Many more black Americans die from the crown. It is due to poverty and fitness.

“Most of the people I know at first thought we couldn’t understand it,” Marlon Creech said by phone. Thirty is a Coca Cola trucker and a part-time police officer in Allendale County, South Carolina. He is also what she is a community leader call it. In addition to his two jobs, he mentors black children from single-parent families, provides sports counseling, and arranges outings for them as alternative exploration, if there is no stay-at-home order due to the Covid-19 epidemic.

At the start of the outbreak, Creech did not know of any African American who had contracted the virus. In sparsely populated Allendale County, so far only one infection has been diagnosed. It would be the melanin in their black skin that protected them, their friends told themselves. “We only understood that this was not true when the basketball player did it, Robert Godert of the Utah Jazz.”

It has been the other way around, according to the figures published last week. In the United States, the epidemic hit African Americans above average. They are more susceptible to the Covid-19 virus, and if they become infected, it affects them the most: they are overrepresented in hospital admissions and mortality statistics.

Mobile testing sites in Washington DC show some of that overrepresentation. About 20 cars pass a large bus run by health insurer Kaiser Permanente on a corner east of the Capitol. African Americans are in 19 of them. The nurse, wearing a double-sided mask and a loose plastic poncho over her uniform, takes a sample from her nose, enters the bus for a moment, and a moment later puts a note through the car window.

Arterial hypertension

Not all fifty states in the US USA They systematically track the ethnicity of Covid-19 patients. More and more states are beginning to do so, as statistics on where they stay show that black Americans are more affected than any population group. Tougher than Latinos who are relatively the largest victim group in New York’s hot spots. And much more difficult than white Americans.

In Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, where they account for a quarter of the population, African Americans account for half of all identified infections and three-quarters of all deaths. In the state of Louisiana, 70 percent of all deaths are black, while they represent approximately a third of the population. In Michigan, 40 percent of deaths come from the black community, which represents 14 percent of the population.

One in three admitted Covid-19 patients is black, while accounting for only 13 percent of the population

The federal health service CDC released a report Wednesday extrapolating the numbers across the country. Conclusion: One in three admitted Covid-19 patients is black, while they represent only 13 percent of the total population. White Americans, three-quarters of the total population, account for less than half of all hospital admissions. For Latinos (18 percent of the population), that’s 8 percent.

Doctors point to hereditary predisposition in black Americans, who partly because of this more often have conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. That makes them more susceptible to this corona virus. About 40 percent of all African Americans have high blood pressure, with an innate sensitivity to salt. High blood pressure is the most common condition among American victims of the Covid-19 epidemic.

But General Surgeon Jerome Adams, the senior public health official, stressed at the White House daily press conference this weekend that the biased relationship is primarily the result of “non-genetic, non-biological causes, but the structural social backwardness of the Negro.” . Americans “Not surprisingly, they get hit harder.” He also noted the high mortality rates among Native Americans on their reserves. “Of the houses there, 30 percent do not have running water. Therefore, these people cannot wash their hands as often as we prescribe,” says Adams. And he pointed out to himself: an asthmatic child, like many children Above-average blacks, who had overcome the barriers of centuries of disadvantage and always walk with an inhaler.

No money to stay home

The main social consequence of deprivation is poverty. The income gap between black and white Americans is large and is growing again after the 2008 crisis. White American households own, on average, ten times more than blacks.

Relative to the Covid-19 epidemic, it means that black Americans are in poorer health, are more often poorly insured, and earn so little that they have to ignore all government advice to stay home because they simply cannot afford it. luxury of staying at home. “That’s the big mess,” said Marlon Creech of South Carolina. “All those children that I normally supervise and keep busy generally only have one mother who takes care of them, and that mother has two or three jobs to support the family. So I organize activities for these children, otherwise they will hang out on the street. “Due to the epidemic, she can no longer organize activities.” But those mothers are still away from work all day. ”

According to Surgeon General Adams, only one in five African Americans has jobs that allow them to work from home.

Driving on the Washington DC subway during a rush hour means not seeing whites for an hour.

Driving on the Washington DC subway during a rush hour means not seeing whites for an hour. “I have to,” says Sol Linwood, who enters the Green Line stop at Gallery Place, her mouth and nose covered in a “Stop the Rona” cap. He is happy to be able to continue working in the metro company; Acquaintances who have applied for unemployment benefit spend hours on the phone without being connected to social services.

On Saturday, Adams and Vice President Mike Pence spoke to several hundred prominent members of the African American community to discuss how best to reach the government. Churches, one of the information centers for black Americans, are forced to close. What certainly will not have helped is that, especially in the southern states of the USA. With a relatively large number of African American residents, the governors later announced far-reaching measures against the epidemic in the west and northeast of the country. The CDC will issue guidelines tailored specifically to “communities of color,” Adams said. Sunday was still unknown.

Erosion

Then there is a social cause, more difficult to understand, but contained in scientific reports: erosion, as well as “erosion”. The term was coined by Arline Geronimus, a professor of public health at the University of Michigan. His hypothesis is that the poor health and shorter life expectancy of black Americans cannot be fully explained by their plight in the economic situation. According to her, part of this is due to the stress that life brings in a society full of discrimination.

The New York Times He spoke to her this week, and she said she had been screaming on television when she heard the news of the overrepresentation of black Americans among Covid-19 victims. “They said on television: ‘We don’t know why.’ And I stay there and say: ‘It is erosion! “

Also read this article on crown in prisons

Marlon Creech sighs over the phone from South Carolina. Yes, these young people face racism, although most of them do not usually interact with white Americans. He entered a store earlier today, the servant said to him, “Hello Bobby Brown.” “My name is not Bobby Brown,” said Creech. It did not stop the servant from continuing to make annoying jokes.

As a police officer, Creech tries to abide by the warnings when he arrests someone during this epidemic. “The fines will only make people a bigger problem and this is not the time to send someone to prison.” Several prisons in the United States have become contamination hot spots. A district official compared the situation at Chicago’s Cook County Jail to “a Petri dish.” In this prison, 276 detainees and 172 guards were infected.

What Creech thinks is boring is that a White City official told the local television station that the police are not issuing fines now. “So of course nobody cares,” says Creech.