Black man, why is Covid-19 killing more blacks than whites?

On the first morning of lockdown, I took an early walk to the local Pick & Pay and observed  the arrival of ‘essential staff’ to work in food supplies and the medical service industry.

I have utilised South African public transport for fifteen years, and have visited local public hospitals and clinics, and in my opinion, the public transport and medical clinics, would be the two high-risk infection areas, and I immediately wrote Voice of Reason, questioning the handling of the Coronavirus, and was duly blocked by KDP-Amazon.    

Very briefly, I saw the movement of the ‘essential staff’ into the food outlets and medical supplies, as defeating the entire lockdown structure, and my proposal was, briefly as follows:

1:      Use the closed schools and educational institutions, to accommodate all ‘essential service’ staff,  within walking distance, Unless they  were accommodated within  five kilometres from the service provider. This includes Security Guards.

2:     Every ‘essential service’ provider would be scanned, in and out of the accommodation facility, and in and out of the service providers premises. Each ‘essential service’ staff member would carry the ‘testing log book, duly signed by the responsible person conducting the scan.

3:    This accommodation provision, would remove the movement by public transport, it would also allow a street / block committee to monitor their community member who was providing the ‘essential service’ and thus prevent the virus from getting from the suburban infected areas into the high-density poverty areas.  

Kaalvoet Comment:

Six weeks later the only good that my proposal would have brought to the world, would have been the scientists to give consideration to the risk of spreading the virus from the western capitalist international traveller,

How is it possible that the South African scientists did not foresee this problem?

I have followed the movement during the past two weeks in the USA and UK, with regards to black people that are dying at twice the rate that the white people are dying in their countries, and when the results of the study were released on Thursday, May 07, they confirm the escalated death rate, yet continue to hide the true reason, which features as a comment towards the end of the report, extract in italics, see the bold print below:     

According to the study released Thursday, black people are about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 compared to those who listed their ethnicity as white, at a ratio of about 1.71. Similar results were obtained for those of Asian or Asian-British ethnicity, who are 1.62 times more likely to die as a result of COVID-19.

“There have been reports already in the U.K. that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds…that they seem to be at an increased risk of…being on intensive care and dying from COVID,” explained Liam Smeeth, a clinical epidemiology professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Smeeth is also the co-lead of the study.

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Previous studies have hypothesized that this increased risk of death among black and Asian ethnic groups may be due to higher prevalence of underlying health conditions such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Smeeth says this new study offers some clarification. 

“When it was first noticed that people from black and minority ethnic groups had a higher risk of bad outcomes from COVID, the obvious thing to think was, ‘is it because they’ve got a high risk of diabetes, a high risk of obesity and a high risk of high blood pressure?’” he said. “While those underlying illnesses contribute a little bit of the increased risk, they actually don’t contribute that much.”

As part of the study, researchers examined more than 17 million long-term medical records pertaining to all those involved, including the 5,683 who died as a result of COVID-19. Based on this detailed clinical data, it was concluded that there is a good chance most of this increased risk of dying stems from greater exposure to the virus, as opposed to pre-existing medical conditions. Smeeth said this is likely due to an over-representation among these groups in front-line jobs, as well as higher household density. 

“We haven’t got data on those social factors – our data are clinical in nature – but it does look much more likely that this is where the explanations will lie,” said Smeeth.

Kaalvoet Comment:

If I had a black skin, and my community was infected by the virus, I would be of the opinion that the Government had used my community as slaves to serve the suburban elite, and failed to protect our community.

Once again Kaalvoet must ask, was this failure with intent, or just gross negligence?

Cedric de la Harpe