May 10, 2020 3 min read

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed the number of Americans lost in the Vietnam War, and there’s the grim likelihood that there will be many, many more casualties before the virus is brought to heel. No one is invulnerable to the virus, as demonstrated by the fact that luminaries like Britain’s Prince Charles, British prime minister Boris Johnson, actor Tom Hanks and CNN program host Chris Cuomo have tested positive.

They, and many others in all walks of life, were lucky enough to escape the worst effects of COVID-19 and fully recover. But many of those who have died as a result of the coronavirus have come from less elevated stations in life. They were people who had to report to work every day driving buses, keeping the peace as police officers or stocking shelves in grocery stores.

And many of them were African American, Latino and other people of color.

Although some localities are not breaking down COVID-19 deaths by race, the ones that are making that distinction are finding that minority populations are being particularly hard hit. In Chicago, for instance, 72% of those who died as a result of the coronavirus were African American, even though they make up 30% of the city’s population. A study released last week by researchers at Emory, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown universities, along with the University of Mississippi, found that counties with substantial African American populations have more than half of the country’s COVID-19 cases and 60% of the fatalities thus far. Wisconsin, Michigan, and the District of Columbia are other locations where African Americans have been disproportionately affected.

It should also be noted that we are not alone in these disparities. Britain’s Office of National Statistics reported Thursday that black Britons are four times as likely to die from the coronavirus as their white counterparts.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pointed out recently, “When you’re in the middle of a crisis like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does have, ultimately, shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 19% of African American workers and 16% of Latino workers report having jobs that allow them to work from home, while 37% of Asian workers and 29% of white workers have such jobs. Moreover, African American and Latino communities have lived in communities where housing is much more densely packed, where there have been higher rates of unemployment and poverty, less access to health care and higher rates of conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes. They also are more likely to live in places where access to fresh food is limited.

When this is over – and it will end at some point – we need to get to work mending some of the “real weaknesses and foibles in our society,” as Fauci put it, and that includes improving the long-term health of all our citizens.