₦airaland Forum

The COVID-19 virus was once called the “great equalizer” because of its potential to infect anyone and everyone at pandemic speed. But data on mortality rates tell a different story.
Instead of affecting everyone equally, the coronavirus is amplifying the racial disparities in health outcomes across the United States. The disparities result from the country’s own pre-existing condition: an environment where people’s living and working conditions are anything but equal when it comes to pollution levels and protection from harmful toxins.
These disparities are most visible in urban environments that have become pandemic hot spots. There, the coronavirus kills a higher percentage of minorities than it does of the cities’ overall populations.
In the nation’s pandemic epicenter, New York City, black and Latino people die at about twice the rate of the total population. In Chicago, the disparity is even more dramatic: Black people account for about 70 percent of coronavirus deaths but make up roughly 30 percent of the city’s population.
In early April, before Wisconsin went ahead with in-person voting, about 80 percent of Milwaukee’s coronavirus fatalities were black people, though the black share of the city’s population is just 25 percent. Since then, seven more coronavirus cases have been linked to voting on Election Day, but the full impact of virus spread is not yet known.
While these statistics shocked many, environmental-justice experts and advocates were not surprised.

More than half of the people in Chicago who have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, and over 70% of those who have died are African Americans, health officials and Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday. African Americans make up 30% of the city's population, according to the city's data.

According to data shared by the city on Sunday, 98 people have died from COVID-19 in Chicago. Of those 98 deaths, 67 were African American.
"Fifty-two percent of our cases have been in black Chicagoans, and, most strikingly, 72% of our deaths here in Chicago," Chicago Public Health Department Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady, said Monday.

Mother Jones compiled data from all of the states that break out their coronavirus data by race and ethnicity. The same thing we’re seeing in New York City is happening across the country: Black and Latino Americans get infected with Covid-19 at alarmingly high rates and more are dying than we would expect based on their share of the population.
A few horrifying examples from the charts you can find in the link above:
In Wisconsin, black people represent 6 percent of the population and nearly 40 percent of Covid-19 fatalities
In Louisiana, black people make up 32 percent of the state’s population but almost 60 percent of fatalities
In Kansas, 6 percent of the population is black and yet black people account for more than 30 percent of the Covid-19 deaths
The proportions can change depending on the state, but the trends are consistent anywhere you look: Compared to their share of the population, greater numbers of people of color die than their white neighbors in this pandemic.

Why is that? Well, there are the more acute reasons (black and Latino people are being put at risk more in their day-to-day lives) and then there are the structural reasons (long-standing economic and health disparities between white people and people of color).
On the first, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in NYC is a useful and disturbing example. As the New York Times reported last week, bus and subway workers have been hit hard by the coronavirus: 41 dead and more than 6,000 either diagnosed with Covid-19 or self-quarantining because they have symptoms that suggest an infection, as of April 8.
Who works for the MTA? Black people and Latinos. They account for more than 60 percent of the agency’s workforce in New York City, according to estimates from 2016.
Black people in particular are overrepresented in the MTA; they are 46 percent of the city’s transportation workers versus 24 percent of its overall population. (White people, on the other hand, make up 30 percent of local MTA employees but 43 percent of NYC residents.)