Some indoor kid activity places now have a funny way of supplementing their income. They cite the governor’s mask mandate to get you to purchase a strangely expensive kid mask at the door. But the kid doesn’t have to wear it. As long as you pay, they are satisfied.

I’m very amenable to this because I understand that they suffer financially and if they leave my kid be, I don’t mind paying a premium.

In  New York, racial minorities are automatically eligible for scarce COVID-19 therapeutics, regardless of age or underlying conditions. In Utah, “Latinx ethnicity” counts for more points than “congestive heart failure” in a patient’s “COVID-19 risk score”—the state’s framework for allocating monoclonal antibodies. And in Minnesota, health officials have devised their own “ethical framework” that prioritizes black 18-year-olds over white 64-year-olds—even though the latter are at much higher risk of severe disease.

Of course there’s no such thing as “Latinx ethnicity” because latinos aren’t an ethnic group. It’s actually very racist to say they are because by doing so you deny the existence of the millions of black latinos or Chinese, Jewish, Ukrainian, Korean, etc latinos.

Leaving all that aside, though, why does this problem even exist? How come the extremely poor Ukraine, a country at war and with a million problems, managed to import huge quantities of monoclonal antibodies back in summer? How come New York and Utah aren’t managing to do the same? We have a huge shortage here in Illinois, too. Why is there a gigantic supply of a vaccine that is clearly very ineffective but a shortage of a treatment that works?

This happens because none of it has to do with health. The point is to exacerbate racial resentments and withhold treatments that work to keep people scared.

Supporting universal healthcare today (as opposed to 30 years ago) means you are in favor of people being denied treatment because of the books they read and the way they vote. This is absolutely the next step in the process we are experiencing.

Wake up, notice that things have changed, and try to achieve the superhuman feat of changing your mind. If anything deserves the effort, it’s this.