Why are POC dying from #COVID19 #coronavirus at higher rates? Infectious diseases magnify health disparities. As someone who's spent most of my career working in #HIV #AIDS & #TB #tuberculosis, I agree with Dr. Fauci. These diseases "shine a bright light."

They are at higher risk for infection because social distancing is a *privilege.* Not everyone has the option to stay home and telework. That's here in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/coronavirus-social-distancing.html & in other countries, too. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-is-a-privilege/

POC are also at higher risk for infection because they're more likely to work in *essential* frontline jobs, whether that's in transportation, food services, agriculture, or healthcare. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/coronavirus-farm-workers.html & https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/04/07/subway-and-bus-workers-are-bearing-a-disproportionate-coronavirus-death-toll-1273457 & https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-exposing-our-racial-divides/609526/

In addition to being at higher risk for being exposed & getting infected, POC are then more likely to have severe #COVID19 disease. They have a higher prevalence of underlying medical conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, & diabetes.

And why do they have higher rates of underlying medical conditions? Everything from the toxic stress of discrimination... to food deserts... to living in areas with more air pollution and water pollution. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/covid-pm 

And then once they get sick, POC face greater barriers to getting health insurance and access to quality healthcare. It's no accident that the states that didn't expand Medicaid are also former slave states.

We have this belief in the U.S. that some people are deserving of health and healthcare, and some people don't. Some of this goes back to English ideas about poverty as a sin to be punished. (See Charles Dickens' many books on workhouses.)

And then there's the "Sanitary Movement" of the 1800s. This came about with urbanization, slumbs, tenements, sweatshops, & child labor. City infrastructure was overwhelmed. Diseases like cholera & TB spread among the" dangerous classes."

But it's not that they were sick because they lived in intolerable conditions, right? They were responsible because they made "choices." Their sickness was seen as a moral failing. They needed to be held personally responsible. (See Edwin Chadwick's works.)

We see these attitudes again in the US: See Samuel Roberts' "Infectious Fear" about #TB #tuberculosis control in Baltimore or Janet Kemp's "Housing Conditions in Baltimore." You see POC referred to as "incorrigible," "shiftless," "colossal ignorance," "disregard for hygiene."

Or what about Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The AMA at the time claimed that Chinese immigrants carried germs to which they were immune, but from which whites would die if exposed.

While others, like Dr. Arthur Stout in "Chinese Immigration and the Physiologic Causes of the Decay of a Nation," said the Chinese were at higher risk for "hereditary" diseases like TB, syphilis, and drug use.

Nevermind that Chinese immigrants were being persecuted by white miners who felt threatened by them. Nevermind that Chinese women were prevented from entering the country. We didn't want Chinese families establishing themselves here. We wanted them ghettoized.

And then you have the eugenics movement. It wasn't that POC were subject to conditions that put them at higher risk for disease. This was natural selection. Whites were supposedly more fit, constitutionally stronger. Another form of victim-blaming.