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Sheila Jackson Lee cites study claiming reparations could have cut Covid infection rates

November 18, 2022 | | Print Article

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) railed on the House floor on Thursday that “reparations are curative, they’re not punishment,” as she cited a peer-reviewed study from Harvard medical school that claims reparations could have cut COVID transmission among blacks.

(Video Credit: Forbes Breaking News)

“There is no doubt that we have been impacted, the… the DNA in the trans, the trajectory of slavery til today. For example the COVID, black African Americans got COVID at nearly a rate of one and a half times higher than that of white people, or hospitalized at a rate nearly four times higher, three times likely to die. COVID hit us very desperately,” Jackson Lee contended.

“Interestingly, a recent peer-reviewed study from Harvard medical school suggests that reparations for African Americans could have cut COVID-19 transmission and infection rates both among blacks and the population at large,” she went on to claim.

“Reparations are curative. They’re not punishment. The analysis continued to look at data throughout the nation. And so as we move in this lame-duck session, it is important that we come together for reconciliation to restoration and provide the commission to study slavery and to develop reparation proposals. I thank my colleagues for their support and I believe together we make America strong, America free, America just, and America equal,” she concluded.

Jackson Lee did not give the exact reference for her claim but the study does actually exist, unfortunately. But that doesn’t make it factual or correct.

“To estimate the impact of structural inequities between Black and white individuals, the researchers set out to capture the effect of reparation payments on the Black-white wealth gap in the state of Louisiana,” the study put forth in 2021. “Their analysis, published online on Feb. 9 in Social Science & Medicine, suggests that if reparations had been made before the COVID-19 pandemic, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the state’s overall population could have been reduced by anywhere from 31 percent to 68 percent.”

“The work was done in collaboration with the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice,” it continued.

“While there are compelling moral and historical arguments for racial-injustice interventions such as reparations, our study demonstrates that repairing the damage caused by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow racism would have enormous benefits to the entire population of the United States,” stated senior author Eugene Richardson, assistant professor of global health and social medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.

The claim by Jackson Lee is no less laughable than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claiming in April 2020 that COVID deaths were disproportionately spiking in black and brown communities because of environmental racism and the wealth gap, calling them “underlying health conditions.”

Her conclusion was that “Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations.”

Jackson Lee has raged about reparations and slavery for years and keeps beating that dead horse in Congress. The congresswoman will spew any rhetoric to guilt America into giving money to those who have never known slavery in the name of Black Lives Matter.

The Texas representative just won re-election to the US House Representative for District 18 in Houston, Texas. She has been in her position there since 1995 and has been advocating for reparations the entire time.

Before going to DC, she served as a municipal judge in Houston from 1987 to 1990 before sitting as a city council member in Houston from 1990 to 1994.

Social media had a field day with Jackson Lee’s leftist and racist conclusion concerning COVID and reparations:

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