“Coronavirus hits people of color harder.”
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
| Communities of color and low-income families are bearing the brunt of the coronavirus, Axios’ Sam Baker and Alison Snyder report. Why it matters: The virus itself doesn’t discriminate. But it’s beginning to reflect the racial and socioeconomic disparities of the cities where it’s spreading and the health care system that’s struggling to contain it. The big picture: There’s no nationwide data on the demographics of coronavirus cases or deaths. But preliminary data from several large metro areas seem pretty clear. Black residents make up about 33% of Mecklenburg County, N.C., which includes Charlotte, but account for roughly 44% of its coronavirus cases, according to The Charlotte Observer. Milwaukee County, Wis., is 26% black — yet African Americans account for almost half of the coronavirus cases and 80% of the deaths, according to ProPublica. The hardest-hit neighborhoods in New York City have large immigrant populations, per the Wall Street Journal. Statewide data from Michigan show that African Americans make up a plurality of both cases (35%) and deaths (40%), but just 14% of the state’s population. What they’re saying: “It puzzles me that none of our responses at the federal or state level has talked about race,” said Lehigh University’s Sirry Alang, who studies health disparities and inequities.“There’s been no focus on the ways in which our policy decisions might have unintended consequences for these populations.” Between the lines: This apparent inequity in coronavirus cases reflects a slew of other, pre-existing disparities.African Americans are more likely to have several underlying health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and some cancers that can make COVID-19 infections more severe. Lower-income areas — which tend to have larger nonwhite populations — have less access to health care services.Substandard housing, multiple families living together, and homelessness all facilitate the virus’ spread. |
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Consider this a companion piece to this post.
Do you think Trump and his followers feel at all badly about this? Or are they (quiet or out loud) somewhere between “act of God” and “serves them right”? It’s horrifying how this serves their agenda.
A Trump supporter I know in Chicago said to me in that “just between us white folks” side-of-the-mouth sotto voce that the majority of COVID-19 cases there are concentrated “on the South Side” (code for “Black”) and it’s because “they’re careless . . . [in a mocking simper] ‘The government will take care of me.'” Then she *shrieked* “I’M SO SICK OF SOCIALISM!!!”
I simply copied an Axios story with all its links, because it won’t let me link to just this part of the newsletter, and Facebook won’t include the links.
But I’ll relent and say, Do read the rest of Axios’s “deep dive.” The next section is headed, “… and its economic impact is unequal, too.”
The bottom line: “It’s a precarious time for people who are already vulnerable.”
Together alone: The virus and the phone
National trauma. I read those words in The Atlantic and I think: Where is this “national trauma,” exactly? Is it located somewhere in the spaces between people, a fluid we’ve all been swept struggling off our feet by, like a toxic tsunami? Or is it granular, stuck as unique, angular shapes inside the hearts of individuals who can’t breathe or can’t pay the rent? It’s all around us but not within us, or it’s within us but not transmissible from one to another even though the virus is nothing but. We can’t get a grip on the trauma and make it real unless we get sick. And then we’re alone, in a basement or an apartment, or on a ventilator. Or shoulder to shoulder in a packed ER, where instead of our phones we’re now siloed by “social distancing” and respiratory distress. When we can’t hold and comfort our friends, rallying cries to drum up a “We” ring false. The only thing uniting us is fear, and fear is the most isolating of feelings.
“Nothing will ever be the same,” but so far it is all too much the same. We are 21st-century virtual people hologrammed into a brute 19th- or 15th- century reality. Not enough has changed yet. We’re meeting the new reality with the old tools: words, pills, takeout and streaming entertainment services. Maybe the “national trauma” is located in the yammerings of pundits, and I’d have to add us micropundits on social media. We’ve had words, words, words, decades of words, we expended so much vehemence and eloquence on much lesser ills, and the real thing hasn’t yet struck us dumb. We still have the same kinds of words and so we have no words. The words reduce this to just more of the same virtual unreality that we’ve been consuming for years in the floods of TV and op-eds and superhero movies and commercials and “social.” The silence of misery hasn’t yet engulfed the luxury of commentary. Note to self: We won’t get it till we shut up.
And we won’t shut up till we get it, and can’t breathe.
Ambiance 