Health care disparities in the age of coronavirus
This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. Past work by a range of scholars has shown that “200 black people die every single day in these United States who would not have died if the health experience of African Americans was equivalent to that of whites,” said Harvard social scientist David Williams during an online discussion about race and health care last week. And the coronavirus pandemic provides new figures to support that grim statistic. A recent CDC report found that among “580 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with race/ethnicity data, approximately 45 percent were white, 33 percent were black, and 8 percent were Hispanic, suggesting that black populations might be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.” And a Washington Post analysis revealed that in places such as Chicago and...