If things cannot be discussed openly, opportunities or solutions can be missed. There is a vicious subculture determined to misunderstand people and assign some label to them to stop them being heard....people are being sacked or forced to apologise for nothing. If society doesn't start getting some balls or ovaries we are doomed to live our lives according to the precise requirements of a quite frankly deranged subset.
First of all, this is a well-researched post that I believe is in no way racist, dealing as it does with facts which are pretty much incontestable. Genetics may play a part in the increased susceptibility of BAME communities but the evidence points to other causes. India the country, for example, despite having the second largest population in the world, and the second highest number of Covid-19 cases, has a far lower death rate than the USA, indeed far lower than the UK. Nigeria, the most populous African country with over 200 million people has has less than 2,000 deaths. I will try and catch the programme mentioned by Laces, but if the causes of the predisposition of BAME groups to dying of the virus are based on lifestyle rather than genetics, then there surely needs to be educational measures put in place to address this.
And these things need discussing (and not avoided) because everything we learn about Covid helps us to move forward. Pussy-footing around things because we wish to avoid being called out for it is not helpful. If some people are more prone or less prone to getting seriously ill from Covid is an important issue. The stats will be complicated because there are other issues...how you live, eat, work etc....so it may be some time before we get a clear picture. The three most important things in the battle against Covid and the other diseases that follow are information, information and information.
It is really just like saying that Prince Harry is more likely to get sunburn than Meghan Markle. Or Peter Crouch is more likely to bang his head on a branch than me (Ok silly analogy). It is not about saying genetics are faulty, but just different. There are also social aspects and cultural aspects to the COVID issue too as Fran says and we need to ask the questions.
Whoo-hoo! Have had my jab! I can now go out without a mask, hug whoever I want and book my holiday to Malaga! Cool!!
I know the blue ink, but hopefully these things very soon can happen. I am desperate to go play some golf but Southampton City Council has taken back control of Southampton City Golf and I have no idea how to book a round for when the restrictions start to lift. First world problems!
I agree, mate! I’m desperate to go back to the frustration of watching golf balls disappear into thick undergrowth or lakes and getting seriously annoyed with myself. I play up at South Winchester and they’re supposedly taking bookings from next week for March 29 onwards. I need to get out and walk off some of this lard I’ve developed since before Xmas!!!
I need to move on to a half decent course. Only been playing the last year. Is South Winchester reasonable?
Yes - the best thing with it is that, being on chalk, it drains really well and is rarely closed due to weather when other courses around here are. Happy to show you around sometime when they open - perhaps we could get a Not606 4-ball with us two, plus Fats and Vin?
And ban an episode of Fawlty Towers because of “racist references” when, in fact, they’re making fun of the racist characters ....
I heard , wchich one was that ? Also . Blazing Saddles , if you actually watch the film the Sherriff ( Black American ) is taking the pi$$ out of ALL the white Americans !
I have no issues with warning people that content could be offensive. That always makes me want to watch! However, the Disney Channel have added warnings to the Muppet show that say the racial depictions are and 'always were' offensive. I would be pretty pissed if I was part of the Jim Henson estate because that is flat out calling him a racist in retrospect.
The other possibility is that you're missing the cause and effect here. The largest correlation with obesity/unhealthiness in general isn't ethnicity, it's poverty. And racism contributes heavily to the differential outcomes between ethnic groups.
And I grew up poor and in a council house. There is still a huge amount of personal responsibility involved in our personal wellbeing.
And you are not the exception. However it does seem to me that over my lifetime, the last 70 years, it has become harder to lift yourself out the sh*t if you are brought up in it.. There are fewer second chances, education at a higher level has become a commodity rather than a service. Without qualifications you are likely to be in insecure employment. Many post war council estates seem to have degenerated from close communities into places of social alienation. The nature/nuture equation has skewed as parenting skills are not valued until things go wrong. All generalisations of course, but not without grains of truth. In short, if you are dealt a bad hand it is harder now than at any point in my lifetime to make good.
I grew up poor, too, and my weight has generally wavered between normal to downright waifish. But it helped that both of my parents worked from home, and consequently we ate home-cooked meals consistently. For a lot of poor families, that isn't really an option; poorer people are less likely to work standard 9-5s, and consequently it's harder for them to cook from scratch. And because these habits are generally ingrained in children, that means that a lot of people grow up eating a lot of prepackaged food out of simple necessity. I didn't, so I am fortunate that I never developed much of a taste for a lot of it, but fortunate is the key word there.