COVID-19, Propaganda, And The Church Lady

Often times I come across stories that I can't believe. Stories that have silly misspellings, or worse, no basis in fact at all.

This is one of those stories. In this story you will find propaganda used to plant ideas into the reader's mind.

To start with the article seems to be a normal work, listing findings related to DNA, COVID-19, and the severity of one's symptoms.

A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history.

“This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today,” said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study.

This piece of the genome, which spans six genes on Chromosome 3, has had a puzzling journey through human history, the study found. The variant is now common in Bangladesh, where 63 percent of people carry at least one copy. Across all of South Asia, almost one-third of people have inherited the segment.

Elsewhere, however, the segment is far less common. Only 8 percent of Europeans carry it, and just 4 percent have it in East Asia. It is almost completely absent in Africa.

Then the article switches to something that’s completely ridiculous! It starts talking about social inequality. Notice the mention of “systemic racism” when mentioning The United States.

Social inequality matters, too. In the United States, Black people are far more likely than white people to become severely ill from the coronavirus, for example, most likely due in part to the country’s history of systemic racism. It has left Black people with a high rate of chronic diseases such as diabetes, as well as living conditions and jobs that may increase exposure to the virus.

Genes play a role as well. Last month, researchers compared people in Italy and Spain who became very sick with Covid-19 to those who had only mild infections. They found two places in the genome associated with a greater risk. One is on Chromosome 9 and includes ABO, a gene that determines blood type. The other is the Neanderthal segment on Chromosome 3.

But these genetic findings are being rapidly updated as more people infected with the coronavirus are studied. Just last week, an international group of scientists called the Covid-19 Host Genetics Initiative released a new set of data downplaying the risk of blood type. “The jury is still out on ABO,” said Mark Daly, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who is a member of the initiative.

The article then states, "Genes play a role as well." Genes play the largest role. You can't judge a group of people based on the assumption that they are all starting from a point generally poor health. To assume that most African Americans have poor health, which the article does, is racist.

This all comes down to one thing in the end. The use of the term "systemic racism" is planted into the story to suggest that people associate racism with issues, which under normal circumstances, would never be. It's about training people to think a certain way. To associate disease with racism. Which is absurd, and in itself... well... actually racist.

This article is the literary version of Dana Carvey's SNL character The Church Lady. Instead of seeing Satan behind everything, it's racism.