I’m having some difficulty in assessing why the results of this study at JAMA Network Open on mortality of COVID-19 by race differ from the similar one conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research:
In this cohort study of 11 210 individuals with COVID-19 presenting for care at 92 hospitals across 12 states, there was no difference in all-cause, in-hospital mortality between White and Black patients after adjusting for age, sex, insurance status, comorbidity, neighborhood deprivation, and site of care.
Three possibilities occur to me. Maybe one is right and the other wrong. The JNO study looks pretty selective to me. Maybe a broader analysis would produce different results. Or maybe they’re measuring different things.
It would sure be nice to know which if any of those were the case.
You mean this NBER study?
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27407.pdf
The JAMA study looks at medical issues largely and corrects for those. The NBER looks largely for economic issues and corrects for those. JA
mA study collects data on an individual data. It is smaller.
nBER study uses county rather than individual data. It is larger. Both find more black people die. When you correct for medical issues that difference goes away. When you correct for economic factors the difference still remains, though that it is tilted towards commuting differences. (Interesting as I would think commuting is at least partially a proxy for housing and income.)
Both retrospective but also different methodology. Both look to be well done but hard to compare directly I think. Also, always harder to be sure you have eliminated some biases or something with retrospective studies.
Steve
That was my sense.
I should repeat. I think the present discussion obscures what needs to be done. We need to devote more resources to dealing with COVID-19 in black and Hispanic communities. That should be done first by the states and secondarily by the federal government. The variances in outcomes by race by state are enormous. In New York the mortality rate per 100K among blacks is 400% that among whites; in Oklahoma the mortality rate for blacks per 100K is 50% higher than for whites.
I really should write a post on COVID-19 among Native Americans. It’s a major scandal. Pre-existing conditions are pretty obviously a substantial component but I don’t think I can attribute all of the differential to that.
‘I really should write a post on COVID-19 among Native Americans. It’s a major scandal. Pre-existing conditions are pretty obviously a substantial component but I don’t think I can attribute all of the differential to that.’
Economic status, access to medicine/hospital care, and attitude towards medical personnel are also factors. I haven’t been able to find it, but I hypothesize that the Kung Flu death rate among poor urban whites in Great Britain are considerably higher than their wealthier countrymen. Uganda (if you trust the data, which I don’t) has an extremely low death count, which may or not be due to high incidence of HCQ use due to endemic malaria.
Economic status, access to medicine/hospital care, and attitude towards medical personnel are also factors
Also attitude towards western medicine itself. They will most likely turn to traditional medicine man first for prayer and “cedaring offâ€. Burning cedar and bathing in the smoke as a curative. If strong enough they will participate in an all night “sweatâ€. Chanting, praying, smoking, and yes, sweating in a teeepee with a fire in the center heating rocks on which water is sprinkled to make steam. Causes a sort of delirium believed to be a religious experience.
So in the end they present to the hospital in rough shape when they finally go.
But regardless, they are all diabetic and usually overweight and typically smokers.
I’d be willing to bet that they die at a higher rate for all causes, not just Covid.
Here’s a cheery notion:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/renowned-eu-scientist-covid-19-was-engineered-china-lab-effective-vaccine-unlikely