Thread by @19thnews

🧵Harvard’s @GenderSciLab on Monday published the first study that examines the race and gender of those dying from COVID-19.

The study found that Black women are dying from COVID at three times the rate of both White and Asian men in Georgia and Michigan.bit.ly/2PxwCoO

The researchers examined census data and publicly available COVID-19 mortality data through September 21, 2020, from Michigan and Georgia — the only two states that reported disaggregated age, race and sex information. bit.ly/2PxwCoO

More findings include:

— Black men had far higher COVID mortality rates than any other race or gender group.

— The disparity between Black women and White women is larger than between White men and White women. bit.ly/2PxwCoO

— The disparity between Black men and women is larger than between White men and women.

— It wasn’t even possible for the researchers to analyze Latinx populations because Georgia and Michigan did not report ethnicity separate from race at the time. bit.ly/2PxwCoO

Many researchers focus on differences in biology to explain the differing mortality rates across gender lines, but this study challenges that focus and interest.

These results show that differences across race and gender cannot fully be explained by genetic differences.

There are social factors involved, and racial differences were interpreted as a “marker of historical and ongoing oppression of communities and individuals.”

Occupation and health care access, for instance, are structural factors that likely contribute to mortality disparities.

— Black workers also disproportionately represent public-facing jobs in the health care, transportation and service industries.

— There is also an overrepresentation of Black women working as nursing assistants and home health aides, where potential for COVID exposure is high.

“The COVID-19 pandemic did not create these inequities,” Richardson said. “It only made them newly visible.”

More from @marielpadilla_: bit.ly/2PxwCoO