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A must-read by @CharlesMBlow. For anyone who studies how Black ppl embody health disparities (diabetes, hypertension, HIV/AIDS, incarceration, homelessness, asthma) it is unsurprising but still heartbreaking to see COVID add to systemic racism of health. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-black-people.html
A related must-read: @uche_blackstock and @juliacraven discussing "How Racial Health Disparities Will Play Out in the Pandemic" in @Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/how-racial-health-disparities-will-play-out-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic.html
I am thinking back on John Henryism, the biophysical medical term coined by Sherman James to explain why Black men die younger: bc racism literally strains & harms cardiovascular health https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/28/not-white-thing-suicide-african-americans
The idea of rationing ventilators is both ableist and racist, as @SFdirewolf has pointed out. Here, read how @uche_blackstock points out to @juliacraven what rationing ventilators would mean regarding anti-Blackness (via ableism, implicit bias & how physicians view Black pain)
I've been thinking abt the tiers of COVID threat. There's who is least likley to be exposed (upper class white ppl), those much more likely (Black/brown working ppl, especially in med jobs) & living targets (ppl incarcerated or homeless). Maps onto HIV/AIDS risk in many ways. BUT
BUT then there is the risk of who will survive if exposed. And that's where the health disparities @CharlesMBlow & @uche_blackstock & Sherman James I are talking abt kick in a 2nd time.
The ravages of racism predict worse outcomes for a Black person going onto a ventilator, IF they get a ventilator. A white person is much more likely to survive intubation than a Black person w systemically higher rates of cardiovascular damage.
One of the counter-intuitive things about Black health disparities is they often cut across class. See @lindavillarosa on Black maternal health. Even wealthy Black women still are plagued by all kinds of persistent health disparities https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html
I so appreciated @chasestrangio pointing out not just that Lorena Borjas was more at risk for COVID exposure, but that trans immigrants (whose bodies are ravaged by transphobia, racism, xenophobia, homelessness, incarceration) are again less likely to survive exposure.
And we haven't even gotten to the wave of death that is going to slaughter people in jails, prisons, immigrant detention camps, Gaza, refugee camps. Detention ctrs scoop up ppl already harmed by systemic racial health, house them closely & then deny them adequate medical care.
For more on the genocidal COVID crisis Black America is facing because of prisons, read @Jamiles https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/28/how-is-the-justice-system-responding-to-the-coronavirus-it-depends-on-where-you-live & his colleagues at the @MarshallProj https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/31/why-jails-are-so-important-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus
