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The central thesis: > We propose that describing COVID-19 as disproportionately impacting people of color may lessen White U.S. residents' concerns about COVID

The central thesis: > We propose that describing COVID-19 as disproportionately impacting people of color may lessen White U.S. residents' concerns about COVID-19. This does not seem controversial, if true. It seems, simply, that affluent (mostly white) people would make the not-far-leap that COVID-19 was a problem for the poor and working class (mostly people of color). This, in fact, hasn't actually been far from the truth for portions of the pandemic.

jimbob45 5y ago
I agree. This seems identical to AIDS mitigations losing support from the heterosexual community once it became evident that it highly disproportionately targets homosexuals. People will naturally be most concerned with what affects them personally and specifically.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  There was a LOT of push back in the scientific community regarding the risks of HIV by demographic with a ton of efforts to try to communicate it was a major risk equally for all. I think this was similar in some ways to claims that things like N95 masks helped more (initially called disinformation by my local health department). In these cases while there may be laudable larger public health goals, I do worry it impacts credibility a bit? What is the actual risk of death for a 5 year old for example from covid? Do we have hard numbers? Mental health impacts, obesity, drownings, accidents, family abuse issues / foster care / divorce / single parent households / various mood and behavioral disorders?. I'm kind of curious about where COVID falls in spectrum of childhood risks.
  - yucky 5y ago
    >There was a LOT of push back in the scientific community regarding the risks of HIV by demographic with a ton of efforts to try to communicate it was a major risk equally for all. Except HIV was not and never has been an equal risk to all, not even close. Which I think was their point.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jethro_tell 5y ago
    We probably won't know for a while. We can see death/ no death right up front but it seems to be pretty savage with organs. And then you have long covid, which seems to clear up at some point but we'll be waiting a while to see what the long term affects are. We don't have hard numbers and even keeping track of cases and deaths was a bit scatter shot.
  - escapedmoose 5y ago
    I’ve had this talk a lot with my sisters, who both have young children. Lack of good information is paralyzing when you’re trying to do right by your kids. Their view is that while the risk of death looks to be low for their kids, they’re more concerned about the long-term developmental effects COVID could have. My sister lost her hearing after a bad illness as a child. The last thing either of them wants is for something similar to happen to their kids. Fortunately they’re both in positions where keeping the kids at home throughout the pandemic wasn’t much trouble. And now that the whole crew is vaccinated, they’re far less concerned.
  - iosono88 5y ago
hammock 5y ago
Calls to mind the infamous "sophisticated, vaccinated" comment: > NYT reporter slammed for calling Obama’s 60th birthday party low-risk due to ‘sophisticated, vaccinated crowd’ https://www.yahoo.com/video/nyt-reporter-slammed-calling-obama-220842756.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/nyt-reporter-slammed-calling-oba...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
floor2 5y ago
This statement is factually wrong. I'll hope that in correcting it maybe some readers on HN can help learn about this common misunderstanding, and it's important ramifications for understanding the often demonized white working class. The working class is not even remotely "mostly people of color". The most recent data I could quickly find (from https://talkpoverty.org/basics/ https://talkpoverty.org/basics/) shows that there are 15.9 million white Americans in poverty compared to 8.5 million Black people. Poverty rates among Black Americans are far higher than among white Americans, but in absolute numbers there are roughly twice as many poor and working class whites. In a similar dynamic, there are far more poor whites than there are rich whites. This creates the essential conflict when we use race instead of socioeconomic class or income. Instead of creating programs and policies to help the poor, we create programs and policies to help people on the basis of race. Those unfortunate 16,000,000 poor white citizens get double-excluded and then scorned as racists when they distrust a system that so clearly harms them. The story here isn't that these people are racists, the story is that people are being harmed by a system that focuses on race instead of need.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > shows that there are 15.9 million white Americans in poverty compared to 8.5 million Black people. That is insane! Consider that black people make up 12% of the USA's population while white people make up 76%. I didn't think the wealth disparity between white and black people was that bad in the USA, are you sure those numbers are accurate?
  - car_analogy 5y ago
    > white people make up 76% Untrue - the talkpoverty.org page being referred to distinguishes white and Hispanic, but non-Hispanic whites make up only 57.8% of the US. It was 75.6% in 1990, but their share has been dropping fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... Furthermore, while that page provides poverty rates for all sorts of groups, it somehow missed men (10.6% vs 12.9% for women) and Asians (10.1%, same as the white rate), according to https://www.povertyusa.org/facts https://www.povertyusa.org/facts (I assume the small difference is due to povertyusa.org using older data, from 2018)
car_analogy 5y ago
> COVID-19 was a problem for the poor and working class (mostly people of color) Untrue - the working class is still 57.6% non-Hispanic white, and it won't be minority-white till 2032: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-changing-demographics-of-americas-working-class/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-changing-demographics-of... Furthermore, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., "Non-Latino whites make up 57.8% of the country's population", so you can't even say that white people are less likely than average to be working class.

jimbob45 5y ago

I agree. This seems identical to AIDS mitigations losing support from the heterosexual community once it became evident that it highly disproportionately targets homosexuals. People will naturally be most concerned with what affects them personally and specifically.

tempnow987 5y ago
There was a LOT of push back in the scientific community regarding the risks of HIV by demographic with a ton of efforts to try to communicate it was a major risk equally for all. I think this was similar in some ways to claims that things like N95 masks helped more (initially called disinformation by my local health department). In these cases while there may be laudable larger public health goals, I do worry it impacts credibility a bit? What is the actual risk of death for a 5 year old for example from covid? Do we have hard numbers? Mental health impacts, obesity, drownings, accidents, family abuse issues / foster care / divorce / single parent households / various mood and behavioral disorders?. I'm kind of curious about where COVID falls in spectrum of childhood risks.
- yucky 5y ago
  >There was a LOT of push back in the scientific community regarding the risks of HIV by demographic with a ton of efforts to try to communicate it was a major risk equally for all. Except HIV was not and never has been an equal risk to all, not even close. Which I think was their point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  We probably won't know for a while. We can see death/ no death right up front but it seems to be pretty savage with organs. And then you have long covid, which seems to clear up at some point but we'll be waiting a while to see what the long term affects are. We don't have hard numbers and even keeping track of cases and deaths was a bit scatter shot.
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  I’ve had this talk a lot with my sisters, who both have young children. Lack of good information is paralyzing when you’re trying to do right by your kids. Their view is that while the risk of death looks to be low for their kids, they’re more concerned about the long-term developmental effects COVID could have. My sister lost her hearing after a bad illness as a child. The last thing either of them wants is for something similar to happen to their kids. Fortunately they’re both in positions where keeping the kids at home throughout the pandemic wasn’t much trouble. And now that the whole crew is vaccinated, they’re far less concerned.
- iosono88 5y ago

hammock 5y ago

Calls to mind the infamous "sophisticated, vaccinated" comment: > NYT reporter slammed for calling Obama’s 60th birthday party low-risk due to ‘sophisticated, vaccinated crowd’ https://www.yahoo.com/video/nyt-reporter-slammed-calling-obama-220842756.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/nyt-reporter-slammed-calling-oba...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

floor2 5y ago

This statement is factually wrong. I'll hope that in correcting it maybe some readers on HN can help learn about this common misunderstanding, and it's important ramifications for understanding the often demonized white working class. The working class is not even remotely "mostly people of color". The most recent data I could quickly find (from https://talkpoverty.org/basics/ https://talkpoverty.org/basics/) shows that there are 15.9 million white Americans in poverty compared to 8.5 million Black people. Poverty rates among Black Americans are far higher than among white Americans, but in absolute numbers there are roughly twice as many poor and working class whites. In a similar dynamic, there are far more poor whites than there are rich whites. This creates the essential conflict when we use race instead of socioeconomic class or income. Instead of creating programs and policies to help the poor, we create programs and policies to help people on the basis of race. Those unfortunate 16,000,000 poor white citizens get double-excluded and then scorned as racists when they distrust a system that so clearly harms them. The story here isn't that these people are racists, the story is that people are being harmed by a system that focuses on race instead of need.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> shows that there are 15.9 million white Americans in poverty compared to 8.5 million Black people. That is insane! Consider that black people make up 12% of the USA's population while white people make up 76%. I didn't think the wealth disparity between white and black people was that bad in the USA, are you sure those numbers are accurate?
- car_analogy 5y ago
  > white people make up 76% Untrue - the talkpoverty.org page being referred to distinguishes white and Hispanic, but non-Hispanic whites make up only 57.8% of the US. It was 75.6% in 1990, but their share has been dropping fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... Furthermore, while that page provides poverty rates for all sorts of groups, it somehow missed men (10.6% vs 12.9% for women) and Asians (10.1%, same as the white rate), according to https://www.povertyusa.org/facts https://www.povertyusa.org/facts (I assume the small difference is due to povertyusa.org using older data, from 2018)

car_analogy 5y ago

> COVID-19 was a problem for the poor and working class (mostly people of color) Untrue - the working class is still 57.6% non-Hispanic white, and it won't be minority-white till 2032: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-changing-demographics-of-americas-working-class/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-changing-demographics-of... Furthermore, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., "Non-Latino whites make up 57.8% of the country's population", so you can't even say that white people are less likely than average to be working class.