The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has published a web site that provides detailed statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths to it, right down to the zip code level. Roughly 28,000 people live in my zip code and fewer than 40 cases have been diagnosed here with no deaths.
The most heavily promoted news here in Illinois is that there is a marked racial disparity in the number of deaths due to COVID-19: relative to their numbers blacks are dying at a much higher rate. The official explanation is that there has been “disinvestment” in health care in the neighborhoods in which most blacks live. I’d like to see the numbers. I suspect that it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s true that there are fewer hospitals in black neighborhoods than there used to be. However, it’s also true that the age-adjusted rate of obesity among blacks is nearly 50% and that conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease are among the relevant “comorbidities” contributing to death due to COVID-19.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that “disinvestment”, predisposition to obesity, and behavior all play a role.
Update
Another factor: smoking. The prevalence of smoking among blacks in Chicago is 50% higher than for whites or Hispanics.
It looks like approx. 40,000 people in my zip code, and the number of cases is under six. The site won’t publish the specific number because of privacy concerns < 6.
The most in any downstate zip code is 17 in Taylorville, where a restaurant owner upset with the shutdown order had her franchise yanked for putting up a sign on the store that said: "Gov. Pritzker — Screw You."
The initial racial demographic claims were pretty stupid: Blacks make up 30% of confirmed cases in Illinois and Illinois is fifteen percent black. This overlooks the reality that the cases aren’t distributed randomly across Illinois, and neither are blacks. The largest concentration of cases is in Chicago, where blacks make up 30% of the population. So is this really a racial story, or does it reflect the virus has spread most in large, dense cities? And from looking at info yesterday, cases in Chicago suburbs seem to be increasing more rapidly than in Chicago now. The numbers will probably change.
The death rate on the other hand seems to be high. The Governor says its because blacks have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes.
Part of the reason the governor is getting into this thicket is that a supposedly credible publication stated that there is a rumor going around that African-Americans are immune.
Give the man a see-gar. Add “…in which people engage in behaviors likely to increase contagion”.
They are already planning to include the disparate impact of Kung Flu on blacks as part of the next impeachment push against Orange Man Black for mishandling the crisis. IMO the impeachment vote to come late October or early November.
And of course now that the drug profiteering charge against Trump has blown up (less than $500 invested in Sanofi, OMGOMG) the next charge will be that he is probably an investor in tobacco companies (or has friends/relatives/acquaintances who are) , so he pushed coffin nails on the poor benighted black community in anticipation of the higher death rate from impaired lungs.
Sorry, feeling a little more cynical than usual today.
African Americanos aren’t smoking the same stuff as the rest of us.