Good morning. The Covid death rate for white Americans has recently exceeded the rates for Black, Latino and Asian Americans. |
First, a note to readers: I've been working at The Times for more than two decades. And I consider it a great privilege to spend my days learning about the world and then reporting back to you about what I've discovered. My work — and the work of my 1,700 Times colleagues around the world — is possible because of the support we receive from our subscribers. I hope you'll consider subscribing. You can do so here. |
 | | Clem Williams, 76, getting her second booster in Durham, N.C. in May.Veasey Conway for The New York Times |
|
One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic's early stages was its disproportionate toll on Black and Latino Americans. |
During Covid's early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian rate. The Latino death rate was in between, substantially lower than the Black rate but still above average. |
"We're most vulnerable to this thing," Teresa Bradley, a nurse in Michigan, told The Times in 2020, after surviving a Covid hospitalization. When she was wheeled through the emergency room, she was pained to see that every other patient she saw there was also Black. |
These large racial gaps seemed as if they might persist throughout the pandemic, especially because white and Asian Americans were initially quicker to receive vaccine shots. Black and Latino Americans, by contrast, had less convenient access to the shots and many were skeptical of them. |
But these large racial gaps in vaccination have not continued — and as a result, neither have the gaps in Covid death rates. |
Instead, Covid's racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the Covid death rate for white Americans has been 14 percent higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72 percent higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest C.D.C. data. |
 | | Data until May 21, 2022. | Sources: C.D.C.; U.S. Census Bureau |
|
It is a remarkable turnabout, a story of both public health success and failure. |
The successful part of the story is the rapid increase in vaccination among Black and Latino Americans since last year. Today, the vaccination rate for both groups is slightly higher than it is for white Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's surveys. |
That has happened thanks to intense outreach efforts by medical workers, community organizers and others. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, the Rev. Steve Caudle preached about the importance of vaccines: "If it's the truth, if it's going to save lives, it should be preached from that pulpit," he told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. In Imperial County, just north of California's border with Mexico, health workers took advantage of the medical infrastructure that Obamacare helped create, according to Joe Mathews of Zócalo Public Square. |
One crucial feature of these campaigns has been their bottom-up nature. Local leaders have often designed outreach campaigns to fit their own communities. Rachel Hardeman, the director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota, described this approach to me as "centering at the margins." |
It can be especially effective when doctors and nurses listen to people's vaccine skepticism and respond respectfully and substantively. Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, a family physician in North Carolina, has described this attitude as "listening with humility." |
Why haven't you heard more about the narrowing of Covid's racial gaps? I think part of the reason is that many experts and journalists feel uncomfortable highlighting shrinking racial gaps in almost any area. They worry that doing so will somehow minimize the problem of racism and the country's enduring inequities. |
Certainly, there are important caveats to the Covid story. For one thing, the total death rate remains higher for Black and Latino Americans, because the early disparities were so huge. For another, the unequal nature of underlying health conditions means that a Black person remains more vulnerable on average to severe Covid than a white person of the same age, sex and vaccination status. |
Here are the trends based on age — which still show a narrowing gap, especially in recent months: |
 | | Data until May 21, 2022. | Sources: C.D.C.; U.S. Census Bureau |
|
Even with these caveats, the larger story remains: Covid has killed a smaller percentage of Black, Latino or Asian Americans over the past year than white Americans. To deny that reality is to miss an important part of the Covid story. |
It also serves as a reminder that rigorous, well-funded public health campaigns have the potential to narrow racial gaps. And there are many stark racial gaps in public health: Traffic deaths, which have surged during the pandemic, disproportionately kill lower-income Americans and people of color. Gun violence, which has also surged, has an even more disproportionate effect. Diabetes, H.I.V., high blood pressure and infant mortality all take a higher toll on Black America. |
With Covid, the country mobilized to reduce the racial vaccination gap — and succeeded. With many other public health problems, a similar focus could probably save lives. |
As I mentioned above, the narrowing of Covid's gaps does involve some bad news: The share of white Americans who have received a Covid vaccine shot has barely budged since last summer. |
The main culprit is politics. Only about 60 percent of Republican adults are vaccinated, compared with about 75 percent of independents and more than 90 percent of Democrats, according to Kaiser. And Republicans are both disproportionately white and older. Together, these facts help explain why the white death rate has recently been higher than the Asian, Black or Latino rate. |
In heavily conservative, white communities, leaders have not done as good a job explaining the vaccine's benefits — and Covid's risks — as leaders in Black and Latino communities. Instead, many conservative media figures, politicians, clergy members and others have amplified false or misleading information about the vaccines. Millions of Americans, in turn, have chosen not to receive a lifesaving shot. Some have paid with their lives. |
 | | Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Washington in 2019.Doug Mills/The New York Times |
|
- "He shot my friend that was next to me": Miah Cerrillo, an 11-year-old survivor of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, who covered herself in a classmate's blood, testified to the House.
- A pediatrician said he would "never forget what I saw" after the shooting.
- The House voted to ban high-capacity magazines and raise the age to buy a semiautomatic weapon to 21. The bill won't pass the Senate.
|
 | | A Ukrainian soldier on the front line.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
|
 | | Bradford Beach in Milwaukee.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
|
Lives Lived: Oris Buckner, New Orleans's only Black homicide detective in the early 1980s, exposed police violence against civilians. He died at 70. |
 | | Phil Mickelson will take part in the LIV Golf Invitational Series.Paul Childs/Action Images Via Reuters |
|
A controversial golf tour |
An upstart professional golf circuit, the LIV Series, will hold its first event today in Britain. The tour has attracted stars including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson to help it compete with the dominant PGA Tour. But it has also attracted scorn because of its biggest investor: the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. |
Why are golfers going to LIV? The Saudis' remarkably large purse. Mickelson was reportedly paid $200 million to join, and Johnson $150 million. The prize money for this weekend's event alone is $25 million; Tiger Woods, by contrast, has won $120 million over his entire PGA career. |
What's the controversy? Critics have accused Saudi Arabia of using its oil profits to buy major sports organizations and sanitize its image. Mickelson lost endorsements after joining, and he acknowledged that Saudi Arabia had a "horrible record on human rights," including the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. |
What is the PGA's reaction? It has aggressively sought to thwart the Saudi tour. The PGA has said it will discipline players who compete and it could bar them from most major American golf events. |
 | | Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Frances Boswell. |
|
The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was ideology. Here is today's puzzle. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David |
P.S. Sign up for Gameplay, a new weekly newsletter of puzzles, brain teasers and more from The Times's Games team. |
Kitty Bennett, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
|
