In answer to the question, “What do Black lives (specifically), COVID-19, and climate change have to do with each other?” here is an article from CNN that I found on the ABC KMIZ website, headlined:
The world’s most vulnerable face conflict, Covid-19 and climate change in 2021, report says
The coronavirus, combined with climate change and conflict, is expected to exacerbate already long-running crises in many developing countries next year, according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a major US humanitarian group.
The report is targeted to the threats to developing nations, but it’s equally true in “developed” nations with histories and current policies that either neglect the well-being of or deliberately target the well-being of minorities.
In case I haven’t mentioned it enough, I’m thinking of police bias and violence toward Black, brown, and indigenous peoples. I’m thinking of unequal treatment in health care.
And that brings me to the question, “If Black people are suffering more from the pandemic, why are so many Black Americans hesitant to take the damn vaccine?”
CBS News reports, in the article headlined Why some Black Americans are skeptical of a COVID-19 vaccine:
The Black community’s distrust of the vaccine and the nation’s medical establishment is rooted in a long record of mistreatment. The late 1900s were defined by medical breakthroughs in the nation’s scientific community, but many of these experiments and discoveries were made at “the expense of Black people’s human dignity,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, co-founder of the Black Coalition Against COVID-19. “There is a history of insults that have occurred in health care for people of color.”
And, in answer to Black Americans to want to know, “Why should I trust that this vaccine isn’t being tested on us to make sure it’s safe for White people?”, Dr. Anthony Fauci answers:
So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman
Fauci wants people to know that one of lead scientists who developed the Covid-19 vaccine is a Black woman
Finally, for those who want to know “What’s Greta Thunberg up to these days?”, she’s celebrating President-Elect Biden’s pledge to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement.
Greta being Greta, she didn’t just celebrate, but insisted we all keep our eyes on the prize and win it before we start drinking champagne out of high heels.
“As young people, we would really appreciate it if we stopped only talking about future, distant hypothetical goals and targets,” she said, adding that it was important to “start focusing on what we need to do now.”
“It is right now that the carbon budget is being used up,” she said, believing that the more delays to concrete action “the more weight we put on the shoulders of future generations.
“We don’t want to solve these problems for you, we want you to take care of it right now because you are destroying our futures right now,” she told CNN.
That ever-lovin’ Greta Thunberg, On 5th Anniversary of Paris Climate Deal, Greta Thunberg Says She is ‘Happy’ U.S. Plans to Rejoin
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about a premature celebration.
MA
