To Celebrate Black History Month let’s explore the recent revelation from COVID of the Double Jeopardy of COVID Race and Aging
There is a US double Jeporady- Race and Aging showing up in our 3-year-old pandemic. Black people and older adults are the two groups most affected by COVID-19. History is not just about the good things that transpired but the negative events that occur like COVID and what it has revealed about the health of both Elders &Black Americans.
This double jeopardy, as a race- and age-informed analysis, demonstrates how Black race and old age are associated with practices and policies that shape key life circumstances (e.g., racial residential segregation, family and household composition) and resources in ways that embody elevated risk for COVID-19.
In a cross-sectional study of adults tested for COVID -19 in a large midwestern academic health system, COVID-19 positivity was associated with the Black race. Among patients with COVID-19, both race and poverty were associated with a higher risk of hospitalization, but only poverty was associated with a higher risk of intensive care unit admission.
Racial Capitalism
Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the United States.
The Double Jeopardy -Race, and aging show up in the overrepresentation of Black death reported in Detroit, Michigan is a case study for this argument. Racism and capitalism mutually create harmful social conditions that fundamentally shape COVID-19 disease inequities. These disease inequities (a) shape multiple diseases that interact with COVID-19 to influence poor health outcomes; (b) affect disease outcomes through increasing multiple risk factors for poor, people of color, including racial residential segregation, homelessness, and medical bias; (c) shape access to flexible resources, such as medical knowledge and freedom, which can be used to minimize both risks and the consequences of disease; and (d) replicate historical patterns of inequities within pandemics, despite newer intervening mechanisms thought to ameliorate health consequences. I would also add that the majority of paid caregivers are people of color and contract it because they work with COVID patients- . Interventions should address social inequality to achieve health equity across pandemics.
How Do We Change the Roots of This Double Jeopardy of Race & Aging?
So we hope that these health revelations will spur our government to address the roots of this double jeopardy-Race and Aging, something we have failed to address, these historical patterns of inequity for poor people of color and all people of color not just over pandemics but our entire caste system when elders and people of color are at the bottom, as Martin Luther King said, along with the untouchables
