Time? Nothing will change for black and brown people
My last five columns have been in one way or another about COVID-19 and how the coronavirus has affected my life.
But in only one of those columns did I express the anger I feel at the slow response of getting critical information to blacks and other minorities so that we could perhaps better prepare ourselves against a virus disproportionately killing us.
And that slow response came not only from national and local leaders but also a Trump-fixated media that has only in the last few weeks begun to put its focus on this critical issue.
So now as the thick fog of COVID-19 begins to lift, it’s no longer a secret that blacks and other minorities are being hospitalized and dying at a higher rate than whites.
Just like it is no secret it is due to what has plagued minorities for decades: lack of access to health care, low-level jobs and poor working conditions, along with crowded and inadequate housing.
And nothing about those preexisting conditions that have led to so many deaths will change no matter how many people die.
Even now as “essential” hourly workers in meatpacking plants and supermarket chains drop dead in the midst of the pandemic, CEOs have pulled the extra financial incentives for them to work.
And the leader of the
Senate has vowed he will put a stop to enhanced unemployment benefits. So, there is little doubt what the future holds for low-income minorities and whites.
If there was ever a time when I wanted to raise my window, stick my head out and scream at the top of my lungs in fury that “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore,” it is right now.
But this column isn’t an Academy Award-winning script and the people affected by the coronavirus are not on set.
“There is no question that race and ethnicity is playing a role in COVID,” said Dr. David Hill, professor of medical sciences and director of global public health at the Frank H. Netter M.D. School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University.
Hill said in terms of testing positive for COVID-19, there is very little difference as minorities only test slightly higher than whites. But in terms of hospitalizations “it’s twice as frequent — and for death, it’s twice as frequent.”
I talked to Hill along with Dennis Brown, a clinical associate professor and director of the physician assistant program at the university, on Thursday.
“It’s just affecting more people who are in social situations that have been there for years … the problem has been there. COVID has just brought it out more,” Brown said. “Now is the time to look at this, recognize it and say we need better action because what we’re doing is not effective.”
Every day, I watch as the number of deaths and people infected with the coronavirus rises here in Connecticut and across the nation even as the number of hospitalizations falls.
Just in New Haven alone, black people account for nearly 50 percent of the city’s COVID-19-related deaths.
And that staggering statistic holds true across the nation.
In states like Louisiana, blacks account for 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths, but only 33 percent of the population. The same is true in Michigan, where blacks are 14 percent of the population but 40 percent of deaths, and in Chicago, 56 percent of deaths and 30 percent of the population.
Experts tell us that we can expect another wave of infections in the fall and some, like Harvard professor Marc Lipsitch, believe that “we will have a harder time controlling coronavirus in the fall.”
But what experts are not saying aloud to minorities continues to be the problem: It is virtually impossible to stop the spread under the current circumstances.
The only thing that can change is what we do in the future to correct our society’s social ills — but as Brown said, “that is a challenge.”
“There just is no easy way,” he said.
And as Hill said, that challenge starts with recognizing the problems in our own backyard — as he tells medical students who want to go to other countries to help.
“I say, ‘go overseas and then I want you to go into New Haven. And I want you to compare and contrast all the challenges you saw overseas — and you will see them all right in front of you.’ ... It is a microcosm of the challenges we have in our American society.”
But, of course, we have known that for decades.
That is why it pains me that this column is just another that will end up as a useless pile of words along with the words of other journalists who have been writing about this problem since America came into existence — and ultimately changed nothing.
Time? Nothing will change for black and brown people.