Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
VIRUS’ toll on blacks stirs concern.
Medical professionals, activists pressure government for data
As a clearer picture emerges of covid-19’s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many black people African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity.
A growing chorus of medical professionals, activists and political figures is pressuring the federal government to not just release comprehensive racial demographic data of the country’s coronavirus victims, but also to outline clear strategies to blunt the devastation on black people and other communities of color.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first breakdown of covid-19 case data by race, showing that 30% of patients whose race was known were black. The federal data was missing racial information for 75% of all cases, however, and did not include any demographic breakdown of deaths.
The latest Associated Press analysis of available state and local data shows that nearly one-third of those who have died are black, with black people representing about 14% of the population in the areas covered in the analysis.
Roughly half the states, representing less than a fifth of the nation’s covid-19 deaths, have yet to release demographic data on fatalities. In states that have, about a quarter of the death records are missing racial details.
Health conditions that exist at higher rates in the black community — obesity, diabetes and asthma — make black people more susceptible to the virus. They also are more likely to be uninsured, and often report that medical professionals take their ailments less seriously when they seek treatment.
“It’s America’s unfinished business — we’re free, but not equal,” civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson said.
“There’s a reality check that has been brought by the coronavirus, that exposes the weakness and the opportunity.”
This week, Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the National Medical Association, a group representing black physicians and patients, released a public health strategy calling for better covid-19 testing and treatment data. The groups also urged officials to provide better protections for incarcerated populations and to recruit more black people to the medical field.
Daniel Dawes, director of Morehouse College’s School of Medicine’s Satcher Health Leadership Institute, said America’s history of segregation and policies led to the racial health disparities that exist today.
“If we do not take an appreciation for the historical context and the political determinants, then we’re only merely going to nibble around the edges of the problem of inequities,” he said.
The release of demographic data for the country’s coronavirus victims remains a priority for many civil-rights and public health advocates, who say the numbers are needed to address disparities in the national response to the pandemic.
After Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation last week to try to compel federal health officials to post daily data breaking down cases and deaths by race, ethnicity and other demographics, the CDC released only caseload data.
Mistrust runs deep among residents in many communities.
St. Louis resident Randy Barnes is grappling not just with the emotional toll of losing his brother to the coronavirus, but also with the feeling that his brother’s case was not taken seriously.
Barnes said the hospital where his brother sought treatment initially sent him home without testing him and suggested he self-quarantine for 14 days. Five days later, his brother was back in the hospital, where he was placed on a ventilator for two weeks. He died April 13. Barnes’ brother and his wife also were caring for an 88-year-old man in the same apartment, who died from the virus around the same time.
“Those people are not being tested. They’re not being cared for,” Barnes said.
Eugene Rush lives in one of the areas outside large urban cities that have been hit hard with coronavirus cases. He is a sergeant for the sheriff ’s department in Michigan’s Washtenaw County, west of Detroit, where black residents account for 46% of the covid-19 cases although they represent only 12% of the county’s population.
Rush, whose job includes community engagement, was diagnosed with covid-19 near the end of March after what he initially thought was just a sinus infection. He had to be hospitalized twice, but is now on the mend at home, along with his 16-year-old son, who also was diagnosed with covid-19.
“I had a former lieutenant for the city of Ypsilanti who passed while I was in the hospital and I had some fraternity brothers who caught the virus and were sick at the hospital,” Rush said.
“At that point, I said, ‘Well, this is really, really affecting a lot of people’ and they were mostly African American. That’s how I knew that it was really taking a toll a little bit deeper in the African American community than I realized.”