USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: ProPublica: Early data shows African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate

i read a long expose on race and the virus in detroit. i'll just try to reel off from the top of my head what i remember. michigan has a real hot-spot in detroit and its suburbs. the population of detroit is 670,000; if you include the suburbs it is 4.3 million. the hottest spot is not simply the city but the neighboring counties, oakland, macomb and one more. the city is 80% black; most of the whites obviously live in the suburbs, and they are broadly part of the hot spot. the poorer population is black; it is more likely to be forced to get out to work in order to survive, and we have very poor public transport. in my city, lansing, the bus service has been stopped. the possible source of the initial spread--possible--is the airport, which is located in romulus, adjacent to detroit. romulus is also majority black. all the travelers coming into that airport were not check; are still no doubt not checked. detroit had direct flights to wuhan; in wuhan car parts are made for cars, and there was considerable business exchanges between detroit and wuhan. for 2-3 months, while the virus spread and spread, no one prepared for the spread into detroit. thank you president trump. same story throughout the country.

our spread began around the first week of march. i've seen the numbers doubling day after day. last i say we had more than 11,000 cases in michigan, 80% of which are from the greater detroit area. which means a larger than proportionate number of africa-americans are now infected in that region, and it is spreading slowly out here. as you go north it becomes more rural in our state. the disease has spread to every county, but the further out you get, the smaller the numbers.

we can imagine a similar story might occur in lagos.

people were not doing distancing as the virus came in. it took the governor till around march 15 to issue an ordering shutting things down. by then the numbers in detroit were very high. it couldn't be stopped but the whole state is now shut down, so it's not as bad as it could be.

as for beds, masks, ventilators, they are stressed enormously in detroit, and shipping patients out to the rest of the state.

we anticipate hitting the peak in 2-3 weeks. that's an eternity, and you can be sure we will have more cases in michigan than in most other countries of the world.

but it could be worse; we are dwarfed by new york.

i only hope nigeria is taking steps now before it explodes.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2020 10:25 PM
To: ya <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>; dialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ProPublica: Early data shows African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate

 

Early data shows African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate
No, the coronavirus is not an "equalizer." Black people are being infected and dying at higher rates. Here's what Milwaukee is doing about it — and why governments need to start releasing data on the race of COVID-19 patients.

Read in ProPublica: https://apple.news/Aw0-ULjO5RkC5hVZf7EKklQ


Shared from Apple News

Sent from my iPhone

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