May is Lupus Awareness Month, so in its honor,I’m sharing an essay about how recent events are impacting lupus patients.The optics haven’t been great when it comes to COVID-19, the United States government, and race. Trump has referred to it as the “Chinese virus”, and the barrage of anti-Chinese rhetoric in general is spurring outrage among many of my international students. Passengers from the coronavirus-afflicted Grand Princess were directed to disembark in Oakland, one of America’s most diverse cities, rather than San Francisco, its wealthier and whiter neighbor. Now, thanks to Donald Trump’s penchant for magical thinking, Silicon Valley billionaires, and metastasizing misinformation, a new population of people of color is imperiled.

Since mid-March, and after nudges from red-pilled Elon Musk and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, Trump has been hawking the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (sold under the brand name Plaquenil) as a coronavirus miracle cure despite little concrete evidence to support his claims. He is right about one thing, though. For many people with systemic lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, hydroxychloroquine is truly miraculous.

It has been for me. I’m one of those “with architecture primed for ruin,” in the words of poet Fady Joudah. Three and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with systemic lupus while teaching literature and creative writing in Kofu, Japan. The immune system of a person with lupus turns against her, attacking internal organs, joints, and/or skin; the disease is named after a rash common among its victims, said to resemble a wolf’s face.

Continue reading →