COVID and Racial Triage

This article examines two vignettes during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA to consider how well-intentioned actors seeking racial justice sometimes implicitly biologized race, while conservative opponents invoked race's social construction to block remedial measures-even as courts largely rejected ill-conceived claims about distinctive Black biological vulnerability to the virus. It explores the implications of confusing race as a risk factor versus a risk marker in two legal contexts: state guidelines prioritizing monoclonal antibody treatment for non-white patients, and compassionate-release petitions for Black detainees citing racialized weathering. The article contends that clarity distinguishing racism-as-risk-factor from race-as-risk-marker is essential to sound, non-essentializing health policy and legal advocacy.