Earlier this month Washington Post Reporter Robert Samuels tweeted about an everyday tragedy that didn’t make it into his newspaper last spring…
The more I hear about President Trump’s covid treatment, the more I think about the late James Freeman, an 80-year-old black man who lived outside Detroit. He left Mississippi for Detroit and built a middle-class life for his family as a company man at Chrysler.
When James Freeman got sick this spring, there was so much confusion about what to do. This energetic man felt unusually tired and chest pain. His kids suspected covid, but they did not take him to the nearest hospital b/c it had a bad reputation for treating black patients.
So they took him to a drive-through test site at a hospital farther away with a better reputation. The outcome wasn’t much better. He was denied a covid test 2x because he had no fever (even though he was elderly, lethargic and with chest pain). That’s how limited tests were.
His blood pressure was alarming, so doctors agreed to give him an X-ray. Only then did they note covid had set into his lungs. The hospital was low on beds, so Freeman had to sleep over night in a wheelchair, then a cot. And finally, a hospital bed, where he died alone.
When his daughter, Robin Freeman-Brooks, told me the story, she and her family were still debating which ten people would be able to go to his funeral. “How are we supposed to decide this?” she asked. “Draw straws? Calculate who loved him the most?”
As the covid story now coalesces around the president, I think it’s important to remember how catastrophic this virus has been for American families. When Freeman-Brooks told me this story in May, there were so many stories like this that we didn’t publish it. It was that common.
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The morning after his tweets, Samuels spoke with Robin Freeman-Brooks who had these words to say about the president…
“The care that he receives compared to the care others receive is much different and for him to be flaunting it shows a lack of empathy and decorum.” She continues: “More than 210,000 Americans have died from this deadly virus, some because they couldn’t get any type of treatment. And here he is, after receiving the world’s best treatment, holding a parade for himself.”