This post was inspired by my last post about the virus in New York City.

I saw this Tweet from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The COVID data continues to expose the truth we‘ve long been warning about: inequality is America’s pre-existing condition.

And it is lethal. https://t.co/p6MCzEYysr

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2020

Then I saw this headline from the New York Post:

NYC park-goers threaten to spit, cough on cops enforcing social distancing

Several officers told The Post on Tuesday that some park-goers are so angry over being called out about social distancing amid the coronavirus that they threaten to spit or cough on them if they try to enforce the safety rules.

“They will say, ‘Screw you, I hope you get coronavirus,’’ a Parks Enforcement Patrol officer said. “People do not want to listen.”

Another officer said, “You have situations where we are educating people about social distancing, and they are threatening to cough on you as a means to break the law and get away with it.

“There’s even people out there that are threatening to spit on you.”

The officers said the biggest problems occur at parks such as Washington Square in Greenwich Village in Manhattan and Astoria in Queens.

Queens, that’s one of the areas hardest hit, and Astoria Park is next to Jackson Heights, which is one of the worst-hit zip codes.

So when people are told by the police to maintain social distancing in one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in New York City, they threaten to cough on the cops and go back to doing whatever they were doing in a non-social distancing way.

Is being a stupid asshole also an effect of poverty or is poverty the effect of being a stupid asshole that publically disrespects authority and common sense?

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez also Tweeted this:

COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities.

Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions.

Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 3, 2020

It’s interesting that I’ve seen this story covered in a few places.

From CNN: Black America must wake up to this viral threat

The Americans who were initially diagnosed with the virus were mostly white. At the beginning of the epidemic, the media understandably focused on affluent white people who had traveled overseas, especially to Asia. The impact of this news coverage had African Americans joking among ourselves that perhaps we were somehow immune to the virus. As crazy as it sounds, a rumor took off that this was a disease that kills only white people.

From OkayPlayer: Are Black People Immune To Coronavirus: How A Joke Turned Into A Believable Myth

A lot is already known about the virus courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): what it is, how it spreads, its symptoms, and ways to prevent it. Although there is valid information being shared about the virus through the media, there are also rumors surrounding it too, specifically the idea that Black people are immune to it.

Here’s what to know about the Coronavirus via the CDC, as well as break down how the notion of Black people being immune to the virus transformed from a joke to a believable myth.

Initially, this idea started off as a joke, likely through a report that came on March 1 about the low Coronavirus rate in Africa. Although cases have been reported in 11 countries since that initial report — it appears Egypt has been hit the worst by the virus with 59 cases — Africa’s rate still remains low. Searching “Coronavirus Black People” on Twitter will show how the jokes have persisted throughout the month, with the tweets mocking our over-reliance on ginger ale to combat illness, highlighting how Black people have given the virus more cool and less abrasive-sounding nicknames (“The Rona,” “The Roni”), and acknowledging that no one Black had tested positive for the virus yet.

Then came another misleading report from The Zambian Observer, who published the story “Chinese Doctor Says African Skin Resists Coronavirus” on February 16.

Still, the idea that Black people are resistant to the virus managed to circulate throughout social media, appearing on personal Facebook profile pages (one post, which has since been deleted, had been shared over 2,000 times since first being published on February 11) and Facebook groups, as well as Twitter and Instagram.

Going through social media, this rumor took off as a form of black-supremacism.

As I’ve said before, racial supremacism is emotional compensation for losers.  The biggest white-supremacists are white trash who glom onto racial superiority to make up for the fact that they are ignorant, impoverished garbage.

In this case, it seems that the rumor about black immunity and white susceptibility to Coronavirus came from the same underlying mentality.

As a result, a rumor spread through the poor black community that caused them to engage in less social distancing and more risky behavior that exacerbated other factors that made the virus spread in the poor black community even worse.

So much so that the Surgeon General had to address it himself.

This is the dumbest question I've ever heard.@Yamiche says people are "offended" by the Surgeon General saying "big momma" and "pop pop" and asks him to address those he's "offended." pic.twitter.com/yLePXzw0zd

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) April 10, 2020

I’m won’t deny that life is harder if you are poor.  Especially being poor in a high cost of living city like New York City.

But having a broken moral compass leading a person to believe in racist rumors and engaging in self-destructive behavior that makes it much more likely that they will catch the virus, spread the virus, and die of the virus can’t be blamed on outside forces.

Being a piece of shit also seems to be a pre-existing condition.