MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-08-17 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] age and COVID-19
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The problem with this is that the numbers with regard to age are SO
skewed and minescuel for young people, and especially children, it is
impossible to reconcile with this report... but here it is..
WSJ News Exclusive | Covid-19 Deaths Skew Younger Among Minorities
Paul Overberg and Jon Kamp
9-11 minutes
Covid-19 is known to be particularly risky for the elderly. For many
minorities, the disease is killing them in the prime of their lives.
Among people in the U.S. who died between their mid-40s and mid-70s
since the pandemic began, the virus is responsible for about 9% of
deaths. For Latino people who died in that age range, the virus has
killed nearly 25%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of
death-certificate data collected by federal authorities.
The data show how deaths from the coronavirus are skewing younger for
many minorities, a stark disparity that offers a clear picture of the
pandemic’s outsize impact on vulnerable populations.
This is especially the case for Latino people, in part because their
high representation in jobs ranging from health aides to meatpacking
have made it harder for some of them to dodge the virus, and because
many have poorer access to care, according to public-health experts.
“Latinos tend to be very, very poorly connected to the formal medical
and public-health infrastructure,” said David Hayes-Bautista, who
directs the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the
University of California, Los Angeles’s medical school. As a
consequence, the population has historically been hit hard by
communicable diseases, he said.
Data from death certificates are collected by the National Center for
Health Statistics, or NCHS, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. Death certificates don’t track Covid-19 deaths as
quickly as the more preliminary state and local reports that feed
real-time trackers, like the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, but the
certificates contain demographic details the faster data sometimes miss.
The Journal analyzed the intersection of both race and age in these data
to drill deeper into the impact on various demographic groups, which the
NCHS is also analyzing more closely.
By early August, the NCHS recorded about 151,000 Covid-19 deaths from
death certificates, compared with nearly 170,000 deaths reported by
Johns Hopkins by late Sunday.
For America’s white population, death-certificate data show the rate of
deaths attributed to Covid-19 steadily rising with age, hewing closely
to the expected trend for a virus that is particularly risky for older
people with health complications. That is partly because white people
have the highest median age of any racial group.
In contrast, minorities in the U.S. are more likely to die at a younger
age than white people from Covid-19.
****Just 3% of white people who die are under 55, but 8% of Asians, 11%
of Black people, 18% of Latinos and 24% of American Indians are under
that age.**** (BY USING 54 YOA this is an example of cherry picking
statistics to fit a narritive)
A study by Harvard researchers shows that this magnifies the pandemic’s
toll in the cumulative effect on potential life expectancy, a key
public-health measure.
Public-health experts are still exploring the reasons for these age
disparities as the pandemic unfolds. Many also say they anticipated
minorities would be particularly affected, including at younger ages,
because of their general health profiles and unequal access to care.
Low-wage jobs that require work outside the home are considered a prime
risk factor for exposure. Cramped living conditions, including multiple
generations in a single home, and higher reliance on public transit can
also increase exposure. Higher rates for some groups of chronic
illnesses that can complicate Covid-19, like diabetes, can worsen the
outlook for those infected.
Medics in Houston load a possible Covid-19 patient into an ambulance.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
“What we know is Latinos are overrepresented in low-wage occupations,
essential occupations from farm working to meatpacking to the service
sector to restaurants and grocery stores,” said Jeffrey Reynoso,
executive director at the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California.
Even as minority deaths skew younger, death certificates show people in
minority groups are dying at higher rates from Covid-19 than the white
population at almost any age. Among people aged 55 to 64, for instance,
minority death rates are two to five times the white rate.
The median age of white people in the U.S. is significantly higher than
that of minority groups, suggesting that a larger portion of the white
population would be in harm’s way for a disease that tends to hit the
elderly the hardest. But they aren’t.
The higher rates of Covid-19 deaths among minority groups are even
starker when adjusting for the different age profiles of racial groups
in the U.S.
The death-certificate data from around the U.S. show a significant surge
in deaths above levels the NCHS tabulated for comparable weeks in recent
years. These so-called excess deaths are a measure epidemiologists use
to track major events like the impact of the pandemic. The increase was
most pronounced during the week ended April 11, when the 78,700 deaths
due to all causes were 42% above the typical rate, according to the NCHS.
Deaths have remained elevated ever since, though not at the levels seen
when the pandemic was hitting hardest in places like New York City in
the spring. Trends in the most recent weeks are less clear due to the
time it takes to collect death-certificate information, which bubbles up
to the NCHS from thousands of medical examiners and coroners around the
country.
****Death certificates from Covid-19 also reveal a sharp distinction
between Black and white Americans. Black people represented 22% of
Covid-19 deaths by early August, though they represent only about 13% of
the U.S. population. By contrast, white people represent 60% of the
population and 52% of Covid-19 deaths.****(This is just bullshit.
First, this depends on the community but the overriding problem here is
comordindities. It is not news that minoirty communities suffer from
diabetes and this is a socio-economic problem befor covid-19 and will be
after, and is not solvable with a quick fix, until you attack the core
diet and cigarrette smoking in those communities).
“There were just inequities in care to begin with that created a bad
foundation,” said Denise Brooks-Williams, an executive with the Henry
Ford Health System in Michigan. She serves on a state task force Gov.
Gretchen Whitmer formed in April to study racial disparities and provide
advice.
However, these numbers look different when weighting the population data
to account for where Covid-19 has actually hit the hardest, which is a
method the CDC has used to zero in on the impact on those places. One
effect of the weighted data is it shows a smaller disproportionate
impact among Black people.
The CDC began presenting these adjustments to the population data
because, in the early stages of the pandemic, deadly outbreaks were
hitting a small number of places, said Robert Anderson, chief of the
NCHS’s mortality statistics branch. This statistical number-crunching
has drawn criticism from some public-health experts who say it discounts
the health and economic vulnerabilities that allowed outbreaks to hit so
hard in Black communities in the first place.
“There’s a reason it hit New York, Chicago, LA in large numbers,” said
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health
Association, regarding the virus. “There’s a reason small rural
communities got hit later.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What should be done to ensure equal access to health care? Join the
conversation below.
The federal data indicate that based on sheer numbers, Covid-19 deaths
among Latino people are only slightly outpacing their share of the U.S.
population. When adjusted for the share of Latino people living in
places where Covid-19 deaths are occurring, that racial group appears to
be underrepresented among U.S. deaths. However, when further adjusting
for the relative youth of the Latino population, their share of deaths
remains elevated, according to the NCHS.
This trend has been on clear display in California. Latino people in the
state make up about 41.5% of the population between ages 35 and 49, for
example, but 77% of the deaths for that age group. California Latinos
die from Covid-19 in disproportionate numbers regardless of age.
Latino people in the U.S. otherwise outlive whites and die prematurely
less often, even though they face issues like greater poverty and less
access to health care.
Coronavirus and Health Care
Write to Jon Kamp at jon.kamp-at-wsj.com
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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