African Americans Far Safer from COVID in Red States

(photo NJ Gov. Phil Murphy)

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, lots of talk by the media of racial disparity when dealing with COVID, but here are some findings that should seriously disturb every African American family . While it is true and troubling that minorities have been more adversely affected (in terms of death rates and infection rates) by COVID than whites, the story that hasn’t been told is that Democratic governors have done a much worse job keeping blacks safe and healthy than red state governors.

The racial composition data comes from the Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project through January 2021. Two findings jump out:

The first is that African Americans per 100,000 population were substantially more likely to be die from COVID if they reside in blue states (Democratic governor) than in red states (Repub. Governor). For example, a African American living in Michigan was five times more likely to die of COVID than a African American living in West Virginia.

Second, the racial disparity within a state – i.e., the death rates of African Americans vs. whites – has been substantially higher in states with Democratic governors.

How Much More Likely Are African American to Die from COVID Than Whites?

This tells us that a African American  living in New York or Michigan was twice as likely to have died from COVID than a white in these states. But an African American living in, say, Idaho or South Dakota was far LESS likely to die from COVID than a white.

These are confounding results given that Democratic governors and state legislators have been much more likely to impose draconian lockdowns of businesses, schools, churches and parks, and more likely to impose “stay-at-home” orders. Those apparently had the effect not of reducing risk but of transferring it from whites to blacks.

The Ridgewood blog has reported many times that lockdowns crushed minorities economically. Jim Piereson and Naomi Riley have examined the data on this in the City Journal and have validated these results. Now it turns out that lockdown governors also did a very poor job of keeping minorities safe