The numbers don’t lie when it comes to the devastating disproportional effect of the coronavirus pandemic on African Americans and other people of color. According to the CDC, 33% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are African Americans who represent only 13% of the nation’s population.
In Chicago, 68% of those who have died from the COVID-19 were African Americans. In New York City, Hispanics who make up 29% of the population represent nearly 34% of the deaths from the disease. Black New Yorkers represent 22% of the population but 28% of the deaths.
At the beginning of his program “PoliticsNation” on MSNBC last Sunday, April 12, the Rev. Al Sharpton cited these grim statistics and then asked his guest Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, about this troubling disparity. “It’s not that they [African Americans] are getting infected more often,” he began, basically reciting what he has said on a number of occasions, “it’s when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions—the diabetes, obesity, hypertension and diabetes—are the kind of things that end them up in ICU and ultimately give them a higher death rate.”
Add poverty to this lethal mix of medical and physical ailments and the disproportional results are easy to understand, though difficult to digest. The doctor confessed that it was not an easy situation to deal with.
Sharpton’s next questions to Dr. Fauci centered on when he was aware that the situation was becoming dangerous. Despite the round of allegations about misinformation and Trump’s blame on the Chinese and the World Health Organization, Fauci said the U.S. knew this was a problem near the end of December of last year. “They [China] said it was something like 24 cases in this wet market, where these exotic animals are sold and there is a human/animal interface.” He was referring to the Wuhan province.
“The proposal made by the authorities in China where this was jumping from animal to a human, and it wasn’t spread from human to human,” Fauci continued. Then it became clear when you look back, that it was likely in China that there was human-to-human spread. By the time we got that information and we started getting cases here…there was community spread.” This meant, he said, “that it wasn’t just a travel-related case, that there are cases that are in the community under the radar screen, then it became clear that we were in real trouble.”
That trouble was exacerbated by the Trump’s delay and denial, and that this was an issue that Fauci skirted though he did say that by the time a ban was put into effect it was too late. But in an earlier interview Fauci told reporters that if Trump had acted promptly “many lives could have been saved.” Moreover, it was later disclosed that the first case in the U.S. actually arrived from Italy.
Other guests on Sharpton’s show included Rep. Barbara Lee from California and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, each of whom provided further clarity and dimension to the coronavirus’s impact on Blacks and the communities of color.