Medical professionals take their ailments less seriously when they seek treatment…
AP Photo
(Liberty Headlines) As a clearer picture emerges of the Wuhan flu‘s decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many 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 African Americans and other communities of color.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first breakdown of Wuhan flu 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 African American, 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 African Americans 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 Rev. Jesse Jackson told the AP. “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 African American physicians and patients, released a joint public health strategy calling for better Wuhan flu testing and treatment data.
The groups also urged officials to provide better protections for incarcerated populations and to recruit more African Americans to the medical field.
Jackson also expressed support for a national commission to study the black Wuhan flu toll modeled after the Kerner Commission, which studied the root causes of race riots in African American communities in the 1960s and made policy recommendations to prevent future unrest.
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.
The AP analysis, based on data through Thursday, found that of the more than 21,500 victims whose demographic data was known and disclosed by officials, more than 6,350 were black, a rate of nearly 30%.
African Americans account for 14.2% of the 241 million people who live in the areas covered by the analysis, which encompasses 24 states and the cities of Washington D.C., Houston, Memphis, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia — places where statewide data was unavailable.
The nation had recorded more than 33,000 deaths as of Thursday.
In some areas, Native American communities also have been hit hard. In New Mexico, Native Americans account for nearly 37% of the state’s 1,484 cases and about 11% of the state’s population. Of the 112 deaths where race is known in Arizona, 30 were Native Americans.
After Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation this 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 that — similar to the AP’s analysis of deaths —show 30% of 111,633 infected patients whose race is known were black.
African American patients in the 45-to-64 and 65-to-74 age groups represented an even larger share of the national caseload.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
