The coronavirus doesn't discriminate along racial lines. But America does.
THE NOVEL coronavirus, as far as we know, does not discriminate along racial lines. But America does — and the data so far show that black people are dying at a disproportionate rate. The first thing to do about it? Get more of that data, and fast.
The numbers trickling in from cities, counties and states in recent weeks are alarming: Chicago’s population is about 30 percent black, but so are nearly 70 percent of those in the city killed by the virus. Milwaukee County looks worse: Black people make up 26 percent of the population, and a whopping 73 percent of covid-related deaths. In Michigan, it’s 14 and 41; in Louisiana, it’s 32 and 70. Maryland has a 30 percent black population and reported Thursday that black residents account for 40 percent of the state’s deaths.
We don’t know the federal statistics yet, because there aren’t any. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typically tracks the location, age and race of those affected by disease outbreaks — but this time it has left out the last of the three. Several members of Congress have sent a letter exhorting Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to change that. He should. Those numbers are essential to understand what’s happening in some of this country’s most vulnerable communities.
There’s the possibility of a race gap in testing and treatment: Medicine is far from immune to implicit biases, and doctors worry the subjective criteria for coronavirus care amid shortages will lead to similar dismissals, to deadly effect. There’s also the possibility that preexisting inequities are making this crisis’s impact unequal. Black people already suffer lopsidedly from obesity, diabetes, asthma and hypertension, all likely associated with worse outcomes from a lung-attacking coronavirus. This reality isn’t an accident but, rather, a result of economic and environmental conditions imposed on minorities over the nation’s long history of discrimination.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-coronavirus-doesnt-discriminate-along-racial-lines-but-america-does/2020/04/10/08420e46-79c9-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
