Thread by @charles_gaba

🧵 So, I delved into the "COVID death rates by race" issue last winter, and like @DLeonhardt, I initially didn't include age adjustment in my post: 1/ acasignups.net/22/01/01/nchs-…

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1534877805753864198

Here's the graph I used at the time. The dotted lines are the % of the total U.S. population of each racial group. The bars show what % of total U.S. COVID deaths were among that racial group for each month, through December 2021. HOWEVER, note that this is *unweighted*. 2/

After a similar (if far smaller, since I have a far smaller platform) controversy over the "age adjustment by race" issue, I modified this graph to reflect, as best as I could figure, the *age-adjusted* COVID death rate by racial group, like so: 3/

There were two main points I was making at the time: The first was that white people had started dying of COVID at a disproportionately high rate starting last June (basically, from the moment the Delta wave started); the second was that this rate was *increasing* over time. 4/

If you adjust each race by age, the 1st point disappears: White people are still dying at a disproportionately low rate. My 2nd point remains true, however: They're still dying at a disproportionately low rate, but the age-adjusted gap has definitely *dropped* substantially. 5/

In terms of *cumulative* COVID death rates, I *think* this is what it looked like as of Dec. 2021 *when age-adjusted*: It *has* dropped for Black & Hispanics, but is still disproportionately high...while it *has* increased for Whites, but is still disproportionately low. 6/

Regardless of the age adjustment issue, the other point is that White Americans (overall) DIDN'T CARE about COVID when they thought it was mostly killing minorities. That's not me shooting my mouth off; it's backed up by a study published this spring:
acasignups.net/22/06/09/shock…

I haven't revisited the "age adjusted by race" subject again since then, as I'm not comfortable that I know enough about the issue to properly analyze it. I *would* strongly advise folks to read @JonathanMetzl's #DyingOfWhiteness, however. amazon.com/Dying-Whitenes…