While perusing the news, as I often find myself doing, I noticed the following two articles. The first is from NPR . It is about the Covid virus infection rate on the Navajo Nation. It is higher by percent than anywhere else in the country. The other article is from Vox . It details the hospitalization rate for black Americans (30%) as opposed to their population rate of 13%.
The Vox article points out that black people on average don’t have access to the level of health care white Americans do and have a higher incidence of pre-existing conditions. Basically more poverty in the black community have contributed to the higher hospitalization rate.
The Navajo Nation has different health organizations depending on what part of the reservation one lives. They are all good organizations. The Navajo Nation has a very low population per area (persons per square mile), one would think this would help slow the spread of the disease locally. Not all of the regions have access to modern amenities like running water, but would that affect the infection rate? The article says the same thing about the infection rate of black Americans, poverty has lead to a higher infection rate.
Being blessed (or cursed) with a mind like mine, the next question is; could a virus be engineered to be race specific? Or a sort of WMD for certain gene pools? The wiki entitled Ethnic Bioweapons has no answer but does have some interesting information on our world leaders and their considerations of such an endeavor. Turns out
The wiki states that “In 1997, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen referred to the concept of an ethnic bioweapon as a possible risk. In 1998 some biological weapon experts considered such a “genetic weapon” plausible, and believed the former Soviet Union had undertaken some research on the influence of various substances on human genes”
And further “In its 2000 policy paper Rebuilding America’s Defenses, think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) described ethnic bioweapons as a ‘politically useful tool’ that US adversaries could have incentive to develop and utilize.”
It continues “In May 2007, a Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the Russian government banned all exports of human biosamples. The report claims that the reason for the ban was a secret FSB report about on-going development of ‘genetic bioweapons’ targeting Russian population by Western institutions.”
Quite obviously the leaders have at least considered research into projects like this, and some believe other leaders may have been making the attempt.
I looked up the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and found it was a Neo Con think tank that operated between 1997 and 2006.