African Americans are dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates than white people.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams told CBS on Tuesday, “When you look at being black in America — number one, unfortunately, people are more likely to be of low socio-economic status, which makes it harder to social distance. Number two, we know that blacks are more likely to have diabetes, heart disease, lung disease. And I’ve shared … that I have high blood pressure, that I have heart disease, and spent a week in the ICU due to a heart condition, that I actually have asthma, and I’m pre-diabetic. And so I represent that legacy of growing up poor and black in America. And I — and many black Americans — are at higher risk for COVID. It’s why we need everyone to do their part to slow the spread.”
In Louisiana, 70% of people who died of the novel coronavirus were black, despite being just 30% of the population. In LA County, 17% of people who died were black.