Via The Washington Post: Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are still dying from covid-19 at higher rates than Whites. Excerpt:
Dennis Bannister’s daughter, Demi, was the first to die.
She was only 28, a beloved third-grade teacher who likely caught the virus during a training at her Columbia, S.C., school district. Doctors diagnosed her with a bladder infection, and by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late. Not long after, the family’s matriarch, Shirley, 57, complained of difficulty breathing. She was twice sent home from the emergency room before returning by ambulance and being put on a ventilator. She died soon after.
Which left Dennis Bannister, childless and a widower, sitting on his porch last month, staring at the last of the green leaves and mourning. Why, he pondered, had the virus hit his family so hard, and not just them, but so many African Americans? Was there something that made them particularly vulnerable? Had they gotten the right care?
“Folks think maybe they saw an African American coming in, and they didn’t take them seriously,” reflected Bannister, who was also infected but asymptomatic. “I don’t know. I just pray God will help me find a way to deal with the situation.”
It’s not just grieving relatives who are demanding answers. Nearly nine months after the virus exploded in the United States, and amid big treatment strides, the disease continues to ravage African American and other minority communities with a particular vengeance. Black, Asian, Native American and Hispanic patients still die far more frequently than White patients, even as death rates have plummeted for all races and age groups, according to a Washington Post analysis of records from 5.8 million people who tested positive for the virus from early March through mid-October.
Death rates overall have fallen more than 80 percent from the pandemic’s peak in the spring, when refrigerator trucks were parked outside New York City hospitals and ice rinks were converted into morgues, according to an analysis of anonymized data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But as another wave of infections sweeps across the country this fall, losses among racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately large. Black Americans were 37 percent more likely to die than Whites, after controlling for age, sex and mortality rates over time. Asians were 53 percent more likely to die; Native Americans and Alaskan Natives, 26 percent more likely to die; Hispanics, 16 percent more likely to die. Those higher case fatality rates for diagnosed people of color are on top of the increased infection rates for those unable to isolate at home because they are essential workers.
These patterns have devastated communities of color across the country: multigenerational Latino households in Texas, Pacific Islander families in Washington state, African American families in South Carolina.
Advocacy groups, researchers and other experts say many of these deaths are preventable, and they blame federal, state and local leaders for failing to take the disparities seriously and take steps to address them.
