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WASHINGTON (AP), Donald Trump falsely claimed at a rally this weekend that the COVID-19 vaccine was being refused to whites by health officials due to their race.
In remarks that distorted the facts of public health policy and exaggerated New York’s antiviral treatment guidelines for people with racial sensitivity The former president inflicted anger based on race.
From his speech last night in Florence, Arizona:
TRUMP: “The left is now restricting lifesaving treatments because of race discriminating and denigrating … white people to decide who is alive and who dies. You can’t get the vaccine when you’re white, and you don’t receive therapy if you’re white. … If you’re white in New York, you must go to the back for medical treatment.
Facts: White people are not being denied vaccinations. There is plenty of them. There is no evidence to suggest that they are being transferred to the “backside” for COVID-19 as a matter of public health policy.
Trump has altered a New York policy which allows race to be considered when dispensed oral antiviral treatments. This is due to the fact that there are only a few of them. This policy aims to direct those treatments to those most at risk for severe coronavirus disease.
It says that nonwhite race or Hispanic ethnicity “should be considered to be a risk factor” because long-standing health and social injustices make people of ethnic minorities more likely to be sick or die from the virus.
Trump has drawn a false conclusion from the statement to claim that whites are being forced to stand at the back of the line for health care , and that they are denied access to vaccines and other therapeutics.
Michael Lanza, a New York City Health Department spokesperson has told the New York Post that race isn’t used to deny treatment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in the summer of last year that Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people were nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as non-Hispanic whites and were notably more likely to be hospitalized. An earlier analysis by Associated Press of the first waves of the pandemic revealed that COVID-19 was taking a disproportionately large toll on Black and Hispanic individuals.
CDC research in October reported that people in certain ethnic and racial minorities were dying of COVID-19 at younger ages and an official report from the institution Friday noted that minorities were less likely to receive outpatient antiviral treatment than whites.
Klepper reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
