Teresa and Marvin Bradley don't know how they sold the coronavirus for sure. It could have come from Ms. Bradley's health center in Michigan, where she works as a nurse. Maybe it came from a family member who was traveling. Maybe it changed into something else. What is certain is that the Bradleys will no longer be outliers, according to new federal data that gives the most complete look so far at nearly 1.5 million Americans who have had the coronavirus. Who gets the virus depends on their race. This has happened in big cities like Milwaukee and New York, but also in smaller cities like Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Bradleys live. As Ms. Bradley, who is Black, was being wheeled through the emergency room, these unfairnesses became very clear. She said, "Everyone in there has been African-American." Early numbers showed that more Black and Latino people were getting sick because of the virus. But the new federal data, which became available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows a clearer and more complete picture: People of African-American and Latino descent were sickened by the coronavirus at a higher rate than people of other races and ethnicities. This was true all over the United States, in cities, suburbs, and rural areas, and among people of all ages.
According to new data, Latino and African-American people in the U.S. are three times more likely to get sick than their white friends. This is based on the trends of 640,000 infections found in almost 1,000 U.S. hospitals. People of color and Latinos were almost twice as likely as white people to die from the virus. This is a well-known fact. The differences stay the same across countries and regions. They can be found in rural towns on the Great Plains, in suburban counties like Fairfax County, Virginia, and in some of the United States' biggest cities. "Systemic racism doesn't really show up in the criminal justice system," said Quinton Lucas, the 1/3 Black mayor of Kansas City, Mo., which is in a state where 40% of those convicted are Black or Latino, even though those groups only make up 16% of the state's population. The data also showed that there were many places where Native American people were different from each other.
In many parts of Arizona and many other counties, they were much more likely to get infected than white people. For Asian people, the differences weren't as big, even though they were three times as likely to get infected as their white friends. The new federal facts, which are a big part of the employer's efforts to keep an eye on sickness, are not done yet. Not only do more than half of the cases lack information about race and ethnicity, but they also lack important epidemiological clues, such as how the person may have become inflamed. And since it only includes times up to the end of May, it doesn't show the recent rise in infections that has hit some parts of the country. Still, the information is more complete than anything the company has put out so far, and The Times was able to look at the difference between white and black infection rates in 974 counties, which cover more than half of the U.S. At first, the signs didn't look good for the Bradleys, who were all in their early 60s.
A funny feeling in the back of the throat. But soon they both got fevers and had trouble breathing. When they went to the hospital, they were separated. Ms. Bradley was let in around the same time that Mr. Bradley was sent home. He said that he was too sick to leave, but that he had no choice. When he got home, he felt like he was alone and didn't know how to deal with the contamination. It took a few weeks, but in the end, they both got better. A few weeks later, when Mr. Bradley went back to work in the engineering department of a production facility, a white co-worker told him that he was the only person he knew who had shrunk the virus. Mr. Bradley, on the other hand, said he knew a fair number of people who were sick. Some of them have died, but not all. "This is the most dangerous part," Mr. Bradley said. In Kent County, which is home to Grand Rapids and its suburbs, Black and Latino people make up 20% of the population but are responsible for 63% of all infections.