Pandemic Playlist

Check Your [White] Privilege

What does that mean? Starting at the beginning, if you Giggle "definition of check" you are confronted with the first two definitions of the verb form:

1. examine (something) in order to determine its accuracy, quality, or condition, or to detect the presence of something.
2. stop or slow down the progress of (something undesirable).

Which to pick? Well if you're in a conversation and someone tells you to "Check your privilege" you are being told to shut up. Hard stop. You are also being told that your privilege is trumped by their entitlement.

So let's not use that definition. Instead let's go with the first and do some examination.

Back to Giggle and "definition of privilege" yields a good working definition of the noun form: "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group."

Now in the context of the current pandemic let's examine white privilege.

Much has been made of the higher death rate among African Americans and Hispanics who contract COVID-19 with some reasonable conversations regarding co-morbidities. This quickly became politicized with the anticipation of monetization obscuring any real issue by drowning intelligent conversation in a sea of noise and passion.

As it turns out there is a very real issue and it is confirmed by no less an authority than the UK's Public Health England the National Institutes of Health.

Research conducted in the UK during the ongoing pandemic indicates that people of color have at least a 10% higher risk of death from COVID-19, many sub-groups  at least 50% higher and some as high as twice as likely to die than white Britons. These results include an accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, leaving ethnicity as the remaining factor. More surprising is the fact that mortality in previous years was quite the opposite with white Britons suffering a higher death rate than people of color from corona virus illnesses.

Turning stateside you'll find a growing wealth of information from the NIH, with two areas of particular interest:

1. research papers (here and here and here) indicate a negative correlation between levels of Vitamin D and COVID-19 severity and death.
   
2. The NIH has long reported (here and here) a negative correlation between melanin levels and Vitamin D synthesis.   

So there you have it. When it comes to COVID-19 the notion of white privilege checks out.

What to do with this info? Some folks might want to panic-buy some Vitamin D, maybe get some sun, but please, for the health of everyone Check Your Ego.

Carcinogens And Cancer

The hallmarks of cancer include out of control growth and disease spread, metastasis, to other critical organs. Carcinogens are environmental elements causing or accelerating the development of deadly growths.

Here in Dunwoody, the cancer is out of control greed and development. The carcinogen is the Developer's Authority and it is the City, staff bureaucrats and elected officials, who support cancer-causing behaviors as if they actually prefer a death by this cancer to a life free from it.

As with biologics there may be no cure, the disease may be too advanced. Ironically it is a true, viral pandemic that may offer some relief. Developer spinmeisters are already ramping up PR around how their high density, highly profitable residential developments will not actually be SARS-CoV-2 reservoirs as they will have a few open areas, some mini-parks. That is their pandemic-slayer. Does anyone really believe it?

Even those blessed with only minimal intelligence can see right through this. Developers have been given carte blanche when it comes to growth in Your Dunwoody, fueled by bad behavior of the city and its captive corps. But now it is no longer a matter of quality of life, it is a matter of actual life and death.

How much is your life worth? Ask a developer how much they stand to make. Better yet, ask council. They should know exactly who profits and by how much as they sell out Your Dunwoody.