COVID-19 racial disparities span nation
But New York Times has to sue CDC to get data, as Trump spreads lies on coronavirus
President Trump continues to spread lies on the coronavirus pandemic. Is that also the reason for the CDC withholding national data on COVID-19? (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
Racial disparities in the spread of COVID-19 prevail not just in big cities, but span the nation, according to government data released by a leading newspaper.
The New York Times published a story Sunday aiming to show what it called “The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequality of Coronavirus.” It found that “racial disparities in who contracts the virus have played out in big cities like Milwaukee and New York, but also in smaller metropolitan areas. … The disparities persist across state lines and regions. They exist in rural towns on the Great Plains, in suburban counties, like Fairfax County, Va., and in many of the country’s biggest cities.”
The Times drew on official government data, but emphasized that it was not the federal government that was releasing it, stating that it was only “made available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
At the same time, President Trump last weekend claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic was overblown and that widespread testing only served to “show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless.” That was immediately determined to be “false” by the Times and was called irresponsible by medical experts, with the Times finding that “no matter how you define harmless, most public health experts and respected coronavirus disease models would flatly contradict Mr. Trump’s assessment.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to diminish the pandemic since before it took hold in the United States in March. The Times charged that was perhaps intentional in the CDC’s failure to release data on COVID-19 infections, as “the initial lack of transparency and the gaps in information highlight a key weakness in the U.S. disease surveillance system.”
The story quoted Andre Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, as saying, “You need all this information so that public health officials can make adequate decisions. If they’re not getting this information, then municipalities and neighborhoods and families are essentially operating in the dark.”
Gov. Pritzker and Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike reported early on in April that the pandemic was having a disproportionate effect on African Americans, following that a month later with the findings that Hispanics were also being adversely affected in larger numbers than the general population. Pritzker blamed “decades of institution inequities,” joined by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in pointing to historic, systemic racism in income, nutrition, housing, and health care. As such, they took steps to target African Americans and Hispanics in outreach, testing, and treatment for COVID-19 infections.
Chicago Mayor Lightfoot and Gov. Pritzker have both drawn attention to racial disparities in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — confirmed nationally by CDC health data. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
The Times data from the CDC confirm that, not just in major metropolitan areas like Chicago, but nationwide. According to the Times, using the limited but still extensive data it obtained from the CDC under the Freedom of Information Act, the national average was 38 COVID-19 cases for every 10,000 people, but Whites registered just 23 per 10,000, while African Americans stood at 62 and Hispanics 73 per 10,000.
A map of the country, with the data concentred east of the Mississippi River, found African Americans and Hispanics leading COVID-19 infection rates in the Northeast, in the South including North and South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, and across the Midwest including areas of Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota.
In Illinois, according to the Times, African Americans led infection rates with more than 50 cases per 10,000 people in Will, Kankakee, Winnebago, Knox, McDonough, and St. Clair counties. Hispanics led with a rate of more than 50 per 10,000 in all the other collar counties around Chicago, as well as Warren, Champaign, Jackson, and Randolph counties, peaking in Pulaski County along the Ohio River, where five cases in a small population produced an average rate of 400 for every 10,000 Hispanic residents.
Similarly, in Cook County, for every 10,000 people, Whites registered 49 cases, Asian Americans 56, African Americans 120, and Hispanics 160, but they were all topped by tribal Americans. Patients identifying as members of American tribes or nations, such as the Lakota, registered just 125 cases in Cook County, but with fewer than 10,000 residents. Projected over 10,000 people, it would suggest 209 testing positive.
On Monday, IDPH reported that new cases remained well below 1,000 a day, at 614, bringing the state total to 147,865. After Illinois surpassed 7,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 on Friday, newly reported daily deaths dropped into the single deaths over the weekend for the first time since March, with six confirmed Monday, taking the statewide toll to 7,026.
Pritzker, Ezike, Lightfoot, and Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady have all emphasized that the pandemic not only strikes minority communities more frequently, but also has a more violent effect in the severity of infections and mortality rates — again stemming from historic disparities in income, nutrition, and health care, leading to chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes, which have more frequently proved fatal when combined with the coronavirus.
In April, Pritzker called the racial disparities “a uniquely American problem,” saying, “Generations of systemic disadvantages in health-care delivery and in health-care access in communities of color, and black communities in particular, are now amplified in this crisis.”
The Times findings from the CDC data bear that out, even as Trump attempts to spreads lies calling 99 percent of cases “harmless.”