5 ms·

Maybe because people buy nonsense opinion pieces that twist the truth to try and imply experts spend their time on nonsense as described? What actually happene

by Latty 5y ago

Maybe because people buy nonsense opinion pieces that twist the truth to try and imply experts spend their time on nonsense as described? What actually happened, if you read the sources, is a Catholic healthcare company set some wrong parameters when deciding who should get the treatment. No "woke left" racism against white people, a Catholic company that actively protests contraceptive use (about as far from "woke" as you can get) messed up, and then changed it as soon as someone pointed it out.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Respectfully, no, you're the one who's been misinformed here. The Atlantic article describes a large number of independent organizations doing this, including at least three state health departments in Minnesota, Utah, and New York. New York in particular didn't change this even after it was pointed out, and still has published guidance (https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/12/prioritization_of_mabs_during_resource_shortages_20211229.pdf https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/202...) that "Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity" should be considered a risk factor for prioritization purposes.
- Latty 5y ago
  Except the examples they give of absurdly high weighting are from the case I mentioned. It being a factor is not unreasonable, there are lots of risk factors for diseases and race is often one of them, clearly for COVID-19 age is an extremely important one. Plenty of diseases are much more common for certain races—it's imperfect as all indicators are, but that's hardly a new or unique problem.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    > Minnesota’s Department of Health used a scoring calculator that counted “BIPOC status” as equivalent to being 65 years and older in its risk assessment. That seems like an absurdly high weighting, and is from the article and is not from the specific case you mentioned.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Well, what's reasonable? As my hardline progressive friends have pointed out to me, conventional medical practice employs racial triage in all sorts of contexts (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-racism-out-of-medical-algorithms/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-racism-out-o..., although I don't agree with 100% of their analysis), so you're right that this isn't new or unique. But it's a big problem despite being old! If you went to your doctor for a sinus infection, and she held up a little skin color chart to decide whether you're allowed to have antibiotics, nobody would struggle to identify that as unacceptable even if you had unimpeachable studies showing racial disparities in sinus infection rates.
    - Latty 5y ago
      When we don't have enough of a treatment, we have to prioritise somehow. Are you arguing it was wrong to prioritise older people for the vaccine, for example? If you think that the metrics they are using are bad, make the case, but arguing that race should never be a factor is absurd when we know there are lots of cases where race massively changes your odds, just as with age. How much time and money that could be spent just producing more treatment is it justified to spend trying to make sure the exact people get the treatment? Maybe we can do better, but it being just racism against white people to ever take race as a factor is an absurd characterisation of that.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    No. In State of New York being a person of colour is effectively a 'primary condition' towards the calculation regarding distribution of the more expensive antiviral therapies. On the same level as 'not having had a vaccine'. If you have had a vaccine, then you need to be 65+ and in very bad shape to get the antivirals. Without the vaccine you need to be a 'person of colour' or have several seriously mitigating factors, like Diabetes, Cancer etc.. Especially since there is actually no apparent physiological difference between racial response to COVID, and that it seems to be entirely 'health' related ... it's really bad. It's one thing to save the antivirals for those in 'really bad shape' - fine - but just define what that is, and don't use race as a crude proxy for it. While I think the study that is posted here is perfectly reasonable, and discusses mostly issues of perception, the racial approach to rationing healthcare services is worth of discussion and much more. I'm surprised it has not gone to the Supreme Court. We're 100% on the path to the Courts on this, and unless it comes out reasonable, there is going to be some serious existential problems in the Western World over this.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      The assumption is that the median person of color has poorer access to healthcare (go visit Jackson Park Hospital in Chicago if you don’t believe me) and moreover the Neanderthal genes in South Asians do predict worse COVID outcomes.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        Yes I fully accept that Race is a crude proxy for access to healthcare. Also, Neanderthal genes are mostly Europe, not 'South Asian' - and even if there were some medically material issue, that's not what they are doing i.e. it's just all 'people of colour'. There are probably just as many White people who've had limited access to healthcare. Obviously, that still implies 'disproportionately bad' for Blacks, but nevertheless, large cohorts of others aka Whites. And so the policy is just unfair. I think it's better to give people a questionnaire about their medical history and go from there. In fact, I believe there's a 100% chance you could more readily identify those in need with just a few questions and measurements. Literally BMI, age, smoker, pre-existing conditions, status of healthcare insurance for the last few years, cholesterol, blood pressure and couple of very simple questions. Fill out that form, put it in the computer and it gives you back a score of 1-5 on the priority list for the local Hospital. I'll bet with just that data they could arrive at something considerably more accurate.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  New York isn't getting rid of their policy because it is medically defensible: - COVID-19 is known to harm people with certain chronic illnesses (e.g. diabetes) far worse than the general population - There are subsets of the population which are far more likely to not treat or even detect these illnesses - For various socioeconomic reasons that subset happens to correlate very well with race - Ergo, we can assume race as a risk factor for those diseases, and thus a risk factor for COVID-19 Almost all of the opposition I've seen to this policy has been on political grounds, not scientific ones. i.e. people who aren't aware of the racial disparity in COVID-19[0] arguing that this policy constitutes "reverse racism"[1], rather than arguing that the scientific basis for the policy is wrong. My assumption is that most of the outrage is from people who aren't paying attention and want to air grievances about whatever left-wing cultural thing they don't understand. Knowing most of the facts (or at least, what I can reasonably presume to be facts), I can say that this policy is "tolerable" iff it actually works to effectively ration care based on need. This is the sort of thing that needs careful, periodic review and revision, not knee-jerk reactions that just make everyone involved circle their political wagons. [0] Or have selectively forgotten about it, through the same mechanism as the purported Gell-Mann Amnesia effect [1] More generally: most complaints of "reverse racism" do not attempt to actually argue against a particular policy choice (e.g. affirmative action, progressive stack, antiracism etc), but make moral arguments about how racially-aware policies are facially immoral in any set of circumstances.
  - kyboren 5y ago
    > There are subsets of the population which are far more likely to not treat or even detect these illnesses That's an argument for improving detection of these diseases which influence clinical outcomes, not for prioritizing care on the basis of race.
    - Latty 5y ago
      This is true of literally all indicators. Should we also not prioritise on age because we could in theory isolate a ton of age-related factors that are comorbid with COVID-19? Where to draw the line is a hard question, maybe we can do better, I agree there should be more visibility and oversight on these things (just like with algorithmic sentencing and so on), but that doesn't make any use of race as a factor anti-white racism.

by Latty 5y ago

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

Respectfully, no, you're the one who's been misinformed here. The Atlantic article describes a large number of independent organizations doing this, including at least three state health departments in Minnesota, Utah, and New York. New York in particular didn't change this even after it was pointed out, and still has published guidance (https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/12/prioritization_of_mabs_during_resource_shortages_20211229.pdf https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/202...) that "Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity" should be considered a risk factor for prioritization purposes.

Latty 5y ago
Except the examples they give of absurdly high weighting are from the case I mentioned. It being a factor is not unreasonable, there are lots of risk factors for diseases and race is often one of them, clearly for COVID-19 age is an extremely important one. Plenty of diseases are much more common for certain races—it's imperfect as all indicators are, but that's hardly a new or unique problem.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  > Minnesota’s Department of Health used a scoring calculator that counted “BIPOC status” as equivalent to being 65 years and older in its risk assessment. That seems like an absurdly high weighting, and is from the article and is not from the specific case you mentioned.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Well, what's reasonable? As my hardline progressive friends have pointed out to me, conventional medical practice employs racial triage in all sorts of contexts (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-racism-out-of-medical-algorithms/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-racism-out-o..., although I don't agree with 100% of their analysis), so you're right that this isn't new or unique. But it's a big problem despite being old! If you went to your doctor for a sinus infection, and she held up a little skin color chart to decide whether you're allowed to have antibiotics, nobody would struggle to identify that as unacceptable even if you had unimpeachable studies showing racial disparities in sinus infection rates.
  - Latty 5y ago
    When we don't have enough of a treatment, we have to prioritise somehow. Are you arguing it was wrong to prioritise older people for the vaccine, for example? If you think that the metrics they are using are bad, make the case, but arguing that race should never be a factor is absurd when we know there are lots of cases where race massively changes your odds, just as with age. How much time and money that could be spent just producing more treatment is it justified to spend trying to make sure the exact people get the treatment? Maybe we can do better, but it being just racism against white people to ever take race as a factor is an absurd characterisation of that.
- jollybean 5y ago
  No. In State of New York being a person of colour is effectively a 'primary condition' towards the calculation regarding distribution of the more expensive antiviral therapies. On the same level as 'not having had a vaccine'. If you have had a vaccine, then you need to be 65+ and in very bad shape to get the antivirals. Without the vaccine you need to be a 'person of colour' or have several seriously mitigating factors, like Diabetes, Cancer etc.. Especially since there is actually no apparent physiological difference between racial response to COVID, and that it seems to be entirely 'health' related ... it's really bad. It's one thing to save the antivirals for those in 'really bad shape' - fine - but just define what that is, and don't use race as a crude proxy for it. While I think the study that is posted here is perfectly reasonable, and discusses mostly issues of perception, the racial approach to rationing healthcare services is worth of discussion and much more. I'm surprised it has not gone to the Supreme Court. We're 100% on the path to the Courts on this, and unless it comes out reasonable, there is going to be some serious existential problems in the Western World over this.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    The assumption is that the median person of color has poorer access to healthcare (go visit Jackson Park Hospital in Chicago if you don’t believe me) and moreover the Neanderthal genes in South Asians do predict worse COVID outcomes.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Yes I fully accept that Race is a crude proxy for access to healthcare. Also, Neanderthal genes are mostly Europe, not 'South Asian' - and even if there were some medically material issue, that's not what they are doing i.e. it's just all 'people of colour'. There are probably just as many White people who've had limited access to healthcare. Obviously, that still implies 'disproportionately bad' for Blacks, but nevertheless, large cohorts of others aka Whites. And so the policy is just unfair. I think it's better to give people a questionnaire about their medical history and go from there. In fact, I believe there's a 100% chance you could more readily identify those in need with just a few questions and measurements. Literally BMI, age, smoker, pre-existing conditions, status of healthcare insurance for the last few years, cholesterol, blood pressure and couple of very simple questions. Fill out that form, put it in the computer and it gives you back a score of 1-5 on the priority list for the local Hospital. I'll bet with just that data they could arrive at something considerably more accurate.
kmeisthax 5y ago
New York isn't getting rid of their policy because it is medically defensible: - COVID-19 is known to harm people with certain chronic illnesses (e.g. diabetes) far worse than the general population - There are subsets of the population which are far more likely to not treat or even detect these illnesses - For various socioeconomic reasons that subset happens to correlate very well with race - Ergo, we can assume race as a risk factor for those diseases, and thus a risk factor for COVID-19 Almost all of the opposition I've seen to this policy has been on political grounds, not scientific ones. i.e. people who aren't aware of the racial disparity in COVID-19[0] arguing that this policy constitutes "reverse racism"[1], rather than arguing that the scientific basis for the policy is wrong. My assumption is that most of the outrage is from people who aren't paying attention and want to air grievances about whatever left-wing cultural thing they don't understand. Knowing most of the facts (or at least, what I can reasonably presume to be facts), I can say that this policy is "tolerable" iff it actually works to effectively ration care based on need. This is the sort of thing that needs careful, periodic review and revision, not knee-jerk reactions that just make everyone involved circle their political wagons. [0] Or have selectively forgotten about it, through the same mechanism as the purported Gell-Mann Amnesia effect [1] More generally: most complaints of "reverse racism" do not attempt to actually argue against a particular policy choice (e.g. affirmative action, progressive stack, antiracism etc), but make moral arguments about how racially-aware policies are facially immoral in any set of circumstances.
- kyboren 5y ago
  > There are subsets of the population which are far more likely to not treat or even detect these illnesses That's an argument for improving detection of these diseases which influence clinical outcomes, not for prioritizing care on the basis of race.
  - Latty 5y ago
    This is true of literally all indicators. Should we also not prioritise on age because we could in theory isolate a ton of age-related factors that are comorbid with COVID-19? Where to draw the line is a hard question, maybe we can do better, I agree there should be more visibility and oversight on these things (just like with algorithmic sentencing and so on), but that doesn't make any use of race as a factor anti-white racism.