Covid-19 and the Culmination of White (Medical) Supremacy
Time to make some use of that privilege.
As a former leftie who has, more recently, been engulfed in and attempting to extricate oneself from the largely right-wing sludge that is the conspiracy world, I have been searching diligently for the story that might unite both sides of our increasingly divided, post-Covid society.
Good news! We may have found it with this piece from the New York Times, which investigates the intersection between race and vaccination (name me a more politically relevant duo, I’ll wait). More specifically, it explores one of the most revealing and paradigm-shifting data points of the pandemic: the hesitancy of black and other minority groups towards Covid-19 vaccines.
Why are so many black people in New York City — and, by extension, America — not getting the jab? Is it because they are prone to misinformation? Is it because of systemic inequality in accessing health resources? Or is it, as this article suggests, that they are simply choosing not to get it because they are “Suss AF” about the people telling them to get it?
Now, on-the-record vaccine skeptics such as myself would argue that suspicion towards these jabs should be a natural reaction, for all of us. Leaving aside the debate around the science itself, the fact that they are being relentlessly pushed by institutions that are notoriously unworthy of our trust — politicians, mainstream media, pharmaceutical companies — has been a red flag for many discerning individuals. However, there should be no doubt after reading this article that black people have even more reason to be discerning.
Why? Because Covid-19 appears to providing the perfect circumstances for the final charge of White Supremacy. Or, more specifically perhaps, White Medical Supremacy. Let me explain.
One of the most depressing developments in racial politics in the Trump era has been the free pass given to his political opponents. Such was the spectre of white supremacy that was associated with Orange Man and his movement, it was assumed that anyone who opposed this movement was, by default, a step in the right direction. This was a regrettable assumption to make then, and is surely indefensible now, knowing what we know about Trumpy’s replacement.
There was an unpopular argument that many leftist commentators steadfastly progressed throughout Trump’s 4 years (and beyond): that The Don is merely the ugly and shameless face of toxic white attitudes in American society, and that his ‘opponents’ are equally as culpable — perhaps even more so, given their tendency to virtue signal away their own white power urgings in public, while further consolidating them in private. In short: at least Trump and his deplorables are honest about it.
That nothing of substance would change for black people in post-Trump America seemed inevitable once the Democrats recruited an old white man with notorious racist views to beat him. For many on the left — the proper left, not those centrist libs — it seems reality is really starting to sink in: that the real battle might only just have started.
We may be starting to see, coming to the surface, an awareness of a form of racism so insidious and uncomfortable that is has gone largely unnoticed: that enshrined in the medical industry. This awareness has been triggered, in some fairly rich and complex irony, by the vaccines rushed out at warp speed by a still proud and self-congratulating Trump himself. Ironic because, you know, his supporters really don’t like that part about him very much.
The most common example provided by hesitant black New Yorkers was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which found the deliberate under-treatment of African Americans in the Alabama town between 1932 and 1972. However, there is a rich history of white medicine killing black people beyond the boundaries of the American continent that provides plenty more examples — including those specific to the introduction of new vaccines.
Much has been made of a certain famous software designers escapades in trialling new jabs in Africa and Asia. The long list of alleged misdemeanours by Bill Gates and his related organisations was documented in a viral post last year by Robert F Kennedy Jnr. Kennedy is a divisive figure, not unlike Gates himself, and has recently been listed in the notorious “Disinformation Dozen” (all of the dozen are very happy to wear that label, in case you were wondering). Nonetheless, his opinion has to be taken seriously on last name and bloodline alone, and many of the claims he makes against Gates are supported by peer-reviewed research.
One of the more shocking examples comes from a retrospective study on the introduction of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) and oral polio vaccine (OPV) in an urban community in Guinea-Bissau in the early 1980s. It found that “DTP was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvaccinated. No prospective study has shown beneficial survival effects of DTP.”
The following quotes from the conclusion of the study are worth giving in full:
“It should be of concern that the effect of routine vaccinations on all-cause mortality was not tested in randomized trials. All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis. Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.”
This is a remarkable thing to say about a vaccine, given the exulted status that they hold in our society. The DTP jab clearly resulted in more deaths than it protected from, due to it making the receiver more susceptible to other diseases. But this fact required a retrospective study to be uncovered, because there was no initial trial that tested for such an outcome.
There are undoubtably lessons to learn here for our current vaccine rollout, which is founded in a similar absence of randomised testing for all-cause mortality. Let it not be forgotten that protection from the original Covid strain is the primary endpoint of the official clinical trials, rather than overall protection from disease or overall positive health outcomes — thus we have no real safeguards in place for unforeseen negative outcomes occurring, as they did in Guinea-Bissau.
But let’s leave those anti-vax quibbles aside, and reinforce the issue at hand: whether innocently or by design, Western medical interventions have a chequered history of negatively impacting black people.
Enough about vaccines for now; the impact of this current regime on the world’s population at whole, let alone black and other minority groups, is something only the future knows. We have other examples for how the ugly face of White Supremacy has emerged in this pandemic, most notably the ways in which we are treating the Covid-19 disease.
A lot has been written about both Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin (IVM) as potential Covid-19 treatments. Unfortunately, a lot of people have also shaped their opinions on these two drugs not on a nuanced understanding of the complex and often contradictory data picture, but around the opinions of people who they either like or dislike: whether they be politicians, media voices, or designated public health ‘experts’. This is a problematic approach to health research, it goes without saying, but thus here we are.
What makes me any different? I have been following it from the start, and I have the articles to back it up: HCQ here and IVM here. And right from the start, I saw a narrative emerge that has shaped the way I still see the discourse around both drugs, and by extension their relationship to the vaccine: the disparaging of a black man’s medicine in favour of a white man’s medicine.
Sure, it’s not quite that simple, for a few reasons — but it might be your best starting point for understanding this medicinal mess.
While they are often spoken of together, there is no direct comparison between the three. The vaccine is clearly a prophylactic: taken preemptively to reduce the chance of infection and/or the severity of symptoms. HCQ, on the other hand, is clearly an early treatment option: its most credible mechanism of action is as a ‘zinc ionophore’ that allows zinc easy passage into cells so it can inhibit viral replication.
IVM falls somewhere in the middle. There are numerous promising studies that suggest it can act as a preventive measure against Covid infection — mechanism largely unknown, but perhaps to do with its anti-parasitic mode of action. In addition, its anti-inflammatory properties are the most likely explanation for its promise as an early treatment option.
Nonetheless, the competition between them is real, and fierce. And they have certain properties that undoubtably place them within opposing medical paradigms.
It is simplistic to call HCQ and IVM ‘black’ or ‘indigenous’ medicine as such. But I do think it is a useful framework, in this way: Indigenous medicine is healing plant medicine, fundamentally; and what both drugs are, are treatments whose remedy lies fundamentally in nature.
HCQ is a derivative of quinine, the active ingredient in tonic water, which can be made easily at home by simmering citrus in hot water (I have tried it myself several times: you get used to the taste, and it definitely does something to you). Oops, forget I said that: our designated medical gatekeepers would like to remind you that you can’t make your own medicines at home. That’s just for them.
IVM is not something you can make at home, given it is in fact derived from a novel soil bacteria. It was discovered over 30 years ago by a Japanese scientist Satoshi Ōmura, who was ultimately awarded the Nobel prize for his efforts (in an impressive Orwellian plot twist, he was recently subject to censorship for approving of its use for Covid-19).
Another argument, probably the most compelling, for the inherent ‘blackness’ of these drugs is that they have been least controversial and most widely used in non-Western regions of the world: Africa, Asia and the Middle East most notably, as well as areas of South America. I did my best to document this reality here for HCQ and here for IVM.
Much of the reason for this early uptake can be attributed to the existing use of these drugs for other diseases — hence why they are now being referred to as success stories for the hidden potential of ‘re-purposed’ drugs. HCQ has been used effectively as an anti-malarial across large parts of Africa. IVM — as well as having potential against malaria — has been hailed as game changer in protecting against river blindness, which has become endemic in areas of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Latin America.
In fact, one of the most overlooked global aspects of this pandemic has been the relatively good performance of the malaria-endemic Africa. What do they know that we don’t?
A final reason why HCQ and IVM appear to fall into a different category than the vaccines, perhaps least talked about but noteworthy and revealing nonetheless: both drugs seem to have associated with them an element of art behind how they are administered. Frame this against the quantity over quality mad rush to vaccinate any shoulder available, even if they are in a shopping centre or still in their car.
How else can you explain the exasperating divergence in findings across studies for both drugs: the reason why you can have one pundit articulate a convincingly cherry-picked case for them to not to work, while another pundit can do the exact opposite? The difference is most stark for HCQ: those astonishingly poor yet most widely publicised studies such as Recovery, which essentially killed of their late-stage, already-critical trial subjects by giving them almost toxic doses; compared to the almost universally positive findings of studies that used the drug early, in correct amounts and in combination with zinc and other supplements.
In fact, one of my favourite numbers of this pandemic comes from this HCQ research aggregating site:
“Studies from North America are 3.1 times more likely to report negative results than studies from the rest of the world combined, 53.7% vs. 17.3%… p = 0.0000000066.”
The mainstream explanation would of course be to put this down to confirmation bias and poor scientific rigour. A less generous and more cynical person might call this a pre-meditated stitch up up by the Western medical elite. What if the actual reason was more innocent yet much more embarrassing: that it takes a true medical adept to bring out the best in these compounds, and North America has failed this test? Is the Western medical ego ready to accept this level of accountability?
Regardless of how you view HCQ and IVM, perhaps this is one thing we can all agree on: that the Covid vaccines — particularly those exotic mRNA types — are the pinnacle, the culmination even, of white medicine. White medicine? But of course, because it is our largely unique racial trait of wanting to control nature, rather than be in a more humble harmony with it.
Send a virus out of the deep, dark bat-filled recesses of Communist China, hey Mother? A mysterious new microscopic creature, with this mysterious and menacingly mutated spike protein attached, which promises to wreak havoc inside our bodies?
Well, we will go one better, and mimic your own mechanism of action by making this spike protein inside ourselves! The ultimate hack of our immune systems ever attempted. And then we will do it again for every mutation you send our way, that’s how good we are at outsmarting you!
Say it isn’t true, I dare you.
So, where are we? As a starting point, we have Western, almost exclusively white governments that have created the conditions for black and minority communities to be disproportionately impacted by Covid-19: this is not disputed.
We have (per our previous discussion) Western, almost exclusively white governments that are restricting the access of these communities to potentially life-saving treatments — naturally-derived therapeutics that these communities would have far greater access to were they not living under Western power structures. Like, you know, the Covid all-star that is Africa.
And now we have Western, almost exclusively white governments restricting the access of minority — and, most egregiously, indigenous — communities to employment, social services and the basic ability to move freely within one’s own land: all because they won’t take the white man’s medicine.
That’s right: measures introduced in August to instate vaccine passports in New York will disproportionally impact the non-white community for the very reasons discussed at the start of this piece. Expect to see a similar situation emerge in other major Western cities, coming soon to you.
The above facts are true and indisputable, regardless of your personal opinion on the origins, the danger posed by, or even the existence of SARS-CoV-2. What is also indisputable is that no white (or other shaded) person who respects the self-cultural-autonomy of black/indigenous peoples should expect nor require any justification or defence from such an individual for why they might turn this vaccine down.
The only thing up for dispute is how we arrived at this situation: by reason or chance.
With that in mind, here is a final question, for us all to ponder: if we believe in the existence of white supremacy, whether medical or otherwise, should we really believe these circumstances — seemingly perfect for which to forward such an agenda — have come about as an innocent coincidence?