are having worse COVID outcomes compared to white folks. ... Sometimes it’s acceptable to consider things like race and ethnicity when making decisions about when resources get allocated at a societal level.”

Leaving aside the issue of why treatments are in short supply and whether governments should be involved in allocating treatments, Leider seems to be saying that minorities’ covid effects are more severe. Severity, of course, can and should be a factor in deciding which people get the treatment. If a doctor has two patients and only enough medicine to treat one, she has to decide. It makes sense, on the individual level, to give it to the sickest patient, other things being equal. But it should make no difference, statistically, whether one group has more severe covid outcomes than another, on average. That would be racist. Groups don’t get covid. But is this what Leider is actually saying?

Since the pandemic began, health care systems and states have been grappling with how to best distribute treatments. The problem has only grown worse as the omicron variant has packed hospitals with COVID-19 patients.

Considerable evidence suggests that COVID-19 has hit certain racial and ethnic groups harder than whites. Research shows that people of color are at a higher risk of severe illness, are more likely to be hospitalized and are dying from COVID-19 at younger ages.

There you have it. Group statistics, rather than individual evaluation, is what is meant by allowing doctors to consider race one of the factors in allocating scarce covid treatments. “Medical experts,” Richmond reports, “say the opposition [to race factoring] is misleading.” No, it’s not. Conservatives are right. It is discriminatory. It is racist. Only real live individual human beings get sick. It makes no difference to a sick individual whether, statistically, his racial group is statistically more or less likely to be severely infected. He is infected, not some group abstraction. 

If a black person, a white person, and an hispanic person are sitting in a doctor’s office, and the doctor cannot administer, say, antibody treatments to them all, it would be grossly unethical for the doctors to consult statistical disparities of each racial group. Individuals are not groups. They are not “disparities.” They are real people, created morally equal. Only medically relevant information, such as how severe the symptoms are or how other personal risk factors, such as age or asthma, come into play, should be considered. Racism has no place in the doctors’ evaluation.

This debate exposes the evil of collectivism -- judging the group over the individual as the real unit and standard of moral relevance and evaluation. Racism is collectivism, writ large. The fact that race as a factor in COVID treatment is even debatable shows that, with all of the progress humankind has made from savagery to civilization, the progress still has a way to go. Let me state this clearly: Collectivism is a philosophy of savages, not civilized people. The rise up from savagery to civilization is progress up from collectivism to individualism. *

I am not claiming that statistical analysis of groups has no place. Group disparities can point to legitimate problems—including, but not necessarily, racial discrimination or prejudice—that should be addressed. But you can’t address wrongs with other wrongs. You don’t correct wrongs, if it is found that statistical disparities are rooted in wrongs, by engaging in racism and injustice. Many people still haven’t learned that the individual is the only real human entity—the only relevant human entity that actually exists. The fact that such highly educated people, such as medical experts, don’t get it -- or, won’t acknowledge it -- shows just how far humankind has to go to achieve, and to save, the highest levels of a civilized co-existence.

* [Do not confuse collectivism with voluntary associations of a number of self-interested individuals cooperating toward the pursuit of some common goal or value, such as a business corporation, labor union, political party, bowling league, or trade or professional organization. Such associations are based on individualism, not collectivism.] 

Related Reading:

Individualism vs. Collectivism and the Neglected False Moral Dichotomy

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell

AMERICA: A RACIST NATION? BY ANDREW BERNSTEIN

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Related Viewing:

 

John McWhorter: America Has Never Been Less Racist -- Reason interview

 

Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook