African-Americans are more likely to work in "essential" industries -- many work in grocery stores, and many are medics and nurses. That they fill these niches has prevented their unemployment from rising even more than it has. But the downside is that they are exposed to a greater viral load.
They are also less likely to have good health care insurance.
I wrote earlier,
- "11.5% of African-Americans are still without health care coverage, compared to 7.5% for whites. This statistic means that some 5- and-a-half million African-Americans are uninsured and probably just don't go to a doctor much. It would be as though all of Minnesota or all of Colorado was without health insurance."
Some 43 million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance, and some 7 million don't have a prospect of replacing it. This loss will hit African-Americans at least a little harder than other groups.
Republican governors refused to pitch in to Obamacare with Medicare expansion even though it did not cost them anything in the initial years, which made it too expensive for the poor. Over-all, before the present crisis 28 million Americans were not covered. African-Americans bulked large in that percentage.
Even where they manage to see a doctor, African-Americans with COVID-19 were substantially less likely to be diagnosed than white patients. Physicians were less likely to refer them for testing. Earlier in the pandemic, testing sites tended to be in affluent white neighborhoods. Hospitals in poor neighborhoods were less likely to have proper personal protective equipment for medical personnel, which reduced the amount of testing offered.
African-Americans are also often shunted off to residential areas near coal plants and other hazards for particulate matter, giving them asthma and other lung problems that are known risks for death by coronavirus. They often live in food deserts and buy high-calorie but inexpensive foods from the few convenience stores and so have problems with obesity, another comorbidity factor increasing coronavirus lethality.
Many experts believe that Trump's reluctance to shut down the country at the end of February when many government scientists wanted to do it much increased the death toll, and that Trump's policies are responsible for about 40% of our more than 103,000 deaths. (CDC scientists were determined to ask him to close the country down while he was in India in late February, but one of them spoke publicly and caused the market to fall and Trump came back from New Delhi angry that a falling market would hurt his reelection, so the scientists had to back off; Trump did not act until mid-March.)
That means that through malign neglect Trump has killed over 9,000 African-Americans with the coronavirus.
Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:
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