the daily show reported on a study that said black americas are much less likely to be given tests even when tests are available than white americans.
could be a lot of specific reasons for that, but ultimately they all boil down to racism ( systemic or otherwise )
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yup. 
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link to trevor noah’s piece on this:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-vhVrdpUFS/?igshid=wwi1j2g6u4sh
Listen…
When you already dont go to the doctor regularly, because you just cant afford it
When you dont eat as healthily as possible because you dont have access to better quality food
When you take public transit regularly because you cant afford to drive
When you live in crowded, less sanitary areas because those are the only places where the rent is even barely manageable
OF COURSE you’re going to be hit harder by a tragedy; that’s how a fucking racist caste system works.
And that’s the lived experience of many POC in this country and across the world.
It doesn’t have fuck all to do with “genetics” or anyone’s existing ‘predisposition to contagion.’
It has to do with the unsustainable societal disparity of our world, no matter how unwilling some of us are to acknowledge that reality.
I’d bet a huge factor for infection rates is urban vs suburban / rural residency. You could also get into lifestyle issues (extended family living / childcare vs isolated nuclear families). Neither of those is caused by structural racism or poverty per se, because there are other communities that share those traits but do not have increased poverty rates, decreased access to education, etc.
The thing that is a head scratcher for me is Georgia. Why is the situation actually REVERSED there? My guess would be a large population of rural blacks, and blacks and whites living more similar lifestyles (extended family etc). On the other hand, infection rates could also be skewed wildly by something like one idiot holding service in his mega church.
For fatality rates… that’s just straight up black folks getting fucked over on healthcare (long term maintenance and short term critical response) and lifestyle / safety net situations (start to get sick, can’t take time off to rest, etc).
Eh, not exactly. The sickle cell gene is an evolutionary response to widespread malaria, so it actually occurs in populations around the globe that have historically been exposed to the parasite. So the gene is found in parts of Africa (in particular, the part where people were abducted for the American slave trade), the Mediterranean (Italy, Greece, Turkey), the Middle East and India (where some regions have very high incidents of the trait). But because of the medical establishment trying to shoehorn things into arbitrary, socially defined constructs like “race,” it gets known as an African/African-American trait.
There’s all sorts of weird, completely wrong medical notions based on racism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, doctors noticed that lung capacity varied enormously between individuals, independent of size/weight/chest size. They came up with random justifications as to why this was, in the US deciding it was a “racial” trait, in England linking it to occupation. Both are total nonsense. England, at least, looked at the evidence and realized they were being silly in the 20th century, but apparently in the US, this wrong information is still taught in medical schools, and codified into medical instruments. Which has a direct impact on how African Americans get treated for lung-related conditions…
I’m reminded of research that showed that, adjusted for wealth (and pre-existing health conditions), black women still had a much higher maternal mortality rate than white women, and that black patients were less likely to get pain relief and other treatments than were white patients. So even when you manage to get beyond the socio-economic factors that negatively impact health, the sheer racism of the medical establishment itself comes into play: patients aren’t listened to as much, their concerns aren’t taken as seriously, they’re subject to a myriad of prejudices both minor and major that impact the treatments they’re given (or denied).
Absolutely, there’s that:
Even affluent Black people and other POC get sick and die at disproportionate rates, largely due to a systemic and long-entrenched subliminal refusal to see us as actual human peers to White people - full stop.
I know that’s a bitter pill to swallow for some people; regardless, that’s the reality of the world those of us who are not denial live in…
Yup. Nothing new here
• When you have to take work in manual, face-to-face, service or caring professions, with little job security, less savings. And frequently several jobs.
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