It's sometimes hard to separate out things that are heartless, in that they primarily affect poor people, from things that are racist, largely because of racial

It's sometimes hard to separate out things that are heartless, in that they primarily affect poor people, from things that are racist, largely because of racial inequalities that do exist and persist because of a history of systemic racism. I agree that poor people are hit the hardest by these measures, but they would also be hit the hardest if the disease were allow to run rampant. I don't like playing the death-counting game, but we've had 1.6 million COVID deaths with countermeasures in place; that might have been 10 times higher with no restrictions at all, as you seem to advocate for. So your 400,000 extra malaria deaths, while absolutely devastating to think about, still pales compared to a potential 10 million lives saved from these measures, plus 100 million more with long-term debilitating effects. I have never cared nor considered what color of skin the dying have and I will never accept being called racist for wanting to save 10 million lives. Every analysis shows that however much restrictions hurt the economy, letting the disease just run rampant and overwhelm the medical system of every country in the world at once would hurt it much more. If every government had taken decisive action and forced (yes, forced) people to self-isolate for three weeks, this would have been over in March and poor people could have gone back to sending their kids to school and health workers could have gone back to helping stop malaria in Africa. But we didn't, because of our all-important freedom to harm others, and because of people like you who dare to call us racist for even trying. You're right that it sucks being poor. It's awful. It's unconscionable how we treat our poor. I hoped that COVID would come with a silver lining where we could start really trying Basic Income on a country scale and seeing how it (almost certainly) works wonders. Maybe it still will help people understand that governments are actually capable of helping people.