However, if the U.S. paid for repairs, the descendants of black Americans who were addicted would have a much lower risk of serious illness and death due to the virus, according to a new, peer-reviewed study by the researchers.
The group of researchers, from Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Commission on Repairs and Redistributive Justice, investigated the compensation payments made before the pandemic, Louisiana, a state that still partially remains, and found that the payments affected the could reduce coronavirus transmission. in the state between 31% and 68%.
The researchers’ latest findings highlight the importance of a pandemic strategy that takes into account the racial divide in exposure and transmission of Covid-19, the researchers said.
“Our study merely provides another example of how racism invades people’s bodies and makes them sick, which can be added to this litany (evidence for compensation).”
The study created a model of compensation
To model how compensation would affect the transmission of Covid-19, the researchers selected Louisiana, one of the states that reported Covid-19 cases by race at the beginning of the pandemic, and a state where the population still ” strongly segregated “is between black and black people. non-black residents, according to the study.
At the beginning of the pandemic, researchers compared Louisiana to South Korea, a relatively egalitarian society that does not have a “large, segregated subgroup of the slave descendants.” Their aim, according to the study, was to see if the difference in infection rates was driven by differences in social structures.
To do this, the researchers created a statistical model using ‘R-zero’, a mathematical term that represents the average number of people on whom an infected person spreads the virus. The term is also responsible for social structure, behavior and differential risk, Richardson told CNN.
They did their calculations with a model that would pay $ 250,000 per person or $ 800,000 per household. They also compared Louisiana and South Korea using infection rates during the first two months of the epidemic.
The researcher’s model found that Louisiana took twice as long as South Korea to bring the R zero value below 1, “the critical value at which an outbreak in a population would become extinct.”
If the compensation was introduced before the pandemic and the gap in equity between Blacks and Whites was reduced, the transmission of the coronavirus in Louisiana could be reduced by 31% to 68% for residents of all races.
Structural racism has caused Covid-19 inequalities, say researchers
Previous explanations for the high risk of black Americans for serious illness or death due to Covid-19 have indicated a high percentage of pre-existing conditions such as cancer and diabetes or ‘personal failure’ to follow public health advice, the researchers wrote.
But these statements do not address how systemic racism positions black Americans in a way that makes them more exposed to Covid-19 and less likely to survive it.
Institutionalized racism in the U.S. has harmed Black Americans for centuries, beginning with slavery, then segregation and the dangerous policies of the Jim Crow era, and now the inequalities that persist today, such as fatal police encounters, high rates of incarceration and prejudice in health care, employment, housing and more.
“These risks are structural – that is, not determined by personal choice or rational assessment,” Richardson said in an email to CNN.
The “mismanagement” of the Covid-19 response in the US exacerbated these differences, the researchers wrote.
Black workers are over-represented in the front lines in sectors such as food services, healthcare and childcare, all jobs that require direct contact with customers, which increases their risk of exposure to Covid-19.
If compensation were introduced before the pandemic, the researchers write, it could reduce the distribution of racial wealth, which would alleviate overpopulation so that black Americans would be better able to distance themselves socially and spread ‘frontline work’ across racial groups.
Study says Covid strategy should include repairs
Recognizing the structural causes in the U.S. pandemic response is essential to alleviate some of Covid-19’s excessive taxes on Black Americans, Richardson said.
Repairs, Harvard researchers argue, would be a worthy addition to existing strategies, and their consequences would extend far beyond the end of the pandemic.
CNN’s Nicole Chavez and Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.