非裔美国人死亡率较高的原因尚不清楚。但是健康专家说，这可能是多种因素的综合，而不仅仅是他们先前已经存在的健康状况。 史蒂芬·华莱士（Steven Wallace）在加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）菲尔德大学公共卫生学院进行种族和衰老研究，他说洛杉矶县的黑人居民更可能是一线工人，他们居住在多代人的住房中，并且在冠状病毒检测和医疗保健方面获得的机会较差。比白人居民多。 即使考虑到贫困，黑人的健康状况始终比其他群体差。在大流行期间并没有改变。

The cause of African Americans’ higher death rate is unknown. But health experts say it likely is a combination of factors, not just their pre-existing health conditions. Steven Wallace, who conducts research on race and aging at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said black residents of Los Angeles County are more likely to be frontline workers, to live in multigenerational housing and to have poorer access to both coronavirus testing and healthcare than white residents. Even when accounting for poverty, black people’s health is consistently worse than other groups. That hasn’t changed during the pandemic.

造成这种情况的部分原因可能是该地区的黑人居民的潜在健康状况偏高。心脏病，高血压，糖尿病和哮喘都对COVID-19患者造成更严重的后果。 该县南部地区（包括英格尔伍德）的居民患糖尿病的比率是圣费尔南多谷地区（包括格兰岱尔）的居民的近两倍。当加州大学洛杉矶分校的研究人员要求对自己的健康状况进行评分时，英格伍德的居民中有25％回答为公平或较差，这是该县得分最低的，而格伦代尔则为15％。 根据加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）的加州健康访问调查，在全县范围内，五分之一的黑人居民在其生命中的某个时刻被诊断出患有哮喘，是除美国原住民以外的主要种族和民族群体中发病率最高的疾病。在该县的白人人口中，这一比例为14％，而拉丁美洲人为12％。黑人居民的高血压（高血压）发生率也高于白人居民。

Part of the explanation could be the high rates of underlying health conditions among the area’s black residents. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma all lead to more severe outcomes for people with COVID-19. Residents of the county’s South region, which includes Inglewood, have nearly twice the rate of diabetes as residents of the San Fernando Valley area, which includes Glendale. When asked by UCLA researchers to rate their own health, 25 percent of residents in Inglewood answered fair or poor, the lowest scores in the county, compared with 15% in Glendale. Countywide, one in five black residents was diagnosed with asthma at some point in his or her life, the highest rate among major racial and ethic groups except for Native Americans, according to UCLA’s California Health Interview Survey. Among the county’s white population, it is 14 percent, and for Latinos, 12 percent. Black residents also have a higher rate of hypertension (high blood pressure) than white residents.

该病毒在洛杉矶县的传播是相对平等的：无论附近有多富裕，白人或受过良好教育的地区，几乎每个地区都确诊了冠状病毒病例。最高感染率的地区是比佛利山庄，西好莱坞和梅尔罗斯（Melrose），这是富裕的邮政编码，那里白人居民占人口的75％以上。 但是，一旦冠状病毒到达附近，其影响就大不相同了。 例如，在因格伍德市（Inglewood）是洛杉矶县黑人人口最多的地区之一，该病毒的死亡率为每十万居民中34人，而在仅14英里之外的大多数白人格伦代尔，每十万人中有18人死亡。到县的仪表盘数据。

The spread of the virus in Los Angeles County has been relatively egalitarian: No matter how rich, or white, or educated the neighborhood, nearly every area has confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Some of the highest infection rates are in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Melrose, wealthy ZIP codes where white residents are more than 75 percent of the population. But the impacts once the coronavirus reaches a neighborhood are a different story. For instance, in Inglewood, which has one of the largest black populations in Los Angeles County, the death rate from the virus is 34 per 100,000 residents, while in majority-white Glendale, just 14 miles away, it’s 18 deaths per 100,000, according to the county’s dashboard data.

现在，这些潜在条件正在加剧非洲裔美国人对COVID-19的脆弱性，这使他们在洛杉矶县所有种族中的死亡率最高。 根据公共卫生部的信息显示，在洛杉矶县死亡的1,418人中，黑人占了12.5％，这是迄今为止加利福尼亚州最多的人，尽管黑人占人口的8％。

Now those underlying conditions are contributing to African Americans’ vulnerability to COVID-19, which is killing them at the highest rate among all races in Los Angeles County. Of the 1,418 people who died in Los Angeles County – by far the largest number in California – 12.5 percent are black residents, even though they make up 8 percent of the population, according to the Department of Public Health’s dashboard.

格雷戈里·泰勒（Gregory Taylor）博士在洛杉矶市中心的一家医院工作时，看到了反映他成长所在社区的案例：许多潜在的健康状况导致黑人患者丧生。 泰勒（Taylor）是一名内科医生，他称这些疾病为糖尿病，高血压，呼吸系统疾病，是南洛杉矶黑人居民中的“社区结构的一部分”。 泰勒（Taylor）在莱默特公园（Leimert Park）长大，现在就职于南加州大学凯克医院（Keck Hospital），他说：“在我们整个种族中，这都是真的。 “您一遍又一遍地看到的是健康状况较差的黑人。”

When he worked at a hospital in downtown Los Angeles, Dr. Gregory Taylor saw cases that reflected the community where he grew up: a host of underlying health conditions killing black patients. Taylor, an internist, called those conditions — diabetes, high blood pressure, respiratory diseases — “a part of the community fabric” among black residents of South Los Angeles. “It’s true across our ethnicity as a whole,” said Taylor, who grew up in Leimert Park and now works at Keck Hospital of the University of Southern California. “What you see over and over is black folks in a poorer state of health.”

COVID-19将此视为致命的失败。因此，至关重要的是，现在必须进行系统的，标准化的，正确分类的数据收集。在创建对COVID-19的响应时，以及在更广泛地处理整个社会的流感大流行余波时，此类数据在短期内势在必行。 英国已达到欧洲死亡人数最高的严峻里程碑，这表明我们需要更强大的数据收集，以便更好地应对这场危机。 我们需要能够承认并采取措施解决英国社会不平等现象的政策。如果我们要重建一个为所有人服务的更加公平的社会，我们现在比以往任何时候都需要做出交叉反应。

COVID-19 is exposing this as a deadly failing. So it is vital that systematic, standardised collection of properly disaggregated data is undertaken now. Such data is imperative in the immediate term as we create responses to COVID-19, but also as we deal with the aftershocks of the pandemic right across society more broadly. The fact that the UK has reached the grim milestone of having the highest death toll in Europe shows we need more robust data collection in order to respond better to this crisis. We need policies that recognise and take steps to address the inequalities in UK society. We need an intersectional response now, more than ever, if we are to rebuild a more equitable society that works for all.

尽管COVID-19大流行表明需要更好的数据，但它也使人们更加关注数据收集的政治层面。如果没有强制性的收集和报告要求，地方和国家各级政府之间以及整个英国下放国家之间的情况可能会不一致。 例如，在苏格兰，种族被记录在死亡证明上，但是在英格兰和威尔士并没有例行采集此类数据。尽管早在2003年就有报告指出，收集这些信息对于解决健康不平等至关重要。

While the COVID-19 pandemic shows the need for better data, it also shines a spotlight on the political dimension of data collection. Without mandatory collection and reporting requirements, this can be inconsistent between local and national levels of government and across the devolved nations of the UK. For example, in Scotland, ethnicity is recorded on death certificates, however such data is not routinely captured in England and Wales. This is despite a report back in 2003 noting that collecting this information was vital for tackling health inequalities.

这是因为它表明，有色女人所面临的不平等与种族因素“被加上”的白人妇女所面临的不平等是不一样的：它们是根本不同的。例如，最近的数据显示，非残疾白人妇女的失业率为2.9％。非残障黑人，亚裔和少数族裔妇女（BAME）的这一数字跃升至7％，而残障黑人，亚裔和少数族裔妇女的这一数字跃升至14％。 同样重要的是要认识到，以诸如BAME之类的广义术语分析数据通常是不够的。对英格兰每100,000人口的死亡率进行的分析显示，不同种族之间存在显着差异-英国白人为23，亚裔为27，黑人为43，加勒比地区为69。 因此，获取更好的数据不仅取决于收集的改善，而且还涉及诸如BAME之类的广泛分类。

This is because it shows that the inequalities faced by women of colour are not the same as those faced by white women with a racial element “added on”: they are fundamentally different. For example, recent figures show an unemployment rate of 2.9% for non-disabled white women. This figure jumps to 7% for non-disabled black, Asian and minority ethnic women (BAME) and to 14% for disabled black, Asian and ethnic minority women. It is also important to recognise that analysing data under broad terms such as BAME is often not sufficient. Analysis of death rates per 100,000 population in England showed marked differences between ethnic groups – with figures of 23 for white British, 27 for Asians, 43 for black people, and 69 for those of Caribbean heritage. Access to better data therefore not only rests on improved collection, but also delving into broad categorisations such as BAME.

收集分类数据也至关重要，因此我们可以进行所谓的交叉分析，这表明人们的结果如何同时受到多种因素（例如性别，残疾和种族）的影响。 采取交叉方式可以使我们对个人，他们的生活，他们的需求以及满足这些需求所需的服务提供方面的潜在差距有更深入的了解。

Collecting disaggregated data is also vitally important so we can undertake what’s known as intersectional analysis, which shows how people’s outcomes are simultaneously affected by multiple factors such as gender, disability, and ethnicity. Taking an intersectional approach has the power to provide us with greater insight about individuals, their lives, their needs and the potential gaps in the service provision required to meet those needs.

但是我们仍然做得不够。只有在所有死亡证明上加上族裔，我们才能完整地了解对黑人，亚洲人和少数民族背景的人的影响。 还有一个紧迫的问题：过去我们没有收集这些数据，这使得针对当今危机提出政策应对措施变得更加困难。即使我们现在开始分解数据，我们仍然遭受无法在大流行开始之前将其与数据进行比较的问题。 无法获得这些经过微调的数据，意味着政府官员被迫用一只手绑在后面，以制定应对COVID-19的卫生和社会政策。

But we are still not doing enough. Only by adding ethnicity onto all death certificates will we be able to establish a complete picture of the impact on those from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. There’s another pressing problem: the fact that we didn’t collect this data in the past makes it even harder to come up with a policy response to the crisis today. Even as we begin disaggregating data now, we suffer from the problem of not being able to compare it to data before the pandemic began. Not having access to this fine-tuned data means government officials are forced to operate with one hand tied behind their back in formulating health and social policies in response to COVID-19.