Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in the race for the U.S. Presidency in 2024 as a Democrat. But at a recent dinner in the posh Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, Kennedy tried to inject a different type of race into a conversation about Covid-19. He claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” However, if you are racing to find actual scientific evidence to support what Kennedy had claimed, good luck. That’s because, surprise, surprise, Kennedy didn’t really provide much concrete support for what he said if any.
Hmm, a politician trying to make the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) about race without providing adequate scientific evidence? Gee, when has that ever happened before? A New York Post article by Jon Levine seemed to be the first outlet to break this RFK Jr. story, describing the event as a “raucous booze and fart-filled dinner at Tony’s Di Napoli on East 63d Street.” Now, a New York Post video from the event didn’t really show the farting—at least not audible farting. But it did show some other types of hot air. You can see the video in the following MeidasTouch tweet:
Yep, that’s RFK Jr. talking about Covid-19 and race, assuming that the man in the video was indeed him and not some android double or some other conspiracy theory. And this discussion about race actually include some diversity? It’s not clear since you can see only three other people in the camera frame.
Nonetheless, Kennedy raced into the conversation by first asserting that he knows a lot about bioweapons. Why? Has he worked in a laboratory? Has he actually done science? No, he said that he has been “doing a book on it for the past two and a half years.” Of course, doing a book on something by no means guarantees that you are an expert on that thing.
He then claimed that both the U.S. and China have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into developing “ethnically targeted microbes.” it’s unclear what evidence he had that this has been happening. And in the video, he did not explain scientifically how exactly microbes would even be able to do this. After all, unlike humans, microbes in general don’t typically discriminate by superficial appearance. You won’t hear microbes saying something like, “I prefer to be among blonde people” or something like that. Sure, a respiratory pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 may skip you if you don’t have a nose, a mouth and a respiratory system—but you’ve probably got bigger issues to worry about if that’s the case.
Next, Kennedy proceeded to say, “Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” There is an argument? Did he find the argument on the sidewalk? Which reputable scientist has argued that Covid-19 is ethnically targeted?
Kennedy went on to say, “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.” He did not cite or produce any of these papers, though.
Sure, studies have shown that some races have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19. If you do look more closely at these studies, though, you’ll find lots of stuff and explanations that Kennedy did not mention. For example, a January 2022 publication in the Lancet Public Health emphasized how various socioeconomic and environmental factors such as income, employment, and access to essential healthcare services have left some communities more vulnerable to Covid-19. This was based on a review of the available scientific literature. For example, in the U.S., many people of color may not have had jobs that allowed them to work remotely or regularly get tested for Covid-19. They may not have had the same access to quality healthcare and faced discrimination by the healthcare system, which in turn could have affected their likelihood of getting Covid-19 and suffering more severe Covid-19 outcomes. Moreover, low-resource neighborhoods—which disproportionately have people of color—may have higher population density and not maintain proper indoor air filtration, two factors that can facilitate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2.
Not surprisingly, RFK Jr.’s comments received pushback. The New York Post article quoted a statement from the Anti-Defamation League as saying: “The claim that Covid-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years.” The New York Post article didn’t mention, though, that most of the available scientific evidence to date has suggested a natural origin to the SARS-CoV-2—meaning that the virus likely jumped from another animal to humans—rather than a lab or human one.
On July 15, RFK Jr. did tweet-back at the New York Post article the following:
As you can see, this tweet reasserted his some of his claims and provided a BMC Medicine publication that he claimed supports what he said. But if you look more closely at the study described by publication, it really does not serve “as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons,” as Kennedy insisted in his tweet. Dan Freedman, DO, an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Texas Dell Medical School, pointed out on Twitter what this study really showed:
Freedman emphasized that, “The study looked at human genomes for polymorphisms in the ACE2 receptor that the SARS-CoV2 virus uses to enter cells. They found small changes that can be associated with ethnic differences.” He added that the study did not show that these differences affects Covid-19 severity in any way. In the same thread, Freedman went on to point out that many Jews and Chinese suffered and died from Covid-19 during the pandemic:
Yeah, none of this really says that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese are immune to Covid-19 and that SARS-CoV-2 can be used as an ethnically targeted bioweapon. And even if it somehow did, one study wouldn’t be enough to really prove anything. When you make strong statements as RFK Jr. did, you’d better have multiple studies to confirm what you are claiming.
This wasn’t the first time that RFK Jr. has brought race into discussions about Covid-19. Back in January 2022, Kennedy compared Covid-19 vaccine requirements to what happened during the Holocaust, claiming, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” as reported by Marlene Lenthang for NBC News. Kennedy did subsequently apologize for those comments.
One of the most tragic aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the repeated attempts by politicians and other personalities to somehow racialize the virus. This has included calling the SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and the “kung-flu.” This despite the fact that Asian Americans have asked politicians not to do so since it might further incite the anti-Asian hate that has occurred throughout the pandemic, as I have covered previously for Forbes. There is not real evidence that the virus has been directed by one set of races to attack another set of races. Viruses tend to infect just whomever they can find. Their sole interest is survival and helping furthering their kind. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case with humans.
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