U.S. mishandling of COVID echoes the 20th century eugenics movement

by Knute Berger in Crosscut

Ed note: In addition to this captivating article, there seem to be a number of undercurrents allowing the pandemic to spread, a major one being the tension between saving older people vs. keeping businesses operating. In a nefarious calculation, allowing 280,000 people to die (258,000 of them over age 65 receiving an average of $1500/month social security) is “saving” the government $4.5 billion/year in Social Security payments alone–saying nothing about the cost savings in Medicare and Medicaid for these deceased seniors. So ageism and the cost-benefit of devaluing senior lives may be more than a conspiracy theory with the “mask deniers” who appear to be accepting senior lives lost as a cost of doing business.

A false belief in the genetic superiority of virus survivors may help explain the Trump administration’s mismanagement of coronavirus.

Spectators watch a “Fitter Families Contest” at the 1920 Kansas Free Fair. American Eugenics is rooted in these Kansas contests and exhibitions, which tried to evaluate family gene pools and attempted to link heredity traits with what constituted a desirable type of family. (American Philosophical Society/Truman State University)

ver the past nine months, I have written about some of the parallels between the 1918-20 influenza pandemic and today’s coronavirus outbreak: opposition to masks, premature elimination of social distancing, increased skepticism about public health, school closures and presidents who made the epidemic a low priority but also caught, and survived, the bug itself.

In the latter case, President Woodrow Wilson, who fell ill in 1919 during treaty talks, was distracted by fighting the first all-out world war. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, became sick after ignoring the advice of his health officials while campaigning for reelection. Trump has long boasted about his health and his smarts. He was hospitalized, given advanced treatments for COVID-19 and, when released, adopted a strongman posture. He and many of his followers believe in their own supremacy — their ability to survive as the fittest of Americans by virtue of their beliefs and their race. White supremacy is, after all, a genetic argument.

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