Covid Racial Data
The Covid Racial Data Tracker shows People of Covid are the Most Impacted by Covid.
The study just posts the numbers. It does not indicate reasons.
Question of Race
Q: Is race itself a factor in and of itself?
A: The report did not say but I suggest that’s unlikely.
Rather, access to testing, healthcare, hygiene, and density of living conditions are the keys.
For example, native Americans living on reservations also have higher rates of alcoholism, obesity, and suicide.
The CDC does not even have a category for American Indians or Alaska Natives.
The categories are White, Black, Hispanic, and Other. The latter is not properly tracked.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly notes “In 23 states with adequate race/ethnicity data, the cumulative incidence of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among AI/AN persons was 3.5 times that among non-Hispanic white persons.”
Mish
I’ve bene taking 4000 IU’s daily for years.
As another has noted: Lots of good and informative comments on this posting!
Couple notes:
Look at per-million excess death stats. Latin America is doing very badly. Sub-Saharan Africa is doing well. Middle East is weird. Western Pacific is doing very well. Lots of good proposals why.
Contrast of Africa with US Blacks: Don’t be fooled by genetic categories you’ve been taught. “Africa” is a really big place and the whole out-of-Africa theory of human origins rests on the fact that Africa has huge genetic variations.
Genetically, US blacks are a blend of relatively small but well populated part of Africa with a dose of NW Europe thrown in. To put this in perspective, Obama’s Dad comes from roughly 2 to 3 thousand miles from where US Blacks’ African ancestors come from. So does his Mom.
“Covid Does Not Affect All Races Equally”
I think that applies to virtually every medical condition. Saw on TV today that men are twice as likely to die from Covid than woman. But woman are more likely to have longer-term consequences. Then those with blood types A, B and AB are more likely to get the virus. And obese people are more likely to get Covid. On and on…
Heard of a study cant remember the nation. Basically risk of catching covid grocery stopping something like .002 percent. Chance of catching it as employee 9 percent.
Sounds like a 91% chance of NOT catching it then. Those are pretty nice odds.
Gosh, you would think that a government interested in keeping the virus under control would extensively fund research into all aspects of the disease and who is most susceptible and why and how it could be prevented.
And then perhaps they would do the basics like making masks and distancing manditory and evolve the process with even more advanced developments in protection.
And perhaps have spent the summer between school sessions with improving on how to better do distance learning and how to safely opening schools which is a greater driver on the well being of society and the economy than making sure bars were open as quickly as possible and as long as possible.
But, hey, it’s all a hoax. Covid, covid, covid all the time. Why can’t the media cover mythical plane crashes with 500 fatalities twice a day like we used to..
230,000 deaths.
But this is America. A microcosm of the world population and still being the 11th worst in the world in terms of number of cases. 5 times the world average in the number of cases per million. 1,000 times worse than a country like Taiwan.
Ummm, “they” is us.
So what are YOU doing to change “they” other than posting regularly on the Mish forums?
They is you.
Voting—elections have consequence
I thought that was the answer I might get. Voting does next to nothing. Your guy, my guy, ther guy, they are all the same beholden to power brokers and campaign money. Biden will try and clean up the mess Trump has made but there aren’t going to be any major societal changes under ‘ol Joe.
Doesn’t Mish know that any statistically disparity that is unfavorable to non-white people is, ipso facto, proof of structural racism? Ibram Kendi said so.
I’m no fan of the Ibram Kendis of this world. I view him as part of the problem, not part of the solution. But people are lined up to kiss his butt. We live in a strange new world, where reality seems to be optional.
Culture plays a huge role in this also. Hispanics live in multigenerational households and work in high risk jobs. Black also like in multi generational households and a tendency to congregate in large groups on a regular basis. They also work high risk jobs.
There is also a correlation between death rate an IQ when adjusting for age and Comorbidities. Take a peek at the counties that have done a good job with this and compare it to IQ. This is a highly racist idea in this day and age.
Countries that have done a good job have higher IQ’s?
Like Israel? Oh, wait.
No like Asia and Germany compared to most of Europe. Look at how bad the Middle East has been hammered even with their minuscule testing compared with western counties.
People tend to forget testing rates in many 2nd and 3rd world counties is tiny compared to the 1st world counties. The situation in many of those counties is terrible but not coved because it goes against the narrative of how bad the US has done.
Also Israel has tested at a far higher rate than there neighbors. Comparatively speaking they are doing a great job.
They just had to lock down again. I wouldn’t call that doing so great. Until they did……they were having a very serious resurgence.
If lockdowns worked, then there would not be 2nd or 3rd waves. The fact that the virus is resurging should give people thought that lockdowns and social distancing aren’t a real solution.
But noooooooo. Most of Europe is talking about new lockdown variations while trying to recover their economies and tax base. Just read tonight that my old boyhood town of Newark, NJ is considering locking down again due to the virus resurging.
I didn’t say one word about lockdowns, or whether lockdowns work. Lockdowns are a different subject than what we were discussing.
Oh, you mean what I said about Israel? They did lock down.again…and it does seem to be working, based on the numbers, Check it yourself. Whether that’s a cost effective solution is another matter.
When I was a kid, parents made their kids afraid to drink out of water fountains..but it kept them from getting polio. The fear argument is bogus.
900 cases today with a population of 10 million or 30k adjusted to the us population.
Or ~10% of France’s numbers. I call that good, like I said comparatively speaking.
Now instead of sticking on one point why don’t you think of my whole idea instead of the arguable outlier you found.
We’re not doing bad here at the moment, but I can pretty much guarantee you it isn’t because the IQ of Texans is higher than some other place.
What I’m questioning is your entire premise…that IQ matters at ALL…in any way.
What matters is behavior and compliance.
Are you kidding me? IQ is one of the most important factors in life for determining success of a person or country.
Adjusted for testing and age this map is spot on for coronaviruses. Lower IQ leads to emotional decisions. Higher IQ leads to rational decisions.
Have another.
Look. I’m very aware of various arguments concerning IQ and the effects it has on individuals as far as success, behavior, and so forth. But in this present circumstance your argument makes little sense.
In any population, regardless of the average or the median IQ, there will be enough people below the threshold of what we might call high intelligence…to perpetuate a disease like COVID..It doesn’t take a population of morons to spread COVID….and having a high median IQ is no reason to expect a population to remain disease free.
Correlation is not causation. And as you can clearly see in the US, it is cultural factors….and belief systems…..that matter. We have groups of people who are less well-educated…who engage in high risk behavior..because they don’t know any better, and they can’t tell good medical advice from bad…and the internet is full of bad medical advice.
I understand what you are saying but IQ fits the bill for most of what we are talking about. Correlation is not causation but correlation helps discover causation. That is my point.
IQ was at one point was used widely to predict a range of economic factors for areas and countries. It didn’t take long before it was consider a racist number as it is also a good predictor or skin color. Interestingly you can tell me a counties IQ and population and I can tell you their GDP. GDP is most likely also a very good predictor of covid infections.
I would also like to add covid numbers in lower income counties are garbage. Mexico for instance has tested 4.1% of the amount the US has tested. They have 11% as many cases as us.
In general I am a believer in IQ as a predictor of many things. GDP is not one I’ve looked at, but it makes sense.
I’m aware of the race angle too, and I have my own beliefs about race and IQ…I subscribe to the notion that spoken word cultures and written word cultures have very fundamental cultural differences that affect test scores. Written word cultures have more precision in the way things are measured and understood. This explains Africa, I think….many would disagree, I know
But it’s a well-known fact that even the best IQ tests have a hard time not introducing bias…..better educated populations typically do better on standardized tests of any kind…including IQ tests.
I could train a country of Down’s syndrome individuals to practice the kind of public health measures that help prevent COVID spread…if I could get compliance.
I agree IQ is not a perfect indicator in many ways. It was been changed over the years to try to include less educated individuals in a more representative way. It still is flawed in many ways though.
I just like to plant seeds in people’s minds. Keep an eye over the winter to see what counties have problems vs the ones that keep things in check. I also reserve the right to completely change my view point at any time if the data doesn’t reflect my theory. I am wrong more than I am right. I just try not to be wrong about the same thing twice.
It has been common knowledge from the beginning of this pandemic that its mortality was linked to factors such as obesity and diabetes. The racial groups being most impacted from the virus, are the same racial groups who have higher percentages of obesity and diabetics. Come on people this is not rocket science.
There is much we don’t know, and may never know. For example, Scandinavian countries all have much lower death rates than the rest of Europe. Why is the death rate low in Africa? Genetics? Diet? Medical care? Who knows….
–Average age of Africans is quite young, and age is the most significant factor.
–Many Africans are dead before they hit the age at which 90% of deaths occur here.
–Probably a lot of old people who die are not being tested for virus RNA, so all the ‘with Covid’ deaths are skipped, and we already know that only a small fraction of people die ‘from Covid’ without comorbidities; besides, there are huge disparities in the infrastructure to keep track of things.
After all that, healthcare and diet, let alone genetics, are probably minor factors.
Plus respiratory virus transmission is highly seasonal (low absolute humidity).
Oh yeah, poor countries use Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as well as herbal medicines that may have similar properties (green tea is also a tremendous zinc ionophore, and Zn++ ions interfere with the virus RDRP in the cell nucleus, if they can get there).
Us Westerners like high-tech solutions because that’s our mindset. That keeps us from looking at low-tech possibilities.
The whole “with Covid” versus “from Covid” is just an argument designed to distract and confuse the scientifically illiterate. How many of those people were “scheduled” to die this year? Very few. Most had a life expectancy of ten years or more. If Covid only killed the people who would have died anyway, there would be no excess deaths; deaths would have moved from other things to Covid. In fact, however, there are 300,000 excess deaths, which means that the number of people killed BY covid exceed the official count.
Covid killing people who would die anyway? I think that would yield excess deaths. But, later, fewer deaths. Covid should very slightly lower the result of a valid life-span calculation for the US.
Age? In the US, there has been no change in the relative deaths by age group with the advent of Covid19. In other words, old people die. Young people don’t die. Covid has had no effect on that fact. The ratio of old/young deaths has not changed from pre-Covid19. The only thing that has changed is that both numbers have scaled up by the same factor.
“both numbers have scaled up by the same factor.”
Why do you say that? I was looking at CDC death statistics, and found that of those who have died in the US since February, about 10% of the deaths of those 45 and over have had COVID … but that percent goes down progressively as you look at younger and younger age cohorts. For babies and very young children, COVID has only been involved in about 1% of the deaths since February.
Not sure this is exactly the same thing you were talking about, but I found it interesting.
Insert images of graphs here. But, the comment that had such images seems to have gone to the bit bucket.
Indeed, death rates have increased for all age groups, but have increased more for the 25-64 age groups. Their deaths are up about 50%, compared to the over 65 group with a smaller percentage increase. Life expectancy will fall slightly, no doubt, but the age distribution shouldn’t change much. Since covid has so little impact on the under 20 group, that age group will proportionally get a tiny bit larger.
Too early to compare the excess morbidity over 2020 to other years. Many prior years have seen spikes and troughs. When 30,000 people die of a heat wave in France for instance, when you look back at the whole year, there is no difference.
Many really good comments on this topic today.
This D vitamin biz is directly from Irish scientists w/same question re Scandinavia. The Irish pop is heavily weighted to older age as they are one of longest lived pop on earth. This is mitigated by one of Europe’s highest fertility rates. Extreme on both ends of the stats. Its a bias on both sides of the Atlantic among the Irish that the Irish are physically strongest in the world (hats off to Clarence Kennedy who seems to be illuminating this notion). Its nonsense but still fun to think that. In fact the Brit upper class has always thought this and the Brits have always been desperate to have Irish in their armies. Anyway, the Irish scientists quickly dropped this notion and gathered characteristics to study from both Irish/Scandinavian/Others in Europe. The researchers fell off their stools, er chairs, when they found these factors: due to lack of sun in Ireland/Scandinavia these folks stuff their dairy w/vitamin D. Due to abundant sun the Southern Euros (I know, always thinking money) do not. CRITICAL. In a way the south Euros are suffering from reverse sun poisoning. The researchers figured Vit D was inhibiting the Covid virus. Side Note: the French discovered the immense lack of enough sunshine when they conquered North Africa back in the 1800’s. The Moroccans simply covered themselves up too much. 2nd side note: interesting to investigate Africa, but my gosh, given what I think is awful stat work, why bother??????
Also Ireland is a nation of drunks, so perhaps the alcohol protects them? [lol]
Very interesting….
“Its a bias on both sides of the Atlantic among the Irish that the Irish are physically strongest in the world…..the Brit upper class has always thought this and the Brits have always been desperate to have Irish in their armies”.
I would have said it’s the fierceness, more than the strength. Even Hannibal liked Celtic soldiers.
My observation…I would have called the Irish blood in my family the weaker DNA, but maybe that’s just because the ones who look the most Irish are almost always alcoholics. lol. But they were no strangers to physical labor. Or war.
Fwiw….23andme doesn’t distinguish between Irish and English DNA ….nor do they distinguish between German and French DNA.
We could have the same phenomenon with Vitamin D here going on as in Southern Europe. Most of the year is very hot, and people live indoors, unless they work in something like highway construction or the roofing trade. We are further south in central Texas…..than Barcelona.
I drink a lot of fortified dairy by habit and appetite….always have……and now I take a Vitamin D supplement most days, if I think about it. I use sea salt to keep my trace minerals up, take some zinc once or twice a week.
No. In the US, death rates for 24-65s have not increased more than other groups’ death rates have increased, post-Covid. This is a fine point, but does demonstrate how we can be confused by numbers. I was until I got curious in the shower and checked.
Backing data URLs: data dot cdc dot gov slash resource slash vsak-wrfu.json for 2020 data. y5bj-9g5w.json for 2018-2020 data. Takes some processing to derive a stacked area graph.
The fact that stands out in the graph is that two or more races category has a vastly lower rate than all the others. Either it’s because of Heterosis or Hybred Vigor as it is also known or the graph is defective. Which one is it?
Problem is that to have two races, you need to posit a few pure basic races, with admixtures somewhere in between. Problem is that there isn’t really a way to distinguish the racially pure from the racially mixed, probably b/c there’s no such thing.
They are self-reporting I believe and that skews the results because it depends on to which race the individual sees himself belonging even if they are mixed like most people on Earth are to one extent or another.
Such statistics are hard to interpret, and many a commentator runs with it to prove this or that.
–There is some correlation with blood types, which have different distributions among races.
–There is some evidence that black people are less prone to respiratory illness.
–Some evidence for less vit D for darker skins.
–Black people in Africa offer little comparison: different age profile, too many differences in health and monitoring facilities, culture, etc.
–Men seem to have higher mortality, but others note that men of that age are generally more prone to death, and that when offset against different all cause mortality profiles, the difference between men and women is insignificant.
–There seems to be a genetic factor on the X chromozone predisposing to dysregulation of the bradykinin system (blood clotting, thrombosis, leaking into the lungs) which is down-regulated by the ACE2 enzyme, and women are less prone having 2 X chromosomes.
–In the beginning it was thought that smokers and Asians may have more expression of the ACE2 receptors, but not that much is known about racial distribution of ACE2. Smoking and air pollution (particularly NOx) do have marked correlation.
–There is obviously a genetic component (some young marathon runners w/o comorbidities are at death’s doors, while 93 year old smokers glide through), but this has not been elucidated, and genetic factors could be racially disparate.
–Then there are factors such as obesity and metabolic syndrome, which probably play a much larger role than access to healthcare and living conditions. However, these factors could in turn be indirectly related to socio-economic circumstances.
–Occupation and precariousness of work may well prove more significant than healthcare differences.
In short, it ain’t easy to tease out the meaning of correlations when causation is not well understood, and there are scores of super-imposed variables as well as a lack of data on certain variables. It’s a little peremptory to let indignation rage, and truth be told, there are lots of other disparities that are equally unfair.
“it ain’t easy to tease out the meaning of correlations when causation is not well understood”
If anything this is understatement. Scientific knowledge is much, much harder to obtain than most of us appreciate. Because knowledge IS knowledge of causation, and it is qualitatively different from the numerical machinations that modern man is in love with.
Non-Hispanic blacks (49.6%) had the highest age-adjusted prevalence of obesity, followed by Hispanics (44.8%), non-Hispanic whites (42.2%) and non-Hispanic Asians (17.4%). CDC
I believe this is one of the reasons we have such a great mortality rate with Covid in the US. Fat people!
We need to get the MSM to broadcast this!
Here’s the new Weight-Watchers pitch:
“LOSE WEIGHT OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, YOU FAT PIG!”
Mish haven’t you heard? Trump tweeted that the huge increase in Covid cases and hospitalizations is just a conspiracy of the liberal “fake news media” and the only reason we show more cases is because we test so much more than other nations!
It does not exist, it is fake news, ignore Covid because it is not real.
My bet is there are about 50 million total morons that will believe him also. In fact I had a handyman couple in Friday to finish painting my guest bathroom and the wife just point blank said that Covid is so exaggerated, more people die of the flu, and that only about 6,000 people have died of Covid while all the rest have died from their preexisting conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Seriously, looked me right in the eye and parroted Trump’s lies about Covid. Had he been around in the 1500’s he would have claimed the Black Death was really not what was killing people and that more people die of acne.
Cases are up because of more testing. In march/April we should have been in the 250,000-500,000 cases a day range if the death rate is a good estimation. Testing was none existent. France has 1/5 of our population and over is over 50k a day. That equals out to 250k a day in the US. We are in the 80k range. Same is tue all over Europe.
Maybe we are not doing that bad. I have a feeling if Hillary was president things would be awesome.
Perhaps China didn’t reveal info on the virus until forced because they knew the reaction they would get from Trump. Perhaps if Clinton was president, they would have made a different decision. Actions have consequences. When you’re an asshole like Trump, people go out of their way to avoid dealing with you.
QE 4 started in September. Once in a century virus shows up 6 weeks later. Seems very convenient.
China didn’t tell the world because they were gobbling up the supplies to protect and treat this thing. I would expect any other self respecting nation to do the same.
There is no such thing as facts anymore. Just what you want to believe.
Why does anyone still listen to what Trump is saying is beyond me. With luck Biden will become president and Trump will spend his remaining years in jail.
I thought I posted the article. I do not have twitter anymore, deleted the account two days ago, just got too dirty and not a good influence on any minds I think, so left.
But the news story had the tweet embedded in it. I will see I if I can find it again for you.
I just looked, it is in the CNBC story I posted above.
The Fake News is talking about CASES, CASES, CASES. This includes many low risk people. Media is doing everything possible to create fear prior to November 3rd. The Cases are up because TESTING is way up, by far the most, and best, in the world. Mortality rate is DOWN 85% plus!
The CNBC’s Trump tweet was a couple days later, but maybe chosen because of it’s inherently ambiguous, terse, telegram / newspaper-section-head style:
Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high. On November 4th., topic will totally change. VOTE!
This tweet is not so explicitly contrary to how TheHill, CNBC, Mish, and you chose to interpret it as is the earlier tweet. Note this tweet does not say anything about what its “Fake news…” reference is to. The reader is supposed to know that.
I’m with you on the nature of Twitter. 🙂
I do not go to The Hill anymore so I would have missed that fact, something happened to that site several years back and I no longer trust it. The fact that it was posted at CNBC no matter where it may have first appeared is interesting though.
The problem with this tweet that I think CNBC was being too subtle to spell out assuming everyone would still understand is that Donald Trump still insists on clinging to his narritive that Covid is not a pandemic to be feared in spite of hundreds of thousands of dead. That if he can just get others to reject the science of it then you will see that he is not actually at fault in it since there would be nothing to be at fault for. He insists it will ~POOF~ Magically just disappear.
I think it is a very instructive peek into his mind, that his only concern when it comes to Covid is the impact it has on his election prospects and how it makes him look like a loser that has an enemy he cannot beat. So, he just prtends it is not even real.
I do not really agree with EVERY thing the left is doing in response to Covid, I particularly think the huge mountains of cash they want to shovel at people in PUA, $600 per week, and retroactive at that, is absurdly high, they should have said we will bring up your regular UI up to $600 so that everyone gets no less than that. But that raises a lot of questions about state administration of UI programs. Like why is the max benefit in Florida “The state offers a maximum of $275 a week — based on your earnings — for up to 12 weeks. An additional week is added for every 0.5 percent increase in the state unemployment rate above 5 percent. “
If their real goal was simply to shovel cash into the economy and they just picked unemployed people as the vehicle to get it there then they should have instead done a mini and temporary UBI where every household got a check for $1,000 per month for the duration.
Would have solved the Moscow Mitch problem since he would have had a stroke on the spot.
“very instructive peek into his mind” – Trump is the Rorschach president. There seems to be this compulsion to imagine Trump to be thinking whatever one wants him to think. Says nothing about Trump but a lot about the person doing the imagining. My excuse for such imagination in myself: Being a Rorschach blot is an intrinsic part of any politician’s role.
Yet he insists upon remaking reality in his own way that is not in harmony with who and what we are. The last time that was tried and achieved on any scale larger than say Jonestown was in Germany in the 30’s. Covid is not real, it is just a cold. Hundreds of thousands have not died of it, only 6,000, the rest died of secondary preexisting conditions (like being over 60). Ignore it and it will go away like magic. Then we can build this wall on the border and make the people on the other side pay for it.
Donald Trump is insane.
New Mexico had serious problems…..they had to close highways in and out of Gallup in May. Turns out it’s one of the worst pockets of poverty in the country….with lots of drug addicts and homeless and alcoholics…and the NA’s who live on the Rez have cultural issues with social distancing.
Here I’d say it hits the hispanic population because the building trades never shut down, or even slowed down. I was in an out of Home Depot a lot during our brief lockdown……and it appeared to be business as usual. Job sites all over town were busy as hell.
Blacks appeared to be hit hard here because we had (and still have) a lot of elder care workers who are African American. Some of these people are really unsung heroes.
Although I think everyone here is practicing better behavior than in the early days…I still think there are enough deniers to cause problems…..and my POV is that it’s a demographic of people who are less-well educated and don’t trust science…..the same demographic as the anti-vaxxers…
It’s hard to social distance for this kind of extended time period. I attended my first small gathering all year that wasn’t all immediate family this last week…..and afterward felt guilty as hell…..although masks were worn and some people were obviously trying to social distance….it’s hard to drink a glass of wine with a mask on. I’m not planning on doing that again, although no one seems to have made anyone else sick.
NM, home of the new space industry? Doesn’t sound like such a good choice now?
Re: Eddie_T
NM has always had large pockets of abject poverty, and the closures in Gallup were a direct result of the explosion of Covid on the reservations and the fact that Gallup is one of the major cities people from the reservation visit to grocery shop. It’s also the last major travel stop on I-40 before you get to Albuquerque. The Navajo’s have “cultural issues with social distancing” is an interesting way to say “If I don’t visit grandma every couple of days she won’t have food or water.”
Re: Jojo
Not a good choice because there exist poor people in New Mexico? Because Gallup is in another quadrant of the state from TorC?
Sorry to offend your sensitivities…but there are clearly cultural factors at work on COVID spread on the reservations.
I’ve been taking care of grandmas throughout the pandemic, and I haven’t spread COVID to any of them. Carrying food and water to grandma is not the problem. It’s HOW you do it that matters.
Mostly I wanted to set JoJo straight. I get very tired of people sh**ing on my state because they read a single article and are suddenly experts.
The timeframe you’re referencing was six months ago. Look at those same areas today and you’ll see they’re doing better than most of rural America. Would you attribute that to a sudden culture shift?
I’d attribute it to getting serious about the problem and complying with the best advice. And maybe some of it had to do with he total lockdown of Gallup for those weeks.
Black people in Africa die at a much lower rate than in the US. It’s not skin color. It’s pre-existing conditions. Generally speaking, US blacks are fat and have hypertension. Africans are skinny and don’t have hypertension.
Exactly! Comparisons with native Africans are an excellent comparison.
However, I’m sure some of the difference is due to reporting issues. I seriously doubt they are testing at the same rate as the USA, or even finding and reporting all the deaths from COVID which will naturally make their case load seem smaller.
That being said, there are very few problems from COVID in Africa compared to the USA.
if this is so you would expect similr infection rates but widely different mortality and hopsitalization rates. Wouldn’t u.s. health care be better?
do you have any data to back up your theory? sounds hokey
There are widely different mortality and hospitalization rates between USA whites and USA blacks. It’s well published and reported on. Mish himself provided the links.
However, if you are asking about African mortality rates and African hospitalization rates, then yes, they have much lower rates of both.
We absolutely know that obesity is the key factor in mortality after age. Even so, obese older folks are the highest risk.
I’ll tell you why: Obesity is extremely rare in Africa.
any idea how many fat white guys there are in the united states. tons. i travelled to south carolina and i was shocked. obesity is rampant in the u.s.
On body weight being a key factor…here’s a peer reviewed study cited by the CDC.
I agree, obesity matters. where does it say blacks are more obese than whites?
Indeed, 3/4’s of all adult men are overweight or obese, and the number of severely obese men is now past 30% in much of the South.
Maybe I’m guessing, but it’s totally logical why American death rates are high compared to the rest of the world. We are the least healthy country in the OECD.
Africans, in terms of diet, are the healthiest, more than the OECD.
You got that WRONG ! I just heard it on CNN(again), it is ALL Trump’s fault ! I can t believe my eyes(ears) 24/7, uninterruptedly : TRUMP DUNNIT ! C R A Z Y !
“Black people in Africa die at a much lower rate than in the US. It’s not skin color. It’s pre-existing conditions.”
Wait a second, are you saying that running 20 mile a day and eating simple foods that come right out of the ground makes one healthy?!
Nah! That sounds like hard work and no fun. Let’s just blame someone else for my condition instead!
I’d say the headline is misleading a bit, though for reasons detailed in the post. It’s not a racial issue, it’s an obesity issue.
Obesity is in itself a massive reason for a bad outcome from COVID. It’s extremely desireable in the black community among women to be “thick” (aka=obese). Many try hard at it and it’s built into that culture.
I do believe access to medical care is part of it, but the desire to be “thick” is a larger part among black women. It’s a cultural mindset that has negative affects on the black female community and is a subject that has been written about extensively in medical counseling.
It’s harder to change mindsets than it is access to medical care.
“It’s extremely desireable in the black community among women to be “thick” (aka=obese). Many try hard at it and it’s built into that culture.”
Is it? You might be right, but it seems the wives of wealthy blacks don’t look all that “thick”. Obesity started increasing in this country in the late ’80’s. Hip Hop culture kind of celebrated it in their ladies, starting in the early ’90’s, but I don’t think it was celebrated earlier in black music. Look at early 1970’s Soul Train episodes and one only sees beautiful and nicely shaped ladies!
(RIP Don Cornelius)
I propose its economic. I would further suggest its likely that blacks and latinos on average are emloyed in more dangrous occupations from covid-19 perspective. They probably are less likely to be able to work remotely and be safe. Being front line worker, meat plant opertor or computer programmer working remotely carry very different risk profiles
I also agree living conditions and population density are going to be key factors
You are looking at overall deaths, which isn’t what Mish cited.
Yes, if, and only if, we were looking at overall deaths then yes, those that have difficulty working remotely would have more deaths.
HOwever, Mish cited statistics showing how many deaths PER 100,000 of a certain race, which means that you should ignore the total deaths.
If a black person gets COVID, they are more likely to die from it than a white person. That’s not the same thing as saying that more black people are dying from COVID.
Blacks suffer from obesity at much higher levels than whites…therefore they die at a higher rate due to complications from obesity. Things like diabetes matter with COVID.
I’m a marathon runner. There’s something called VO2max, which determines your ability to process oxygen at a certain activity level. One thing about weight is that the heavier you are, the lower your V02 max is. Since COVID dramatically reduces the bodies ability to process Oxygen, the higher your VO2 max is, the better your chances of survival. Just last week a study came out showing that the #1 risk factor for COVID after age is your BMI.
if you are obese and afraid of COVID the best thing you can do is lose weight quickly. That’s a choice that 99.999 percent of us can control.
i’m disagreeing with you. if 30% of blacks work in high risk occupations versus 10% of whites it would result in more deaths per 100,000
No, that’s per 100000 of the general population. You are mistaking comparing black mortality rate with black overall number of deaths. Those are not the same thing.
The chart Mish posted posted the mortality rate among blacks with COVID and the mortality rate for whites with COVID. If you look at 100,000 blacks who had COVID and compare them to 100,000 whites who had COVID, the data shows that blacks die at higher rates than whites.
You are arguing that blacks are more likely to get COVID because they work in higher risk industries. I agree with that statement. Yes more blacks get COVID per capita in the general US population. That’s not what MISH is saying.
Here’s an illustration, because it is confusing:
You have 1000 white people in a room and 1000 black people in another room. Of those 1000, 100 whites get COVID and 200 blacks get COVID. Furthermore, of those infected with COVID, 1 white person dies and 4 black people die.
The following three things are true:
If only two black people died, the black\white ratio would be identical, even though more blacks died. 1% of both groups died if two blacks died, even though 2x as many blacks died.
Mish is placing emphasis on # 3, you are pointing out #2.
A big mystery. Notice this amazing graphic:
Notice the USA was #1 in the world for an early quarantine (six days after the official “Wuhan outbreak”) but still got hit hard. Notice every other country on the chart had similar policy responses (shutting down schools, bars, etc) at about the same time after the official Wuhan outbreak date, but had wildly varying outcomes (compare South Korea to the Netherlands, for example). It shows Covid-19, which some scientists believe is a chimeric virus, is still not understood well. It could affect different races differently (not just ages, South Korea is roughly as old, demographically, as are the Netherlands, but had 500 cases of C-19 per 1M people vs the Dutch 17.5k/1M)
South Korea very quickly implemented an effective policy of universal masking and contract tracing born out of their prior experience with SARS.
As Mish says, it is more likely to come down to many other factors. First density, city vs rural, and then economic status.
The hardest hit are the “essential workers” in the city who still have to drive the busses and work the checkout registers.
This is the US model, but I’m not convinced it works for the rest of the world. It’s hard to believe that ‘essential workers’ are infecting the rest of the population more in the USA than elsewhere. I do believe the contract tracing and masking factor has merit however; when I live in Asia in ordinary times lots of people wear masks for air pollution reasons. Also that perhaps the European strain of C-19 is more contagious than the Asian strain (speculative).
Simple stuff (like mask wearing) sometimes has radical implications. I came across this photo, taken in northern VA where I sometimes live part of the year, and it’s amazing: keeping an interior door closed at night (when 50% of fires occur) can result in a huge difference between your room being burned black and being completely intact: https://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-safety/close-before-you-doze.htm
It reminds me of those famous ‘spontaneous combustion’ photos where a body is burn to ashes, and the furniture next to them is untouched (turns out these people were smokers who fell asleep with a cigarette, and the fire fed off the fat on the body).
Contact tracing generally only works in small groups when you can quickly get to and isolate all the contacts as necessary. This can’t be done in the USA for a wide variety of reasons including people’s desire for privacy. Many people will not run an app on their phone for tracing. Many won’t reveal contacts they have had for again, a wide variety of reasons. Government cannot force someone to reveal contacts they have had. And contact lists quickly grow exponentially, especially in larger countries with open borders and a population that is continuously on the move.
But no one really delves into these problems. They just parrot BS they hear on the news. “Why can’t we do what SK is doing?” D’oh.
May not be that speculative, there is an outbreak in Trondheim Norway right now that is far more contagious than the strains seen so far.
This virus is a mutation that has shorter sharper “hooks” on it’s surface that allow it to grab on to more types of cells.
This will happen when you let an infectious disease rage without taking it seriously, the more bodies it infects the more opportunity it has to mutate to a more dangerous infection. We played with fire by allowing Trump to downplay this pandemic and we are about to get burned with a much deadlier version of the Coronavirus.
SK is a small, isolated country with a homogenous population run by a semi-dictatorial government. Same for Taiwan. Neither can be used as a comparison to the USA in Covid-19 response.
But don’t let facts stop you from regurgitating the same pap over and over. You should get a job on CNN/MSNBC.
Jojo, I don’t want to be mean, but you’re probably one of the least intelligent posters here. And the bar is set quite low, sometimes, so that’s saying something.
South Korea had such a good outcome because they were able to achieve containment. Of course the covid horse is out of the barn in the US now, and containment was lost back in April. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a valid strategy that could have been implemented.
Unfortunately, due in a large part to people like you and the politicians you support, we are now left with universal masking as the best way forward, until a safe vaccine is finally available.
Ha ha ha. I hope there isn’t Louis Winthorpe a kid with a IV after his name. Inbreeding really does have genetic consequences.
South Korea is not “semi-dictatorial” and has a very powerful history of mass protests, especially over the last two decades.
Quit saying the US “can’t” do contact tracing and other measures. There is simply no political will to do so from those with the power to do so, and especially because that would require the full commitment of resources that the ruling rich in the US (liberal or conservative) have little or no desire to do. Commit trillions to no-strings bailouts of monopoly-capitalist companies? Right away. And, yes, “government” has earned the distrust of most working people. But who do you think ultimately runs the government, plowing billions in “donations” into candidates who carry out the policies they prefer? The rich, the Kochs and Bill Gates and all the rest, all using big-business media to sell us their policies.
Taiwan (from where I write) is not run by a ‘semi-dictatorial’ government, not even close, it’s a free and open democracy. It is true that it is an island, and relatively small (pop. ~ 23 million), so not comparable to the US but then it has some disadvantages too such as extremely high population density. And it is not really isolated in terms of Covid, there were many regular direct flights from Wuhan itself right up to 12/31, when word of human-to-human transmission leaked out and the Taiwan government immediately starting taking action. It’s true that people here are more likely to listen to government directives, but in this case that is mainly because the government quickly demonstrated its competence (the VP at the time was health minister during SARS in 2003), there was a plan, regular transparent press briefings by health officials not politicians, etc.