MSNBC opinion columnist Eric Garcia argued the Biden administration’s approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic is reminiscent of eugenics.
By emphasizing vaccination and masking over everything else, President Joe Biden and his team are leaving the disabled and immunocompromised behind, Garcia wrote. He specifically criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent decision to shorten quarantine times, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s commitment to keep schools open.
The hyper-focus on vaccination makes catching COVID-19 a moral failure, Garcia writes, but people with disabilities or health conditions can still get very sick or die from the virus even if vaccinated and boosted. Making it immoral to get sick from COVID-19, and therefore immoral to be unhealthy, is akin to eugenics in his eyes.
“Mentioning eugenics is sure to rankle some readers because it evokes the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But eugenics, which is rooted in the idea that the human gene pool can and should be improved, is often evoked during pandemics,” Garcia writes. “During the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which has often been compared to our novel coronavirus pandemic, poor people, immigrants and racial minorities were disproportionately infected, and eugenicists argued that they fell ill more often because they were genetically inferior.”
The White House and society as a whole’s response to Covid, keeping business open and schools open at all costs have disabled people thinking one word: Eugenics https://t.co/NQzciNejMb
— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) January 5, 2022
“When people with disabilities hear politicians say it is ‘time to live with Covid,’ as newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said, it makes them wonder if they are included in either the “we” or the “live” and whether nondisabled people want to live with us.” (RELATED: Study: More Than Half Of Omicron Hospitalizations Weren’t Actually For COVID-19)
The Biden administration has come under attack from many on the left for the CDC’s decision, which cut the isolation time in half from ten days to 5 for individuals infected with COVID-19, and does not require a negative test to return to normal activities. Critics of the president claim the move was made to appease business interests after the CEO of Delta Airlines penned a letter to the CDC requesting such a change in guidance shortly before it happened.
Now, a push to close schools is coming from the left as well. Several major teacher’s unions, including in Chicago, have tried or succeeded in having schools close or go remote to start 2022, as the Biden administration continues to signal a desire to keep students in classrooms.