In November of last year, The Washington Post reported that, nearly nine months after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the disease was “ravag[ing] African American and other minority communities with a particular vengeance” – as Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian patients continued to perish at a far higher rate than white patients.
Then in April 2021, a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that Black women in the US suffered three times the coronavirus mortality rate of white men.
According to the study’s authors, the disparities in mortality had much to do with “the gendered and racialised nature of work, housing and living conditions, comorbidities, and access to care”.
Yet COVID-19 was not the canary in the coal mine that exposed US society as, well, downright sick. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.