The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that several racial minority groups account for a disproportionate number of the Covid-19 cases and fatalities in the United States, but the black community in particular is suffering. In Wisconsin, a state that is only 6 percent black, black people account for about half of its Covid-19 deaths. In Chicago, black people account for 70 percent of deaths due to Covid-19 but make up only 30 percent of its population. In Richmond, Virginia, all but one of the people who have died of Covid-19 were black. “I’ll tell you the first thing I said when I saw the disparities in fatality rates,” says Louis Penner, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University who studies racial disparities in health care. “I said, ‘People are surprised?’”
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