Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
The new coronavirus is blind to race. So how come the risk of a 35- to 44-year-old American dying of COVID-19 is nine times higher if they are Black than if they are white? Or 19 times higher if they are an American Indian or Alaska Native age 25 to 34?
At the ScienceWriters2020 conference, three leading researchers presented new analyses that answer these questions. The disparities, they show, have little to do with biology and everything to do with the legacy of racism and who the essential workers are in the United States. Whites living in high-poverty neighborhoods, one of their new studies shows, are also more than 13 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than whites in rich neighborhoods of the same county.
FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Spero Manson
Director, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health
Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center
"Bringing Light to the Darkness: COVID-19 and the Survivance of American Indians and Alaska Natives"
-----------------------------------------------
David Hayes-Bautista
Director, Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
"Framing Latinos, Framing COVID-19: Understanding the Hispanic Experience with Coronavirus"
-----------------------------------------------
Mary T. Bassett
Director, François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights
T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University
"Journalists' Role in Uncovering and Explaining Racial Inequities in the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Produced by W. Wayt Gibbs and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing for New Horizons in Science 2020
The new coronavirus is blind to race. So how come the risk of a 35- to 44-year-old American dying of COVID-19 is nine times higher if they are Black than if they are white? Or 19 times higher if they are an American Indian or Alaska Native age 25 to 34?
At the ScienceWriters2020 conference, three leading researchers presented new analyses that answer these questions. The disparities, they show, have little to do with biology and everything to do with the legacy of racism and who the essential workers are in the United States. Whites living in high-poverty neighborhoods, one of their new studies shows, are also more than 13 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than whites in rich neighborhoods of the same county.
FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Spero Manson
Director, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health
Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center
"Bringing Light to the Darkness: COVID-19 and the Survivance of American Indians and Alaska Natives"
-----------------------------------------------
David Hayes-Bautista
Director, Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
"Framing Latinos, Framing COVID-19: Understanding the Hispanic Experience with Coronavirus"
-----------------------------------------------
Mary T. Bassett
Director, François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights
T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University
"Journalists' Role in Uncovering and Explaining Racial Inequities in the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Produced by W. Wayt Gibbs and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing for New Horizons in Science 2020
