Articles like this one dramatize the distinctions among causes, symptoms, and cures. Often, causes dictate cures. But not always.

We are living through a pandemic in which the highest priority research project is to find vaccines and therapies, not some magic bullet that can be sprayed in the air to kill every last corona virus on the planet. The virus is CAUSING the illness, but we are not trying to eradicate it directly. We are trying to make it die off for lack of hosts by strengthening the hosts.

The search for vaccines and therapies compete in a sense for resources, but both are necessary and both are ongoing. Those who are engaged in one need not disparage the other, and both operate with a necessary understanding of the nature of the pathogen. These inquiries are synergistic, not opposed.

We all know by now that COVID-19 is statistically a selective killer. Fragility and co-morbidity effect outcomes. So, again, to the extent that a co-morbidity is fixable (careless obesity, say), there is nothing anti-vaccine or anti-therapy about advising those who can and could benefit from losing weight to do so.

The metaphoric leap from anti-Black racism to the dynamics of a pandemic is not really that far. My disagreement with Mr. Coates lies in some of his characterizations of Cosby's position as "judging" poor Blacks. I do not believe that his focus is their character so much as their fecklessness. Indeed, if he conflates the two, because it's not really clear where one begins and the other ends, the character critique cannot be resisted at the price of denying the fecklessness.

Things change. In some places and times, failure to thrive can be attributed to failure to strive. Here and now may be such a place and time. If the fastest and most durable cure for Black dysfunction looks like what Cosby said it looks like, then at least some persuasive resources need to be directed there, and dismissing such thoughts because they do not make White people sufficiently uncomfortable isn't going to make things better for Black people.

OTOH, the case can be made that the oppression remains insuperable. That may be true, too. But that seems to me a question on which reasonable people may disagree without ascribing bad intentions.