It goes on to state that in Michigan, where 14% of the population is black, they make up 40% of the deaths. This is the same stat that Gov. Whitmer used about three weeks ago on April 11 to set up a task force.
The article goes on to say that data collection needs to be improved. Whats the latest?
I’m not seeing much info at all in this forum re deaths? Men or women? Racial disparity ? Ages? Underlying conditions?
Could be (prob is) in the Breaking News thread but it seems to me that these stats are key to what needs to be done…no?
I think exposure to air pollution, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes all increase your risk of dying from covid. Black Americans have higher rates of all of those. And if I had to guess, there are more Black people who feel financial need to do stuff that risks exposure despite being older or otherwise in high risk groups.
Add to that more multi-generational exposure in many poorer communities with younger single parents, inclusive of but not limited to urban poor Black ones, in which the parent of the young child is out working an essential job, and grandparent and/or even great-grandparent, are in the household helping out, all the more now as there are no school programs to take care of the kid(s). Possibly in an urban poor community more public transportation use to get to those essential jobs. My WAG is a confluence of more higher risk individuals getting more exposures for a variety of reasons, then magnified by factors of structural racism.
One additional image to add that I saw driving yesterday through the West side of Chicago, this while the new Illinois state law mandating mask use when outside if a distance of greater than six feet cannot be maintained - a pair of Chicago police officers having stopped a car with the officer sticking his head into the car to talk with the driver, none of them, officers or driver and passenger, wearing masks. Really, WTF.
Some of these same factors overlap in rural white poor communities btw … not all of course … but they too will likely be hit harder than more higher SES communities when they get their full brunt, even if not as bad.
Similar concerns in the UK, and there doesn’t appear to be a simple, single explanation.
As the quoted NPR piece notes, poorer (mostly darker) US communities suffer with insufficient and biased healthcare. Blacks and LatinXs are stronger and dumber than Whites so they don’t need medical support, right? Alas, racism is a disease with no sure cure.
Clarifying RioRico that while explicit racism exists and contributes to disparities, not all that is girds structural racism is based on such explicit beliefs.
I’d guess that this is the main factor, but I was going to couch it in terms of being in a job that requires you to show up or get fired despite the danger, but is not so critical that they will provide you with masks and sanitizer.
I wonder if another factor – definitely far from the only factor since the disparities are so high – could be the natural resistance some European populations have evolved to the Plague, which attacks immune cells in a similar manner to HIV, and Covid has also been implied to do. So I wonder if people with this beneficial mutation might be more resistant to secondary infections like pneumonia.
I could think of at least half a dozen possible reasons for the racial disparity, some of which have been mentioned in this thread. One that I don’t think has is population density. The OP mentions that 14% of the population of Michigan is black, but how many of those are concentrated in urban areas where they live and work in close proximity to lots of other people?
I am surprised the officers were not wearing masks. However, drivers are not required to wear masks, themselves.
P.S. There is NO Illinois state law mandating mask use. That’s part of the reason that the governor is getting sued for exceeding his authority.
You are correct: it is “an order” not “a law” - my imprecision and my apologies.
Lawsuits challenging the power of the governor’s emergency authority are noted. No legal scholar I, but I’d still bet on his authority to order those in the state to use masks when in a public place where they can’t maintain a six-foot social distance and in public indoor spaces, such as stores, at least if over 2 years old and able to medic ally tolerate it, will stand.
The WTF was aimed at the officers. Although if I was stopped in a car I’d put on my mask if someone else came to my open window.
It did NOT stand for this individual, are others are planning on a class-action type suit to make it applicable to the entire state.
In my city, most public transit riders are black. It is hard to do any kind of social distancing on a packed bus.
I’ve wondered about blood types. There are some studies that show that people with type A are worse off than people with type O. Here’s a map from Wikipedia that shows the distribution of type A blood. In the US it is most common in part of the northeast and southern states.
You do understand that a county judge granting a restraining order is not the same as winning a case?
Again, not a lawyer, and it might be that the court will rule in favor of the plaintiff that governor emergency powers are only able apply for one month. Not sure what the plaintiff can do now he could not have done before the order.
Thanks for the info and discussion on the reasons. Note that I was also looking for stats and why the old (and not particularly accurate) 40/14 claim in Michigan is still being cited.
I’ve long thought that big cities should be better protected. Here in Michigan, nothing was done by the Governor about Detroit any sooner than the rest of the state. On the other side of the coin, there is a bit of loosening going on and the Upper Peninsula is still being locked down as much as Detroit is. Its almost like going down the road of regional differences within a state would open officials up to questioning about why regional factors weren’t used in the very beginning.
The overall metro area was 22.8% African-American in the 2010. (Be careful about assuming too much stability in data that old. The city that was already suffering a decades long trend of population losses that ramped up after 2000. Since then the city has been through a state takeover of city government, bankruptcy, and the start of a resurgence that finally seems to be slowing population loss. Things have been chaotic, to say the least.)
The city itself is 82% African-American (cite talks broadly about 2020 populations but does not specify source or as of date for that estimate.)
It is one of the problems of the comparison of simple statewide numbers of deaths to population. We should expect to see much higher death numbers among African-Americans than statewide racial demographics would suggest even if the death rates were the same. Nationwide the disease has tended to produce more infections in larger and more densely packed populations. Detroit has, in keeping with those understandable trends, been the hotspot for Michigan’s outbreak. Even if there is no racial disparity in infection inside the hotspot, we should still see African-Americans being infected at rates higher than their percentage of the statewide population.
The raw numbers in Michigan mix together two different types of causes. One is that African-Americans are more are risk of dying if they catch it. The other cause is that African-Americans in Michigan are more likely to have caught the disease in the first place.
I would too–but not if I was black, and especically not if I was a black dude. I would be scared it would be seen as threatening (“he made moves to conceal his face” or even “he was reaching for something in the front seat”.)
In addition to having more of the comorbidities seen in covid-19 patients with severe disease Black people are also much more likely to be vitamin D insufficient and deficient. Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency has been linked in multiple studies to more respiratory illness and poorer immune response.
And right on cue — a study linking vitamin D deficiency insufficiency to covid-19 outcomes. Adjusting for age and comorbidities a person who is vitamin D deficient is 10 times more likely to die with covid-19.
