Trump claims white people are discriminated against for COVID-19 treatment: 'If you're white you go right to the back of the line'
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- Donald Trump said that white people are at the "back of the line" for COVID-19 treatments.
- At an Arizona rally, Trump claimed the left is "denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies."
- Some states have published guidance that non-white race is a risk factor for severe illness and death from COVID-19.
During a rally on Saturday in Florence, Arizona, former President Donald Trump claimed that white people are being discriminated against in the allotment of COVID-19 treatments.
"The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies," Trump said.
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"You get it based on race. In fact, in New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. If you're white, you go right to the back of the line."
The former president referenced a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article titled "New York's Race-Based Preferential Covid Treatments."
The article says that COVID-19 treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals are in short supply and that New York state has published guidelines outlining how to allocate them to those most in need.
The guidelines state that "non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor" because of "longstanding systemic health and social inequities" that increase the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.
The health departments of Utah and Minnesota have published similar guidelines.
Hispanic or Latino people die of COVID-19 at a rate of 2.1x compared to white people, and Black or African American people die at a rate of 1.9x, according to data from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"If you're white, you don't get the vaccine, or if you're white, you don't get therapeutics. It's unbelievable to think this. And nobody wants this, Black people don't want it, white people don't want it, nobody wants it," Trump said at his rally in Arizona.
It's unclear what the former president meant by his claims that white people don't get the vaccine.
Bloomberg reports that in nearly half of US states, Black and Hispanic vaccination rates lag White ones by 10 percentage points or more.
In the clip of Trump's speech, aired by the right-wing Right Side Broadcasting Network, several Black people can be seen in the crowd behind him wearing "Blacks for Trump" t-shirts and cheering.
At Trump rallies, people wearing 'Blacks for Trump' t-shirts are often positioned prominently behind him.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/3GzZm5u
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