African Americans Have Contracted and Died of Coronavirus at an Alarming Rate

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
CORONAVIRUS

Early Data Shows African Americans Have Contracted and Died of Coronavirus at an Alarming Rate

No, the coronavirus is not an “equalizer.”
Black people are being infected and dying at higher rates.
Here’s what Milwaukee is doing about it — and why governments need to start releasing data on the race of COVID-19 patients.



20200403-milwaukee-covid-3x2.jpg

Fred Royal, the Milwaukee head of the NAACP, walks empty
streets near his home in a largely black neighborhood hit
hard by the coronavirus. He knows three people who have
died. (Darren Hauck for ProPublica)

ProPublica
by Akilah Johnson
and Talia Buford
April 3, 2020


The coronavirus entered Milwaukee from a white, affluent suburb. Then it took root in the city’s black community and erupted.

As public health officials watched cases rise in March, too many in the community shrugged off warnings. Rumors and conspiracy theories proliferated on social media, pushing the bogus idea that black people are somehow immune to the disease. And much of the initial focus was on international travel, so those who knew no one returning from Asia or Europe were quick to dismiss the risk.

Then, when the shelter-in-place order came, there was a natural pushback among those who recalled other painful government restrictions — including segregation and mass incarceration — on where black people could walk and gather.

“We’re like, ‘We have to wake people up,’” said Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik.

As the disease spread at a higher rate in the black community, it made an even deeper cut. Environmental, economic and political factors have compounded for generations, putting black people at higher risk of chronic conditions that leave lungs weak and immune systems vulnerable: asthma, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. In Milwaukee, simply being black means your life expectancy is 14 years shorter, on average, than someone white.

As of Friday morning, African Americans made up almost half of Milwaukee County’s 945 cases and 81% of its 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26% black. Milwaukee is one of the few places in the United States that is tracking the racial breakdown of people who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, offering a glimpse at the disproportionate destruction it is inflicting on black communities nationwide.

In Michigan, where the state’s population is 14% black, African Americans made up 35% of cases and 40% of deaths as of Friday morning. Detroit, where a majority of residents are black, has emerged as a hot spot with a high death toll. As has New Orleans. Louisiana has not published case breakdowns by race, but 40% of the state’s deaths have happened in Orleans Parish, where the majority of residents are black.

Illinois and North Carolina are two of the few areas publishing statistics on COVID-19 cases by race, and their data shows a disproportionate number of African Americans were infected.



“It will be unimaginable pretty soon,” said Dr. Celia J. Maxwell, an infectious disease physician and associate dean at Howard University College of Medicine, a school and hospital in Washington dedicated to the education and care of the black community. “And anything that comes around is going to be worse in our patients. Period. Many of our patients have so many problems, but this is kind of like the nail in the coffin.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks virulent outbreaks and typically releases detailed data that includes information about the age, race and location of the people affected. For the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC has released location and age data, but it has been silent on race. The CDC did not respond to ProPublica’s request for race data related to the coronavirus or answer questions about whether they were collecting it at all.

Experts say that the nation’s unwillingness to publicly track the virus by race could obscure a crucial underlying reality: It’s quite likely that a disproportionate number of those who die of coronavirus will be black.

The reasons for this are the same reasons that African Americans have disproportionately high rates of maternal death, low levels of access to medical care and higher rates of asthma, said Dr. Camara Jones, a family physician, epidemiologist and visiting fellow at Harvard University.

“COVID is just unmasking the deep disinvestment in our communities, the historical injustices and the impact of residential segregation,” said Jones, who spent 13 years at the CDC, focused on identifying, measuring and addressing racial bias within the medical system. “This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The overrepresentation of people of color in poverty and white people in wealth is not just a happenstance. … It’s because we’re not valued.”

Five congressional Democrats wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whose department encompasses the CDC, last week demanding the federal government collect and release the breakdown of coronavirus cases by race and ethnicity.

Without demographic data, the members of Congress wrote, health officials and lawmakers won’t be able to address inequities in health outcomes and testing that may emerge: “We urge you not to delay collecting this vital information, and to take any additional necessary steps to ensure that all Americans have the access they need to COVID-19 testing and treatment.”


20200403-stay-home-milwaukee.jpg

The city’s health officials have tried to take a purposeful
approach to communicate information. (Darren Hauck for ProPublica)


Milwaukee, one of the few places already tracking coronavirus cases and deaths by race, provides an early indication of what would surface nationally if the federal government actually did this, or locally if other cities and states took its lead.

Milwaukee, both the city and county, passed resolutions last summer that were seen as important steps in addressing decades of race-based inequality.

“We declared racism as a public health issue,” said Kowalik, the city’s health commissioner. “It frames not only how we do our work but how transparent we are about how things are going. It impacts how we manage an outbreak.”

Milwaukee is trying to be purposeful in how it communicates information about the best way to slow the pandemic. It is addressing economic and logistical roadblocks that stand in the way of safety. And it’s being transparent about who is infected, who is dying and how the virus spread in the first place.

Kowalik described watching the virus spread into the city, without enough information, because of limited testing, to be able to take early action to contain it.

At the beginning of March, Wisconsin had one case. State public health officials still considered the risk from the coronavirus “low.” Testing criteria was extremely strict, as it was in many places across the country: You had to have symptoms and have traveled to China, Iran, South Korea or Italy within 14 days or have had contact with someone who had a confirmed case of COVID-19.

So, she said, she waited, wondering: “When are we going to be able to test for this to see if it is in our community?”

About two weeks later, Milwaukee had its first case.

The city’s patient zero had been in contact with a person from a neighboring, predominately white and affluent suburb who had tested positive. Given how much commuting occurs in and out of Milwaukee, with some making a 180-mile round trip to Chicago, Kowalik said she knew it would only be a matter of time before the virus spread into the city.

A day later came the city’s second case, someone who contracted the virus while in Atlanta. Kowalik said she started questioning the rigidness of the testing guidelines. Why didn’t they include domestic travel?

By the fourth case, she said, “we determined community spread. … It happened so quickly.”

Within the span of a week, Milwaukee went from having one case to nearly 40. Most of the sick people were middle-aged, African American men. By week two, the city had over 350 cases. And now, there are more than 945 cases countywide, with the bulk in the city of Milwaukee, where the population is 39% black. People of all ages have contracted the virus and about half are African American.

The county’s online dashboard of coronavirus cases keeps up-to-date information on the racial breakdown of those who have tested positive. As of Thursday morning, 19 people had died of illness related to COVID-19 in Milwaukee County. All but four were black, according to the county medical examiner’s office. Records show that at least 11 of the deceased had diabetes, eight had hypertension and 15 had a mixture of chronic health conditions that included heart and lung disease.

Because of discrimination and generational income inequality, black households in the county earned only 50% as much as white ones in 2018, according to census statistics. Black people are far less likely to own homes than white people in Milwaukee and far more likely to rent, putting black renters at the mercy of landlords who can kick them out if they can’t pay during an economic crisis, at the same time as people are being told to stay home. And when it comes to health insurance, black people are more likely to be uninsured than their white counterparts.

African Americans have gravitated to jobs in sectors viewed as reliable paths to the middle class — health care, transportation, government, food supply — which are now deemed “essential,” rendering them unable to stay home. In places like New York City, the virus’ epicenter, black people are among the only ones still riding the subway.

“And let’s be clear, this is not because people want to live in those conditions,” said Gordon Francis Goodwin, who works for Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a national racial equity organization that worked with Milwaukee on its health and equity framework. “This is a matter of taking a look at how our history kept people from actually being fully included.”

Fred Royal, head of the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP, knows three people who have died from the virus, including 69-year-old Lenard Wells, a former Milwaukee police lieutenant and a mentor to others in the black community. Royal’s 38-year-old cousin died from the virus last week in Atlanta. His body was returned home Tuesday.

Royal is hearing that people aren’t necessarily being hospitalized but are being sent home instead and “told to self-medicate.”

“What is alarming about that,” he said, “is that a number of those individuals were sent home with symptoms and died before the confirmation of their test came back.”



20200403-fred-royal-walk.jpg

Royal has spent the past days coordinating with front-line
community groups trying to make sure residents have what
they need in order to stay inside. (Darren Hauck for ProPublica)


Health Commissioner Kowalik said that there have been delays of up to two weeks in getting results back from some private labs, but nearly all of those who died have done so at hospitals or while in hospice. Still, Kowalik said she understood why some members in the black community distrusted the care they might receive in a hospital.

In January, a 25-year-old day care teacher named Tashonna Ward died after staff at Froedtert Hospital failed to check her vital signs. Federal officials examined 20 patient records and found seven patients, including Ward, didn’t receive proper care. The report didn’t reveal the race of those whose records it examined at the hospital, which predominantly serves black patients. Froedtert Hospital declined to speak to issues raised in the report, according to a February article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and it had not submitted any corrective actions to federal officials.

“What black folks are accustomed to in Milwaukee and anywhere in the country, really, is pain not being acknowledged and constant inequities that happen in health care delivery,” Kowalik said.

The health commissioner herself, a black woman who grew up in Milwaukee, said she’s all too familiar with the city’s enduring struggles with segregation and racism. Her mother is black and her father Polish, and she remembers the stories they shared about trying to buy a house as a young interracial couple in Sherman Park, a neighborhood once off-limits to blacks.

“My father couldn’t get a mortgage for the house. He had to go to the bank without my mom,” Kowalik said.

It is the same neighborhood where fury and frustration sparked protests that, at times, roiled into riots in 2016 when a Milwaukee police officer fatally shot Sylville Smith, a 23-year-old black man.

And it is the same neighborhood that has a concentration of poor health outcomes when you overlay a heat map of conditions, be it lead poisoning, infant mortality — and now, she said, COVID-19.


Knowing which communities are most impacted allows public health officials to tailor their messaging to overcome the distrust of black residents.

“We’ve been told so much misinformation over the years about the condition of our community,” Royal, of the NAACP, said. “I believe a lot of people don’t trust what the government says.”

Kowalik has met — virtually — with trusted and influential community leaders to discuss outreach efforts to ensure everyone is on the same page about the importance of staying home and keeping 6 feet away from others if they must go out.

Police and inspectors are responding to complaints received about “noncompliant” businesses forcing staff to come to work or not practicing social distancing in the workplace. Violators could face fines.

“Who are we getting these complaints from?” she asked. “Many people of color.”

Residents have been urged to call 211 if they need help with anything from finding something to eat or a place to stay. And the state has set up two voluntary isolation facilities for people with COVID-19 symptoms whose living situations are untenable, including a Super 8 motel in Milwaukee.

Despite the work being done in Milwaukee, experts like Linda Sprague Martinez, a community health researcher at Boston University’s School of Social Work, worry that the government is not paying close enough attention to race, and as the disease spreads, will do too little to blunt its toll.

“When COVID-19 passes and we see the losses … it will be deeply tied to the story of post-World War II policies that left communities marginalized,” Sprague said. “Its impact is going to be tied to our history and legacy of racial inequities. It’s going to be tied to the fact that we live in two very different worlds.”



Update, April 3, 2020: This story has been updated to reflect that Illinois and North Carolina are breaking coronavirus cases down by race.


Doris Burke and Hannah Fresques contributed reporting.





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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Somebody needs to pull the plug on NY and NJ, California is an international hub yet they don't have as nearly as many people infected and dying. They will be leaking out soon with those yellow and blue plates in their New Yorker drawl.

He keeps claiming other states will be like NY, yes they will with all the infected pus filled people in NY.
 

RoadRage

the voice of reason
BGOL Investor
Hate to say it but Blacks and the Hasidic Jews are acting recklessly as fuck, many of them heard that mostly old people and sick people get it, so they think they are in the clear, what they are failing to realize is that this is no longer the case and if you were to go to the hospitals in the hood right now, its filled with young blacks.
Also, many blacks have high-risk jobs, jobs such as Teachers, Nurses, Bus Drivers, CO's, Group Home counselors and even Cops, these are the people who are in the frontline who often are not in the position to stay home.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The coronavirus hit Ketchum, Idaho, during the annual gathering of the National Brotherhood of Skiers.

SAMANTHA ISOM

A Festival for Black Skiers in Idaho Became a Coronavirus Nightmare

More than 100 skiers who traveled to celebrate together would ultimately fall ill, likely carrying the virus to their homes around the country

By Dan Frosch
and Ian Lovett
April 4, 2020

This year’s weeklong gathering of the National Brotherhood of Skiers was supposed to be a celebratory landmark in the group’s 47-year existence: The organization’s two founders were going to become the first African-Americans ever inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame later that month.

More than 600 skiers from the NBS paraded into the Ketchum town square to kick off their annual event.

More than 600 skiers from the NBS paraded into the Ketchum town square to kick off their annual event.PHOTO: SAMANTHA ISOM


 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Use our simple template to make a face mask at home: A step-by-step guide

by Jonathan Lai,
Updated: April 5, 2020



Use our simple template to make a face mask at home: A step-by-step guide


We have a template to help
Here’s a PDF of our template. Print it out — make sure to print it at 100% scale on letter-size paper — and use it to help as you make the mask.
» Download our template here.




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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
With the likes of Stop and Frisk and crime bills (Democrats using Civil Rights as racial cover and Republicans), black leaders in the community or organizations need to meetup and put out their own advisory on how to deal with CV-19 relevant to them. Don't just rely on this clown Cuomo to help you.

You might have to advise people to evacuate the city or shut down a packed subway. As an OG, Nazi politicians will seize on this opportunity to kill us during a disaster by acting slowly or recommending actions that are not in our best interests.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
What would supersaturating your blood with oxygen before your lungs get damage from COVID-19?

5HENSASUCRACHDWLS7Z6GZIED4.jpg


There are claims that supersaturating your blood after a heart attack reduces damage. I would advise people with COVID to open their windows of their house with the heat, get a window fan to blow air out. Your body is expelling virus particles by coughing, taking them back in to cause further damage will just burden your immunity system. Your immunity system was designed for you to be in a poorly insulated hut, not some super insulated thermos bottle of a home.

If I was not living in Nazi Germany, I would be able to check it out.
 
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
generic-fire_1562686082475-jpg_38950375_ver1-0.jpg


Viruses, fires, Internal combustion engine cars use the same principles. In the case of virus, the fire would be viral particles expelled from your body to infect other people. Your body would be the wood burning up. If you put a fire in an insulated box and feed it oxygen, it would burn up the wood quickly. That energy that would dissipate is now heating up the wood. The same thing with your body, you need to get those viral particles you are expelling away from you and intake clean air to reduce its efficiency.

Sleep in an electric blanket that you clean regularly with your windows and fan running even if it is 20 degrees outside.
 

ORIGINAL NATION

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Hate to say it but Blacks and the Hasidic Jews are acting recklessly as fuck, many of them heard that mostly old people and sick people get it, so they think they are in the clear, what they are failing to realize is that this is no longer the case and if you were to go to the hospitals in the hood right now, its filled with young blacks.
Also, many blacks have high-risk jobs, jobs such as Teachers, Nurses, Bus Drivers, CO's, Group Home counselors and even Cops, these are the people who are in the frontline who often are not in the position to stay home.
Damn did they spray this shit every where with jets or something? There has to be more going on than what they have told us. This shit is like a biological weapon. Makes you think that project Ivory coast was in danger when Julius Malema tried to become president of South Africa and said that if he became president he would take the farmland back from the white farmers with no compensation because they got it by genocide.
If there really was an effort to save people and they say 90 degree heat for 15 minutes would kill it. Seem like they would be building something like this to help combat it plus the faculties that already have this. It seems almost like they are locking down more and more until a hit list is finished that they have.
 

RoadRage

the voice of reason
BGOL Investor
Damn did they spray this shit every where with jets or something? There has to be more going on than what they have told us. This shit is like a biological weapon. Makes you think that project Ivory coast was in danger when Julius Malema tried to become president of South Africa and said that if he became president he would take the farmland back from the white farmers with no compensation because they got it by genocide.
If there really was an effort to save people and they say 90 degree heat for 15 minutes would kill it. Seem like they would be building something like this to help combat it plus the faculties that already have this. It seems almost like they are locking down more and more until a hit list is finished that they have.
It's a new virus (novel) to which they are still trying to piece together exactly how it is transmitted. My advice to the board is until they fully figure out what we are up against, don't be a wise guy by acting you know more than you do. I am treating this as if it's an airborne disease, even though I believe that if it is, it also takes long exposure to the virus in order to contract it, this is why I rarely go outside and when I do I have a N-95 mask under a regular surgical mask.
 

ORIGINAL NATION

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
It's a new virus (novel) to which they are still trying to piece together exactly how it is transmitted. My advice to the board is until they fully figure out what we are up against, don't be a wise guy by acting you know more than you do. I am treating this as if it's an airborne disease, even though I believe that if it is, it also takes long exposure to the virus in order to contract it, this is why I rarely go outside and when I do I have a N-95 mask under a regular surgical mask.
I may be wondering if it is new or if is something they strengthened to use how they are using it now. But for something to hang around so long and to be so wide spread there is some planning in this. There are ways to grow and concentrate things. It is like our lives are in danger not because of nature but some one that is an enemy of nature and humanity.
I never did get a mask or anything. I stocked up and that took almost all of the money. While health is being more controlled by these devils so is money. I don't trust what is going on but it is just like the days on the plantation. You cannot do anything but fear what is going on. And obey what these devils tell you. I still plan on stocking up more bottled water. And I be wondering about the water right now.
 

ORIGINAL NATION

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
It's a new virus (novel) to which they are still trying to piece together exactly how it is transmitted. My advice to the board is until they fully figure out what we are up against, don't be a wise guy by acting you know more than you do. I am treating this as if it's an airborne disease, even though I believe that if it is, it also takes long exposure to the virus in order to contract it, this is why I rarely go outside and when I do I have a N-95 mask under a regular surgical mask.
I can understand that. I still feel they should have left the saunas and steam rooms open. Or built ones to help fight it.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Stop Blaming Black People for Dying of the Coronavirus
New data from 29 states confirm the extent of the racial disparities.


An illustration of a person with virus cells behind them and a graph superimposed

CDC / GETTY / THE ATLANTI


The Atlantic
By Ibram X. Kendi
Director of the Antiracist Research and
Policy Center at American University
April 14, 2020


I grew up in the Christian Church, the second son of two ministers. I’m not one for making biblical references about my life, but I can’t say the same about my father.

Two weeks ago, Dad likened me to John the Baptist, a voice crying out in the wilderness for racial data on the pandemic. I had to remind him that, unlike John, I was not crying out alone. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Ayanna Pressley, and a quintet of black doctors at the University of Virginia had also raised the alarm.

But we were indeed in the wilderness. On April 1, hardly any states, counties, hospitals, or private labs had released the racial demographics of the people who had been tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. Five days later, citing racial disparities in infection or death rates from five states or counties and the racial demographics of the worst coronavirus hot spots, I speculated that America was facing a racial pandemic within the viral pandemic. But we needed more racial data to know for sure.

Ibram X. Kendi: What the racial data show

Now—after so many Americans joined our chorus, after so many states and counties released their first sets of racial demographic data, after so many data sets showed appalling racial disparities—we know for sure.

At least 29 states have released the racial demographics of confirmed coronavirus cases, death rates, or both, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker. The tracker, a collaboration between The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project and my colleagues at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center, is being developed to track, analyze, and regularly update racial data on the pandemic within the United States. These initial data provide a still-incomplete picture of the national outbreak's disparities. In 38 percent of the 194,000 cases that these 29 states had reported as of April 12, no racial data were attached. And some states mix racial and ethnic categories in reporting their numbers. But the federal government’s failure to assemble these data has left it to us to produce this resource, however incomplete, for researchers, advocates, and the public.

And the picture keeps looking worse by the day. In New York City’s ground zero, Latinos make up 34 percent of the known deaths from the coronavirus, higher than their 29.1 percent share of the city’s population. Two small Native American pueblos in New Mexico had higher infection rates than any U.S. county as of Friday.

But at this point in the pandemic, the disparities between the size of the black population and the percentage of black people infected with, hospitalized with, or dead from COVID-19 appear to be the most severe. A Washington Post analysis found that majority-black counties had infection rates three times the rate of majority-white counties. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of nearly 1,500 hospitalizations across 14 states found that black people made up a third of the hospitalizations, despite accounting for 18 percent of the population in the areas studied. An Associated Press analysis of available death data found that black people constituted 42 percent of the victims, doubling their share of the populations of the states the analysis included. In Louisiana, more than 70 percent of the people who have died so far from COVID-19 were black, more than twice their 32 percent share of the state’s population, and well above the 60 percent share of the population of New Orleans, where the outbreak is worst. In New York, African Americans comprise 9 percent of the state population and 17 percent of the deaths.

Amid all these data drops last week, a few antiracist voices came out of the wilderness, stood a brief moment at the clearing, then were moved back again into the wilderness. Today, the racial disparities are undeniable. But Americans don’t know for sure that there is racism behind those racial disparities. The racism itself remains deniable. So yet again, our voices are crying out in the wilderness for a miracle to save America from its original sin—the sin Americans can’t ever seem to confess.

Over the past two weeks, each answer led to new questions. Should states be collecting racial data? Yes.
Do those data show racial disparities? They do.

And that led to the question Americans have been arguing over since the beginning of the republic: Why do racial disparities exist?

Why are black people generally being infected and dying at higher rates than other racial groups? This is the question of the hour. And too many Americans are answering this new question in the old, familiar way. They are blaming poverty, but refusing to recognize how racism distinguishes black poverty from white poverty, and makes black poverty more vulnerable to a lethal contagion.


And Americans are blaming black people. To explain the disparities in the mortality rate, too many politicians and commentators are noting that black people have more underlying medical conditions but, crucially, not explaining why.
Or they blame the choices made by black people, or poverty, or obesity—but not racism.

“Now, if you have diabetes, obesity, hypertension, then African Americans are going to have more of those receptors” the coronavirus likes to hit, Senator Bill Cassidy said on NPR’s Morning Edition. “Now, as a physician, I would say we need to address the obesity epidemic, which disproportionately affects African Americans. That would lower the prevalence of diabetes, of hypertension.”
When pressed on whether these “underlying health conditions” are “rooted in years of systemic racism,” Cassidy responded: “That’s rhetoric, and it may be. But as a physician, I’m looking at science.”

Without question, African Americans suffer disproportionately from chronic diseases such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung disease, obesity, and asthma, which make it harder for them to survive COVID-19. But if Cassidy was looking at science, then he’d also be asking: Why are African American suffering more from these chronic diseases? Why are African Americans more likely to be obese than Latinos and whites?

Defending Cassidy, Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative, argued that “in the South, country white people and country black people eat the same kind of food” and wondered “to what extent black folks all over the country still eat the traditional soul food diet with lots of grease, salt, pork, sugar, and carbs.” To which one of Dreher’s readers responded: “I am especially amused by the implication that a racist conspiracy is keeping brussel sprouts and kale from black neighborhoods. If people wanted fresh vegetables and salads and tofu, stores would provide them.” If there are food deserts, it seems, then black people are to blame.

If black people receive inferior care from hospitals and doctors, are black people to blame?
If black people are less likely to be insured, are black people are to blame?
If hospitals in majority-black counties are overloaded with coronavirus patients, are black people to blame?


According to this logic, racism is not murderous; black people are killing themselves.
To be black in America is to be suicidal.
Black people are to blame for showing up in so many morgues across this godforsaken land.

Others have embraced a different theory of black culpability. “An information vacuum in some black communities … allowed false rumors to fester that black people were immune to the disease,” The New York Times reported. “While farfetched, the early rumors of black immunity to the COVID-19 virus gave some African Americans a fantastical hope,” the Los Angeles Sentinel stated.

“Now we’re playing catch-up with the messaging and spreading the word that it can affect any one of us,” explained Philadelphia city-council member Cindy Bass. “Influential figures in black communities need to unite and overcorrect for the misinformation running rampant about African Americans being immune to Covid-19,” CNN’s Van Jones declared. Or as the Los Angeles activist Najee Ali told the Los Angeles Times, “That myth spread like wildfire on social media, but there was never a concentrated effort from leaders to dispel that myth.”

What actually spread like wildfire was another myth: that the fable of black immunity affected black behavior. Where’s the evidence that this was widely believed by black people? Where’s the evidence that it caused black people to not take the virus as seriously as other groups did? Anecdotes offer evidence of individual behavior, not group behavior.


Then again, when it comes to black people, whenever Americans see a black individual acting in a self-destructive manner, they see black people actively in a self-destructive manner. Whenever Americans see a black individual not social distancing, they see black people not social distancing. Whenever Americans see a group of black individuals congregating at a party or a funeral, they see black America congregating at a party or a funeral. Black individuals are all, always, stand-ins for their race, never individuals. As Barack Obama intoned in Dreams From My Father, “Only white culture had individuals.”

That many Americans generalized the behavior of black individuals, claiming black people are being infected and killed by COVID-19 at higher rates because they are not taking the threat seriously or social distancing appropriately, should not be surprising. “The message of social distancing doesn’t seem to be hitting home, with people still playing basketball, having card parties and hosting sleepovers, say black mayors,” USA Today reported. “I don’t think our community is taking it as seriously as it should,” said Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester, New York, and the second vice president of the African American Mayors Association. Instead, African Americans have taken a “lackadaisical approach to social distancing,” surmised Representative Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, Texas. A Cleveland nurse made it plain: “Ignorance is causing us to have a rapid increase.”


Because they believe the cause of higher black infection rates is black ignorance and skepticism, a group of Dallas-area pastors and community leaders recently launched the #WeNeed2Survive campaign, aimed at “preventing misinformation,” “educating skeptics about social distancing,” and “raising awareness without fear.” As the director Tyler Perry pleaded in an Instagram message to black people: “Please, please, please, I beg you to take this seriously.”
There is nothing wrong with begging all Americans to take this vicious virus seriously. There is nothing wrong with begging one’s black grandfather or white daughter or Latina sister or Asian father or Native friend to social distance. There is everything wrong with lecturing a racial group to behave better as a solution to racial disparities, as U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams did on Friday during a White House press conference.
Too many Americans are infected with the belief that a cause or the cause of higher black infection or death rates is black people are not taking the viral threat seriously, and that white people have lower infection and death rates because they are taking COVID-19 seriously.


But the evidence points in the opposite direction. A national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center between March 10 and 16, long before racial disparities in infection rates were documented, found that black respondents, at 46 percent, were more than twice as likely as white respondents, at 21 percent, to view the coronavirus as a major threat to their own health. An additional 32 percent of black respondents considered it a minor threat. Slightly more white respondents (23 percent) than black respondents (21 percent) considered the coronavirus to not be a threat.
Days later, Pew and Dynata conducted a survey that again found that black people (59 percent) were significantly more likely than white people (44 percent) to be very concerned about their health during this pandemic. According to the survey, black people were more likely than white people to be buying nonperishable foods, hand sanitizer, cleaning products, toilet paper, and bottled water. Ironically, the very people calling black people ignorant are ignorant about black people.

What if black people are taking the coronavirus as seriously as white people? What if black people have been taking the coronavirus more seriously than white people for weeks, as the survey data suggest? What if despite all that, black people are still being infected and dying at higher rates from COVID-19?

The answer of the hour can be heard. Our voices are still crying out in the wilderness: Black people are not to blame for racial disparities. Racism is to blame.

I want to imagine the day when the wilderness finally clears for good, when our antiracist voices are heard for good, when Americans will no longer blame black people for black death. I want to imagine the day when every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain.

But I cannot see that day right now, because I remain in the wilderness.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

__________________________________________
IBRAM X. KENDI is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a professor and the director of The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist.



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‘For black folks, it’s like a setup: Are you trying to kill us?’



a man standing in front of a house: Albany, Ga., commissioner Demetrius Young objects to plans to open up nail salons, theaters and other businesses where it’s impossible to practice social distancing. People are like, what?“ he said. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)

Albany, Ga., commissioner Demetrius Young objects to plans to open up nail salons, theaters and other businesses where it’s impossible
to practice social distancing. "People are like, what?“ he said. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)


Sheryl Means already has lost so much to the invisible virus burning through her hometown. Her mother and her aunt died within days of each other. Her sister has been on a ventilator for weeks in a hospital miles away, and there are no visitors allowed in the covid-19 isolation unit. She has this tightness in her chest, and she’s scared she might be next.

But Means can’t get a test. Even now, six weeks into a national emergency, with the death toll still climbing in southwest Georgia, and her kin sick from the novel coronavirus. Even though, as a home health-care worker, she’s at high risk for exposure. She isn’t displaying enough symptoms to get the required doctor’s referral.

If she wanted, though, she could get her hair and nails done, since the state’s governor invited some businesses to reopen Friday, despite local leaders, public health experts and residents like Means insisting Georgia isn’t ready.

They fear the restart will spike new infections, particularly in the southwest region, with some of the highest death rates in the nation. In these small, interconnected towns, where everyone seems to know everyone else, each death reverberates.

“It’s crazy to open these businesses,” said Means, a 51-year-old Damascus resident. “Which do you want us to do: Be safe or be sorry? Live or die?”

Of the 20 counties in the nation with the most deaths per capita from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, five are in southwest Georgia, including Early, where Means lives. In the state’s hardest-hit places, African Americans make up most of the population, and about 30 percent of residents live in poverty. They’ve struggled for years with a severe lack of access to health care. Some counties have no doctors, no hospitals and a high percentage of uninsured residents. The facilities and physicians already were stretched thin.

Then came the coronavirus, fast-moving and super-infectious, preying on the elderly and those with underlying health problems — perfectly primed to devastate a vulnerable population.

When Gov. Brian Kemp (R) announced he was lifting restrictions
on businesses, some residents in this region felt cast off, like the state was telling them to fend for themselves once again.

“To open up businesses where it’s impossible to practice social distancing — hair salons, nail salons, theaters — people are like, what? You want to put everybody in a closed room, and that’s supposed to be okay?” said Demetrius Young, a city commissioner in Albany, the center of the state’s epidemic. “For black folks, it’s like a setup: Are you trying to kill us?”

Without a widespread testing infrastructure and local health departments able to do meticulous contact tracing, Young said, his region will continue to suffer. Georgia ranks 40th in tests per resident, well behind states that have pledged to maintain their shelter-in-place orders, according to an analysis of Covid Tracking Project data. Some models say the state has not yet reached its peak number of daily deaths, suggesting the worst is still to come.


a close up of a map
© Provided by The Washington Post


“We need to save lives,” Young said. “The way we feel is, this is another ‘Black Lives Matter’ moment.”

Glen Singfield, 67, owns two restaurants in Albany that have been shuttered for more than a month. He said he doesn’t plan to reopen them on Monday, when Kemp’s order for restarting the economy extends to restaurants.

He is not convinced the virus has been brought under control, especially in Southwest Georgia.

“We were hit hard, and our restraint needs to be harder. We have to make sure we’re way beyond the curve,” he said. He hasn’t had time to come up with a plan, such as how to screen customers, to make sure he can keep everyone, including his employees and family members who work in the restaurants, safe.

“My wife, my sons, my granddaughters are in there. My employees. These are folks we love. I can’t play with their lives. We’re a small town. When somebody dies here, everybody knows them.”

a man sitting in front of a building: Glen Singfield, who owns two restaurants in Albany, says he's not prepared to reopen safely even if the government says he's allowed to. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)

Glen Singfield, who owns two restaurants in Albany, says he's not prepared to reopen safely even if the government says he's allowed
to. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)

Through Friday, African Americans accounted for more than 50 percent of Georgia’s deaths, despite making up about 30 percent of the state’s 10.6 million people. The toll is far greater in less populous counties where the largest share of residents is black.

The number of cases per capita in plurality-black counties is 1.75 times that of plurality-white counties. The number of deaths per capita in plurality-black counties is twice that of white counties.

There are signs the virus’s spread is picking up pace in white communities, too, though the mostly black neighborhoods are still seeing the highest number of cases per capita, according to an analysis of Census block-level data scraped from documents on Georgia’s Department of Public Health website.

These disparities illuminate a deep racial inequality: In Georgia, where Kemp has resisted Medicaid expansion, African Americans are less likely to be insured and more likely to have preexisting health conditions like diabetes, said Ben Lopman, a professor of epidemiology at Emory University.

They’re also more likely to work in industries with a greater risk of exposure such as transportation, nursing homes and animal-slaughter plants — like the still-operating Tyson Foods plant in Mitchell County, where four infected workers have died.

“In the South, we’ve seen these kinds of inequalities in health for a long time,” Lopman said, comparing the pattern to the AIDS epidemic. “These inequalities are being repeated again for covid.”


States from Wisconsin to Louisiana are seeing disproportionate numbers as well, but the disparity in Georgia is also geographic. Across the United States, urban counties have higher rates of coronavirus cases and deaths than rural counties. In Georgia, it’s the opposite. The state’s rural areas have a death rate 1.5 times that of its large cities.

“Is this an indicator of what we’re going to see throughout the country? Absolutely,” Andrew T. Pavia, head of the pediatric infectious diseases division at the University of Utah School of Medicine, said of rural Georgia at an Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing this week. “It’s a perfect storm for risk of death when the virus lands in these poor, more rural communities.”

The resources to fight an epidemic like this — ventilators, intensive care facilities, infectious disease experts, doctors in general — are overwhelmingly concentrated in cities, Pavia said, making rural areas particularly vulnerable.




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New figures show stark disparities in coronavirus deaths across NYC neighborhoods



a man wearing a white shirt: New figures show stark disparities in coronavirus deaths across NYC neighborhoods
© UPI Photo


Justine Coleman

The New York City Health Department for the first time released data on coronavirus deaths broken down by the city's more than 60 ZIP codes, showing that some neighborhoods are experiencing death rates almost 15 times higher than others.

The data demonstrates the COVID-19 pandemic has been deadliest in black and Latino neighborhoods, according to analysis by Reuters.

The highest death rate was documented in Canarsie-Flatlands in Brooklyn, an area with a subsidized housing development, where 612 in 100,000 people died from the virus.

The primarily white and wealthy neighborhood Gramercy Park in Manhattan 31 deaths per 100,000 people were recorded.
In Far Rockaway in Queens, which has a 40 percent black and a 25 percent Latino population, there were 445 deaths per 100,000 people.

New York City had previously released daily updates in cases broken down by ZIP code but the death count was released by borough.

City advocates have been calling for more data collection, saying it would show racial and economic inequalities in the U.S. city that has been hardest hit by the pandemic.

Mark Levine, the chairman of the City Council's health committee, told Reuters in an interview that black and Latino residents are more likely to have low-paid, essential jobs putting them at risk of contracting the virus.

He added that these populations are more likely to live in smaller, more crowded apartments and have underlying health conditions.

"It's really heartbreaking and it should tug at the moral conscience of the city," he told Reuters. "We knew we had dramatic inequality. This, in graphic form, shows it's even greater than maybe many of us feared."

In total, New York City has recorded 191,073 cases of coronavirus, leading to at least 50,217 hospitalizations. The city has documented at least 15,983 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 4,823 probable deaths.


 

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CORONAVIRUS

Over 20,000 Black People Have Died From COVID-19 Nationwide

Ishena Robinson


1590345533063.jpeg

New figures released by an independent research organization reveal that more than 20,000 black Americans have died from the COVID-19 disease, confirming indications that African Americans have been disproportionately impacted by coronavirus.


The non-partisan APM Research Lab published the findings earlier this week in a report that breaks down coronavirus deaths in the U.S. up to May 19 by race and ethnicity.

According to the report, black people are dying at a higher rate than any other demographic from the disease that has killed more than 90,000 people across the country:

The latest overall COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.4 times as high as the rate for Whites and 2.2 times as high as the rate for Asians and Latinos;
  • 1 in 2,000 Black Americans has died (or 50.3 per 100,000)
  • 1 in 4,300 Asian and Latino Americans has died (or 22.7 and 22.9, respectively, per 100,000)
  • 1 in 4,700 White Americans has died (or 20.7 per 100,000)
The widest racial disparity is in Kansas, where the report found black residents are 7 times more likely to die from coronavirus than white residents.

The researchers behind the new report say they were surprised it was left up to them to put to break down the nationwide mortality rate by race.

From The Guardian:

Gathering data on the racial gulf in deaths has itself been hampered by an absence of federal action, compounded by slow and in some cases non-existent reporting by many states. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only produced its first set of death statistics by race this week, despite mounting calls for basic information.

In the absence of government data, APM Research Lab has stepped into the breach. It now gathers statistics from 40 states, covering almost 90% of the total of 92,128 deaths in the US recorded by Johns Hopkins.

Andi Egbert, senior researcher at APM Research Lab, said she was astonished that it was left to an independent organization to produce nationwide statistics that should be coming from the federal government. “I won’t speculate about motive, but I can’t believe in a modern economy that we don’t have a mandated, uniform way of reporting the data across states. We are in the midst of this tremendous crisis, and data is the best way of knowing who is suffering and how.”


Given that black people are dying from coronavirus more than any other race, the new figures raise the question: why is the federal government holding back data that would illustrate the ongoing decimation of America’s black population from COVID-19 via structural racism, while at the same time eagerly moving forward with opening up the country?


Ishena Robinson
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Writer, speaker, finesser, and a fly dresser. Jamaican currently chilling in Chicago.




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Given that black people are dying from coronavirus more than any other race, the new figures raise the question: why is the federal government holding back data that would illustrate the ongoing decimation of America’s black population from COVID-19 via structural racism, while at the same time eagerly moving forward with opening up the country?

I’m hoping that this headline is not the answer to The Atlantic’s question:

“The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying”
Jason Kottke May 11, 2020​



 

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Report: Black, Latino Families Struggling with Food, Housing Security During Pandemic


Kristen Thometz | December 17, 2020


Families pick up Thanksgiving meal boxes and coats for their children at West Town nonprofit Northwestern Settlement on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (Ariel Parrella-Aureli / WTTW News)

Families pick up Thanksgiving meal boxes and coats for their children at West Town nonprofit Northwestern Settlement on Saturday,
Nov. 21, 2020. (Ariel Parrella-Aureli / WTTW News)

The disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black and Latino communities has been documented this year by public health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, a report finds that Black and Latino families across the U.S. are also more likely than their White counterparts to struggle with food security and housing payments.

In Illinois, 24% of Black adults and 18% of Latino adults said they sometimes or often didn’t have enough food to eat in the past week, compared with 10% of Whites, according to the KIDS Count policy report “Kids, Families and COVID-19.”

The report, based on weekly surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau throughout the pandemic, analyzed how families are faring during the crisis by measuring food security, the ability to make rent or mortgage payments, health insurance status and mental health concerns.

“The pandemic really took all the problems we already had and accelerated and exacerbated them,” said Bill Byrnes, KIDS Count project manager. “Every metric you look at for the state of Illinois and nationally, you see people of color consistently disadvantaged in terms of economic (status), education, housing status and things along those lines.”

In Illinois, Black and Latino residents were also more likely to report difficulties related to housing. According to the report, 32% of Blacks and 25% of Latinos said they had little or no confidence in their ability to make their next rent or mortgage payment on time, compared to 10% of Whites and 20% of all Illinois residents.

While Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently extended the state’s ban on evictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic until Jan. 11, Byrnes worries about what happens once evictions are allowed to resume.

“If the state and federal government don’t continue extending the moratorium, we’re going to get to a point where there’s a serious housing catastrophe on our hands, not just in Illinois, but as a nation,” Byrnes said.

According to a University of Arizona study, between 279,000 and 590,000 Illinois households are at risk of eviction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationally, those researchers say as many as 9.5 million to 13.9 million renters are at risk of eviction.

“Even if the pandemic ended tomorrow, there’s still going to be a lot of need for assistance (for people) who owe back payments,” Byrnes said. “A lot of assistance from state and federal resources are going to be needed to make sure housing remains stable.”

That relief needs to be “focused on populations and areas that need it most, particularly among people of color, people living in poverty and people living in rural counties in the state,” he added.

Byrnes says to avoid an eviction crisis, Pritzker should extend the state’s eviction moratorium until “COVID-related closings are no longer necessary.”
The coronavirus pandemic, which has sickened more than 870,000 people in Illinois, has underscored the need for access to health care, but the report found 10% of Illinoisans didn’t have health insurance. That rate is even higher among Blacks (22%) and Latinos (15%), but lower among Whites (4%), according to the report.

“Lacking insurance – and limiting contact with the outside world – families are forgoing the care they need, putting parents, children and young people at risk,” the report states.

Blacks and Latinos are less likely to have health insurance, in part, because of their occupations, according to Byrnes. “People of color in the state tend to work or are overrepresented in occupations where social distancing isn’t possible,” he said. “Latinos are overrepresented in food service and preparation, transportation, food processing and material fabrication. And Blacks are overrepresented in service sectors and transportation. In many cases, people of color are represented in jobs without benefits like health insurance and paid sick leave.”

Byrnes says people shouldn’t have to choose between going to work and risk getting sick or staying home and losing a paycheck, and if people do get sick with COVID-19, they shouldn’t have to “bear the brunt of the hospital bills.”

“We need to make sure the uninsured are protected from the worst parts of the pandemic,” he said. “The fact of the matter is getting a hospital bill in the mail when you’re uninsured is simply something most families in America can’t afford, even if it’s staying one or two days.”

While the report found Blacks and Latinos faced more challenges than Whites in terms of food security, housing and health insurance, Whites had higher rates of depression. According to the report, 21% of White Illinoisans said they felt “down, depressed or hopeless,” compared to 17% of Blacks and 13% of Latinos.

Byrnes said he’s not sure why that’s the case but he hopes to get more data in the future as to why those differences exist.

“I think the important takeaway is that the pandemic has left no one untouched, and the people of Illinois need resources to help get them through it – whether those resources are financial, emotional or otherwise,” he said.

The report calls on policymakers to put racial and ethnic equity first in responding to the pandemic and to engage community stakeholders to ensure “the policymaking process is informed by those hardest hit by the pandemic.”

The report also makes several recommendations for policymakers to enact to help families, including expanding access to unemployment insurance for part-time and gig-economy workers, low-wage workers and students; removing barriers to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program; and increasing the availability of public housing.

Policymakers should also make sure schools are “better and more equitably funded” to meet the needs of students impacted by the pandemic.
“We need to also prioritize the physical and mental health of all kids in the state and to guarantee that any vaccine will be available without cost as a factor,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes says it’s crucial that the issues outlined in the report are addressed. “Because we didn’t do enough prior to the pandemic to eliminate these problems, the pandemic only took these things and only exacerbated and accelerated them,” he said. “After the pandemic is over, we need to ensure people’s needs are being met. … If we don’t do that, we’re just going to see the effects of this pandemic for years to come.”

Contact Kristen Thometz: @kristenthometz | (773) 509-5452 | kthometz@wttw.com
File Attachments:
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Kids, Families and COVID-19 Report.pdf


Report: Black, Latino Families Struggling with Food, Housing Security During Pandemic | Chicago News | WTTW
 

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Trump's racism has now killed 1 in 1000 Americans in less than a year


“April 7th was the day that America learned that the majority of the people who were dying from COVID19 were either elderly, black or Hispanic. Not so many white guys, after all.​
Exactly one month earlier, on March 7th, Trump had played golf at his club in West Palm Beach, met with Brazilian strongman Jair Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago, and visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. Over the previous week, US deaths had risen from 4 to 22.​
In March, Jared Kushner even put together an all-volunteer taskforce of mostly preppie 20-something white men to coordinate getting PPE to hospitals.​
Then came April 7th, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States. Other media ran similar headlines across the American media landscape, and it was heavily reported on cable news and the network news that night.​
As the New York Times noted that day: “In Illinois, 43 percent of people who have died from the disease and 28 percent of those who have tested positiveare African-Americans, a group that makes up just 15 percent of the state’s population. African-Americans, who account for a third of positive tests in Michigan, represent 40 percent of deaths in that state even though they make up 14 percent of the population. In Louisiana, about 70 percent of the people who have died are black, though only a third of that state’s population is.”​
American conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”​
 

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England minorities: Higher COVID-19 cases, fewer vaccinated

By DANICA KIRKA
25, 2021





LONDON (AP) — England’s ethnic minority communities have higher levels of COVID-19 infections and lower levels of vaccine acceptance than other groups, according to a new study that highlights how the pandemic is worsening health inequalities.


The study found that 92% of people across England either have received or would accept a vaccine. But that figure dropped to 87.6% for Asians and 72.5% for Blacks, according to the study released Thursday by Imperial College London.


Researchers also found that most people of all age groups produced disease-fighting antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Fewer people tested positive for antibodies after a single dose, with the proportion falling to 34.7% for those 80 and over.


Professor Helen Ward, lead author of the report, said it was “encouraging” to see high levels of vaccine confidence and antibody response, while cautioning that the study didn’t assess the effectiveness of the vaccine.

“Our findings suggest that it is very important for people to take up the second dose when it is offered,” she said. “We know that some groups have concerns about the vaccine, including some people at increased risk from COVID-19, so it is really important that they have opportunities to discuss these and find out more.”

The findings are based on a study of more than 154,000 people who tested themselves between Jan. 26 and Feb. 8 using a home finger prick test. Participants also answered questions about their willingness to be vaccinated.

The study found that 13.9% of the population had antibodies either from infection or vaccination. Antibody prevalence in unvaccinated individuals was highest among Blacks, 22.1%, and Asians, 20%.

Rokhsana Fiaz, mayor of the London borough of Newham, said issues surrounding poverty, unequal access to health care and the concerns of ethnic minorities were well known at the start of the pandemic and should have been factored into the mass vaccination program from the beginning.
While the British government has so far focused on large-scale vaccination sites, Fiaz called for a “hyper-local” strategy to reach more people. Newham, a borough where Black, Asian and other minority communities make up 72% of the population, is now having trials offering vaccinations through local pharmacies and religious groups, she said.

“In order to address the challenges and the risks for communities from certain minority ethnic groups, we’ve got to address those fundamental issues of deprivation, inequality and poverty,” Diaz told the BBC. “And we’ve got to be able to address issues of health inequity that have been long-standing features in this country.”
___
Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak


 

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As Covid-19 deaths hit record lows, those dying are younger and more disproportionately Black than before

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
Wed June 23, 2021


article video


(CNN) Covid-19 deaths have fallen dramatically across the United States -- average daily deaths are less than a tenth of what they were at the peak of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University -- but nearly 300 people are still dying of Covid-19 each day in the US.

Some groups remain more at risk than others.
People who died of Covid-19 in May [2021] were younger and more disproportionately Black than those who had died of Covid-19 throughout the pandemic, a CNN analysis of CDC data shows.

And Americans who are still dying of Covid-19 are "overwhelmingly" unvaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday.



"This is exactly what we would expect, given ongoing inequities in vaccine access and a smaller proportion of younger people having been protected by vaccination," William Hanage, a member of Harvard University's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics and associate professor of epidemiology, told CNN.

Deaths are a lagging indicator of disease, following weeks and sometimes months behind initial Covid-19 diagnosis, experts say.

"For May, we might be looking at a group of individuals diagnosed in March or April, or in some cases even February," during a time when the US was still prioritizing older adults and those with certain comorbidities to be vaccinated, Dr. Judith O'Donnell, hospital epidemiologist and director of infection prevention and control at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, told CNN.

People 75 and older have accounted for about 57% of all Covid-19 deaths in the US, but the balance was shifted in May, with 59% of deaths among those under the age of 75 for that month, CDC data shows.

Instead, those between the ages of 50 and 64 have represented a significantly larger share of deaths recently. In May, about a quarter of deaths occurred in this age group, compared to 16% of total deaths throughout the pandemic.

And adults under 40 represented about 3% of Covid-19 deaths in May, more than double their share of total deaths since the pandemic began.


O'Donnell, who has cared for inpatients with Covid-19, says there is a "striking difference" in the people she's treated over the past couple of months compared to a year ago, with the average age of hospitalized patients now two decades younger than it was.

But it's not just about age, she said. The same comorbidities -- including heart failure, kidney failure, obesity and history of smoking -- put people of all ages at higher risk, although vaccinations are making a difference.

"We're very rarely seeing the older population hospitalized and I think it's because they heard the vaccine message, rolled up their sleeves and, in most cases, got vaccinated early on," O'Donnell said.

"The 18 to 29 group is really undervaccinated right now, and if it stays that way, we're going to see them accounting for a greater share of hospitalizations and deaths as time goes on."


Racial gaps getting wider

Black people have also represented a larger share of Covid-19 deaths recently, as well as lower vaccination coverage, CDC data shows.

Throughout the pandemic, Black people have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, accounting for about 12.5% of the population but more than 15% of total deaths, according to CDC data.

That disparity was even larger in May, with nearly 19% of Covid-19 deaths throughout the month among Black people. In recent weeks, Black people and American Indians have been more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic White people to die of Covid-19, CDC data shows.

Indeed, Black people are the most undervaccinated racial or ethnic group in the US. More than 45% of the US population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, but coverage among Black people is less than half of that, at about 22%.


"These lower rates may be due in part, to vaccine hesitancy, but they may also be due to inequities in vaccine access," Dr. Lisa Cooper, founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, told CNN. "Many African Americans in the South live in rural areas with limited access to health care facilities. Furthermore, many people may have other stressors related to housing, food, or job insecurity, which may be preventing them from getting vaccinated."

The share of Covid-19 deaths among Asian and Hispanic people, however, decreased in May and both groups were underrepresented in their share of Covid-19 deaths relative to their share of the population.

While vaccination coverage among Hispanic people also lags the US average -- about 25% overall -- rates have been increasing for this group over recent weeks, CDC data shows. And Asian people recently surpassed non-Hispanic White people in terms of vaccination coverage and have had one of the lowest death rates throughout the pandemic.


"Health equity plays into this because as we have learned over the past year, we are not safe until we are all safe," Cooper said. "As long as some people in our society don't have what they need to stay healthy, we are all at risk of the infection spreading, overwhelming our health systems and leading to lockdowns that harm all of us through their negative effects of our psychological and social well-being, our physical health and our economic stability."

Experts stress that continued vaccination efforts are critical to stop the spread of the virus and prevent more deaths.

"As more Americans have rolled up their sleeves to get vaccinated, we have chipped away at the ability of the Covid-19 virus to cause more illness and more suffering," Walensky said. "This new virus forced too many of our families to accept death as its outcome for too many of our loved ones, but now, this should not be the case."

Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.


 
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