RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/21/the-privilege-of-identity-politics/

Last month, Melinda Gates announced that “we need to apply a gender lens to solving this [coronavirus] crisis.” She linked to a March 12 story in the New York Times reporting that with women making up to 70 percent of healthcare workers worldwide, women are at “disproportionate risk.” COVID-19 may very well end up “exacerbating gender, social and economic fault lines,” Gates claimed.

Buried in the Times story, however, was an inconvenient detail. It appears as an afterthought in parentheses at the end of a paragraph. The preceding phrase talks about women being “squarely in the virus’ path,” but then comes this: “(although some early studies of coronavirus in China suggest men have a higher death rate).”

Well, one would think that before asserting the greater vulnerability of women to the disease a reporter would check on mortality rates or at least wait until more information comes in. But, of course, that would be to allow the possibility that males have a higher susceptibility, and that would yield the wrong gender equality. The whole story would be shot. Let’s go with the female vulnerability instead.

That’s what Melinda Gates did. After all, she has steered piles of cash at the Gates Foundation to the issue. Last October she wrote a story in Time Magazine under the headline, “Here’s Why I’m Committing $1 Billion to Promote Gender Equality.” And on March 7, she published an op-ed in the New York Times with the title, “How to Start a Conversation About Gender Equality.” A photo accompanying the story showed a sign announcing, “WOMEN’S RIGHTS are HUMAN RIGHTS.”

That conversation might begin with this: Can you explain why men are more likely than women to die of coronavirus, thus far making up more than two-thirds of all fatalities?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-you-care-if-a-white-man-cured-covid-19-11587142808?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

“If we are in a war, as our leaders tell us, we should act like it. Diverting scientists’ attention, time and funding away from research and toward identity politics is a decadence that we can no longer afford. Reviving the economy will be as urgent a task as fighting the pandemic. Yet an early Democratic version of last month’s $2 trillion relief package required corporations to bulk up their diversity bureaucracies if they want aid. The only qualifications that should matter for both science and private enterprise are knowledge, insight and drive.”

Scientists at Oxford University and King’s College London are racing to develop an inexpensive ventilator that can be quickly built with off-the-shelf components. Should it matter that all the lead researchers on the project are men? If you believe university diversity bureaucrats and many academic deans, the initiative will be handicapped by the absence of women among the project heads. If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to expose as dangerous nonsense the practice of hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific accomplishments.

Mandatory diversity statements are now ubiquitous in hiring for science, technology, engineering and mathematics jobs. An Alzheimer’s researcher seeking a position in a neurology lab must document his contributions to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” At the University of California, Berkeley, the life sciences department rejected 76% of the applications it received last year because they lacked sufficiently effusive diversity, equity and inclusion statements. The hiring committee didn’t even look at the failed applicants’ research records.

Were the remaining contenders the best scientists in their field? Apparently it doesn’t matter. What matters is how good they are at discussing “distinctions and connections between diversity, equity, and inclusion” during their job talks, in the words of UC’s diversity guidance. The rejected applicants showed insufficient knowledge of the “dimensions of diversity that result from different identities, especially URMs”—underrepresented minorities. Perhaps some were so rash as to suggest that racial and sex quotas in STEM hiring are antithetical to the university’s research mission.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/predictable-backlash-against-bill-maher-for-saying-we-should-blame-china-for-pandemic/

Bill Maher told his “Politically Incorrect” audience that it frightens him “that there are people out there who would rather die from the virus than call it by the wrong name.” That started a classic Maher rant that gored several liberal oxen, including skewering the PC police for denying reality.

The PC police say it is racist to attack any cultural practice that’s different than our own. I say liberalism lost its way when it started thinking like that and pretended that forcing a woman to wear [a burqa] was just a different way instead of an abhorrent human rights violation.

It’s not racist to point out that eating bats is bats**t crazy! …

So when someone says, “What if people hear ‘Chinese virus’ and blame China?”

The answer is we should blame China, not Chinese-Americans. But we can’t stop telling the truth because racists get the wrong idea. There are always going to be idiots out there who want to indulge their prejudices, but this is an emergency! Don’t we have bigger tainted fish to fry? Jesus, if the sun was exploding, Twitter would pile on the first guy who called it a dwarf star.

Liberals say Trump is a racist because he “enables” racists and white supremacists. Why is Trump responsible for other people being idiots? True, Trump’s lack of racial sensitivity and empathy is a problem, but that doesn’t make him a racist.

Predictability, the left exploded in anger. “Bill Maher Goes on Despicably Racist Rant Against China Over Coronavirus,” screamed the Daily Beast.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/racial_warrior_offended_when_the_surgeon_general_tells_minorities_that_behavior_affects_virus_risks.html

✔ @tedcruz

Imagine: you’re a professional NPR reporter, you have an opportunity to ask the US Surgeon General a Q—in the midst of a global pandemic w/ over 100k fatalities—and you ask “‘many people’ are offended by what you call your grandmother.” Seriously, what the hell is wrong w/ MSM?!?

PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor has distinguished herself as one of the media figures most engaged in the “gotcha” game at COVID-19 press conferences, especially when she can work race into the issue.  On Friday, after the surgeon general made a direct plea to minorities about behaviors that can protect them, she went on the attack.

U.S. surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams spent five minutes during Friday’s press conference talking about the fact that COVID-19 is hitting minority communities especially hard.  His densely packed presentation began with his addressing minorities’ predisposition to diseases that increase the risk from COVID-19, such as asthma, heart disease, and diabetes.

From there, Adams moved to lifestyle factors that increase the risk.  These included the fact that minorities tend to live in more densely packed, urban communities; have multi-generational houses; and are employed in jobs that cannot be done via telecommuting.

Adams then talked about dangerous COVID-19 myths that circulate in minority communities.  He said he and Vice President Pence have spoken to thousands of minorities, including hundreds of community leaders, to discuss minorities’ unique vulnerability to COVID-19.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/08/cdc-battles-biology-instead-of-coronavirus/

“The question I would like to ask President Trump at one of his coronavirus briefings is: “Mr. President, why is the CDC prioritizing gender ideology over science, especially at a moment when Americans are suffering and many dying from the Coronavirus?” 

Why are the Centers for Disease Control prioritizing gender ideology over science, especially in the midst of a pandemic? 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) online tool for Coronavirus symptom assessment, the “Coronavirus Self-Checker,” asks about “gender,” with options of “female,” “male” and “other.” This is strange. The coronavirus attacks the human body. The coronavirus does not attack gender identity.

In protecting Americans from the coronavirus, sex matters. Humans, like other mammals, have two sexes: male and female. In disease research and treatment, accurate information about the sex of a person is important for researchers and health professionals to know. The novel coronavirus, for example, discriminates on the basis of sex.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/whither-woke-culture-era-pandemic-bruce-bawer/

Last week, in the New York Post, Kyle Smith made a thoughtful argument that, in the COVID-19 era, “the woke virus,” too, “is spreading faster than ever.” He quoted a statement on Twitter by actress Fran Drescher that the Chinese virus is a product of capitalism; he noted the “vomitatious ‘Imagine’ video praising open borders, socialism and atheism” that was posted online by Gal Gadot and other C-list celebrities in response to the pandemic; and he cited inane claims by various activists that the coronavirus disproportionately disadvantages women or people of color. “Next year,” Smith concluded, “there will probably be a vaccine for coronavirus. But there will never be an inoculation for woke stupidity.”

He may be right. But during these strange weeks when all the world has been united in being apart, I’ve kept nourishing the hope that woke culture may turn out to be one of the casualties of this plague. In fact I’ve pretty much talked myself into believing that it will be. After all, what could more effectively expose the absurdity of the concept of microaggressions than a macroaggression on the scale of the coronavirus? When an increasing number of Americans are infected by a very real and malignant corporeal contagion, how many people are going to keep buying the leftist fiction that no country on earth is more riddled with the contagion of prejudice than the United States? In a time when we’re all “social distancing” to save our skins, who will dare to carry on about the need for “safe spaces” as protection from mere words?