Do you know why African-Americans align with so many COVID-19 co-morbidities? Structural racism. Food deserts=unequal access to healthy & fresh foods= diabetes, heart disease. Enviro injustices mean dirty air, water. Greed & neglect, subpar housing=asthma
Do you know that grocery stores use #census tracts to determine where they should open? Black, Latinx, AAPI, Native & Indigenous communities rank as the most undercounted & in turn are under resourced by the federal govt=cycle of intergenerational poverty & poor health outcomes.
RIP my mentions w/all of the victim blaming re: disproportionate COVID-19 deaths in the Black community. No one is playing victim (we are resilient) or the "race card". Your willful ignorance is exhausting. Systemic oppression thru structural racism is real.
It has been a slow killer of people & communities & now it is proving a more blunt tool of death in the midst of a pandemic. This is why we need race/ethicity data collected, disaggregated & publicly reported.
We are already collecting age & gender. Data informs our public health response & containment strategies, it helps us to identify trends, clusters, it holds us accountable to equitable access to testing & treatment. IT WILL SAVE LIVES. It is a matter of the PUBLIC HEALTH.
