We should all be unflinchingly clear about what happens disproportionately to non-white bodies in general and specifically to Black bodies because it is part of our national tradition. When the law moves in the direction of progression towards what many have termed towards a more perfect Union, the forces of regression (forces that history has proven exist on all sides of this social experiment) and retrenchment to traditional ways deploy their plans—plans that range from incrementalism, the least effective paths to harm reduction, pseudo science, to outright sabotage. Whether or not we all acknowledge our known world, there are decisions that must be made that implicate our mutual survival in a time of parallel pandemics. The impact of the parallel pandemics means not only Black deaths but also maladies of commerce and capital, and that is one of the major reasons why people who once said there were no problems in America that hard work and bootstrapping could not fix, are now saying that America must at least do some things differently. America cannot Tuskegee-experiment its way out of the pandemic; although we have no proof, given its history, patterns, and practices, that if it could, it would not do so. Our nation beckons, with Fauci hat in hand to the most vulnerable who have always been the most vulnerable by design, to save it from itself, seemingly begging that community to be vaccinated without the proper plans and governance in place. Sensing the communal side eye, campaigns and press conferences continue to be deployed through images of Black doctors and patients developing, administering, and taking the vaccines on screens around the world to reassure that past is not present. And yet, the skepticism and distrust remains. “Why? What does it mean,” asked no Black person ever in 2020, and now 2021. It means that for all of the images and well meaning gestures, rational distrust in what is seen and heard matters, and that not enough has been done to address the very real and abiding fact in the present, which, again, is a symptom of our shared history and present belief system. America cannot fix its mouth to tell Black people to just “get over” this one, and it knows it.