COVID-19: Ensuring We’re All in This Together:

Blacks Disproportionately Affected 

We Demand National Racial Statistics on COVID-19   

The novel coronavirus has claimed 16,231 American lives through April 9. However, data about the race and ethnicity of the deceased is available for just 35% of deaths.

At the time of this writing, only eight states were releasing full or partial COVID-19 death data disaggregated by race and ethnicity: California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and North Carolina. In addition, the cities of Chicago and New York, and the counties of Los Angeles, Calif., and Milwaukee, Wisc., were also releasing race statistics regarding mortality. (Mississippi has since released race data and will be included in future analyses.)

                                         

Nearly 50% of Milwaukee’s COVID cases and 81% of its deaths were Black. In Michigan Blacks made up 35% of coronavirus cases and 40% of deaths.

The federal government refuses to release statistics on the racial breakdown of COVID-19.  States have begun to release their data but it is still not complete.  We must have this data published to fight the disease, save our community and ensure resources and research are equitably mobilized.

 

 An immediate call to action to save our community!

As we move forward, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely represent the single biggest threat to humanity, more than any war, natural disaster or prior infectious virus outbreak.  The dynamics of the world as we know it will be forever changed.  The potential mortality rate is staggering with estimates of 200,000 in the USA alone. These estimates are could potentially be grossly underestimated.  

It is times like this when strong leadership must be demonstrated.  That leadership appears to be lacking on all levels inclusive of the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), President of the United States, and at most state levels where governors refuse to acknowledge the trend of this viral spread and fail to make reasonable and rational decisions to combat the spread. We know there currently is not treatment for the virus and so a directive as simple as mandating social distancing through the stopping of social gatherings would constitute strong leadership. As there is no treatment, containment is our only hope. The effect will be long lasting in a world that is exceedingly transient, the sacrifices made in lost work, confinement and lives lost in area will be threatened by the spread of the virus in other locales. Without strong leadership we run the risk of not containing the pandemic. We are running out of time.

Lost among the pandemic discussions centering on the lack of masks, gloves, ventilators and lives lost, is an understanding of its effect on aspects of our community.  The daily statistical releases cover positive cases, tests performed, hospitalizations and deaths at state, city, county levels and covering age and gender.  What is missing is how this disease is trends along racial lines. This data is not only important from a transparency and allocation of resource context but also scientifically.   

Leadership in the Black Community must rise to the occasion and educate, advocate and activate for all and especially those less fortunate.  We need leaders at all levels and positions in our community to speak up and leverage our collective access and resources to lessen the impact this pandemic will have on our precious community and demand that the reporting of racial demographic data be included by every state city and county.

Blacks are plagued with issues of structural racism that put us at a greater risk of not only contracting but succumbing to COVID-19.  These issues include:

·         Health care disparities

·         Overrepresentation in health, service and first responder professions

·         Susceptible diseases such as Heart Disease, Asthma, Diabetes run unabated in our communities

·         Overrepresentation in the prisons and jails.

·         Condensed living spaces

For these reasons, Blacks will be overrepresented in infection rates, mortality rates and income loss because of COVID-19.  Many of our friends, kin folk and coworkers are too poor to shelter at home.  With no savings, heavy debt loads, job instability, they are literally deciding between going to work and potential contracting the virus and dying or stay home and losing a job. 

Access to good quality healthcare has been absent in our communities for decades.  Intensive Care Unit beds tend to be disproportionately located in high income areas. Although we hear the discussion on allocation of ventilators, African Americans communities are starting from a scarcity of supply.  The images being shown in NYC from Elmhurst Hospital in Queens or Bellevue in Manhattan are both hospitals servicing a disproportionate amount of low-income African Americans. 

The data suggests that Blacks have a disproportionately higher probability of contracting the virus because of jobs which don’t allow them to work remotely, being greater users of mass transit and therefore at an increased risk of exposure to the virus. Moreover, they are more likely to die from the virus because of the lack of adequate medical care and their high prevalence of susceptible diseases. We can reasonably conclude that African American communities nationwide are destined for devastation.   

The CDC, and most state departments of health have not released data (hospital admission, death, etc.) relative to the racial/ethnic breakdown of those infected with COVID-19.  A select few systems are transparent and release their statistics and numbers tell a horrible tale. For example, as of Friday morning, April 3, 2020, African Americans made up nearly 50% of Milwaukee’s 945 COVID positive cases and 81% of its deaths. The black population in that County is just 26%. In Michigan, where blacks constitute 14% of the State’s population, they made up 35% of coronavirus cases and 40% of fatalities, many of these in Detroit, which has a large population of Blacks.  New Orleans, Louisiana has not published case breakdowns by race, but 40% of the State’s deaths have occurred in Orleans Parish, where most residents are black.  The others to report racial COVID-19 data include Illinois and North Carolina and both indicate the disproportionate infection and death of the black community. 

While frightening, this data is not surprising.  But we must act not as a community to stop it and demand action. 

We must immediately call for all departments of public health to release the ethnic and gender breakdown of the following:

1.       Access to testing

2.       Tests performed

3.       Hospital admittance for COVID-19

4.       Deaths from COVID-19 or coronavirus related illnesses

These statistics are critical for us to (1) know and understand scientifically what is transpiring, and (2) to assure equal access to quality healthcare and opportunity for survival.  Race should not render one defenseless to surviving COVID-19.  We are all in this together as humans first and Americans second.

If you agree, we need you to call upon our political leaders and demand they serve us in this time of despair as they were elected to do by calling upon the President of the United States, CDC, all states and territories to release ethnic and race-based data immediately.

Please digitally sign the Change.org petition to show your support.  Being silent is not an option and will resign our community to certain devastation in the loss of lives, not to mention the economic impact.