Blacks and COVID-19

At Vox.com Dylan Scott underscores a point I have been making here for some time:

According to the APM Research Lab, as of mid-September, “1 in 1,020 Black Americans has died (or 97.9 deaths per 100,000).” More than 200,000 Americans are confirmed dead from Covid-19, and a disproportionate number of them are Black. It’s that simple. (Biden’s statement that 1 in 500 could die by the end of the year without swift action would appear to reflect the estimates that the US death toll could grow to 400,000 by January 1.)

There are several reasons why. Black Americans have disproportionately higher rates of preexisting conditions, including heart disease and cancer, which are associated with more deaths and hospitalizations from Covid-19. Black Americans are also more likely to work in jobs that are considered “essential,” which requires them to go into work and risk exposure to the coronavirus.

Housing segregation has also led to Black Americans having less access to clean water and created many longstanding health disparities. Race, place, income, and health, as should be obvious by now, are inextricably linked. And the health consequences of these inequities have been especially evident during the pandemic, as David Williams, a professor of public health and sociology at Harvard, wrote in a May 2020 editorial for JAMA

Economic status matters profoundly for reducing the risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Lower-income and minority workers are overrepresented among essential service workers who must work outside the home when shelter-in-place directives are given. Many must travel to work on buses and subways.

But the bottom line is, due to both systemic racism and factors particular to Covid-19 and the accompanying economic crisis, Black Americans have died at disproportionately high rates during the pandemic.

I think it’s actually even worse than that which a network analysis, something I think has been sorely lacking during this pandemic, would show. I strongly suspect that practically every black person living in New York City, Newark, New Haven, Hartford, Chicago and many other cities with greater than 20% black population knows someone, possibly a close relative, who has died of COVID-19. That produces stresses which have serious implications.