New York Post

Racial medical care is careless

- By POST EDITORIAL BOARD

CALL New York’s prioritiza­tion of COVID tests and treatments by ethnicity exactly what it is: racist.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s obsession with race already hurt our schools and our police department, so why not go the

extra mile and sacrifice our lives? Rather than distribute city COVID testing resources based on population, his administra­tion prioritize­d neighborho­ods that have “borne the brunt of this pandemic due to structural racism,” a city Health Department representa­tive told The Post.

Meanwhile, the distributi­on of COVID medicine such as monoclonal antibodies “will consider race and ethnicity when assessing individual risk.”

But what is that risk? Not race, but class, says a Harvard epidemiolo­gist and professor. “I have not seen [race] as one of the risk factors for severe disease and death,” Martin Kulldorff told The Post. “The reason that a lot of African Americans have died in New York — which is true — is because the rich people and more affluent were working from home while the working class were exposed.”

Yet City Hall, as it has done repeatedly for the past eight years, decided to fuel racial division instead.

We don’t need to make these decisions at all. New York City is awash in federal aid. Congress allocated the Department of Health and Human Services $480 billion for hospitals and health care, of which only a fraction has been spent.

De Blasio just wanted to preen for the progressiv­es and show off his “Taskforce on Racial Inclusion & Equity.” If one person dies in this city because they didn’t get the treatment they need or weren’t properly tested, that blood is on his hands.

Mayor Adams now has the opportunit­y to stop this nonsense. Get athome tests and city centers to any neighborho­ods that want them. Disband De Blasio’s task force. And let’s have a city government aimed at helping all New Yorkers.

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