Reparations for slavery could have reduced Covid-19 transmission and deaths in United States, Harvard study finds

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If the United States had paid reparations to descendants of black Americans who were enslaved, the risk of serious illness and death from the virus would be much lower, according to a new peer-reviewed study of researchers.

The group of researchers, from Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, examined how reparation payments made before the pandemic would have affected Louisiana, a state that remains partially separated, and found that payments could have reduced the transmission of the coronavirus. in the state between 31% and 68%.

As the United States approaches a year of life with Covid-19, black Americans and other groups, including Hispanics and Native Americans, are up to 4 times more likely to be hospitalized than Americans whites, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Shows.

The researchers’ latest findings underscore the importance of a pandemic strategy that takes into account the racial gap in exposure and transmission of Covid-19, the researchers said.

“The effects of racial justice interventions on health disparities between blacks and whites are rarely studied, which is part of breeding systemic racism,” said study author Dr. Eugene. Richardson, assistant professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. CNN in an email.

“Our study is just another example of how racism enters people’s bodies and makes them sick, which can be added to this litany (of evidence for reparations).”

Richardson and his team’s findings were published this month in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

The study created a model of reparations

The crux of the research team’s argument centers on reparations or payments to African Americans who are descended from slaves. If the repairs work the way developers want, the payments could narrow the racial wealth gap, which in turn would narrow the gaps in access to health care, housing, education, employment and Moreover.

To model how the repairs would have affected the transmission of Covid-19, the researchers chose Louisiana, one of the states that reported cases of Covid-19 by race at the start of the pandemic and a state where the population is still “highly segregated” between blacks and non-black residents, according to the study.

Six questions on reparations linked to slavery, answered

The researchers compared Louisiana at the start of the pandemic to South Korea, a relatively egalitarian society that lacks a “large and segregated subgroup of the population made up of descendants of slaves.” Their goal, according to the study, was to see if the difference in infection rates was due to differences in social structures.

To do this, the researchers created a statistical model using “R-nothing,” a mathematical term that represents the average number of people to whom an infected person transmits the virus. The term also takes into account social structure, behavior and differential risk, Richardson told CNN.

They did their math with a model that would pay $ 250,000 in repairs per person or $ 800,000 per household. They also compared Louisiana and South Korea using infection data rates for the first two months of the outbreak.

The researcher’s model found that Louisiana took twice as long as South Korea to bring the R-nothing value below 1, “the critical value at which an epidemic will die out in a population.”

Had repairs been introduced long before the pandemic and narrowed the equity gap between blacks and whites, transmission of the coronavirus in Louisiana could have been reduced between 31% and 68% for residents of all races, according to study.

Structural racism caused disparities in Covid-19, researchers say

The modeling described by the research team is the latest evidence that reparations can address and begin to dismantle systemic racism in the United States, Richardson said.

Previous explanations for the high risk of serious illness or death among black Americans from Covid-19 indicated high rates of pre-existing illnesses like cancer and diabetes or a “personal failure” to follow public health advice, the researchers wrote. .

But those explanations don’t address how systemic racism positions black Americans in a way that makes them more likely to be exposed to Covid-19 and less likely to survive it.

Institutionalized racism in the United States has put black Americans at a disadvantage for centuries, starting with slavery, then segregation and the dangerous policies of the Jim Crow era, and now the inequalities that endure today, such as clashes. fatal with the police, the high rates of incarceration and the stigma found in health. care, employment, housing and more.

Institutional racism contributes to

“These risks are structural – that is, they are not determined by personal choice or rational assessment,” Richardson said in an email to CNN.

The “mismanagement” of the Covid-19 response in the United States has “exacerbated these disparities,” the researchers wrote.

Black workers are overrepresented on the frontlines in industries like restaurants, healthcare and childcare, all jobs that require direct contact with customers, which increases their risk of exposure to Covid-19 .

Black Americans are also more likely to live in crowded housing than white Americans, which can make it difficult or impossible to maintain social distancing. And black Americans make up a disproportionately large number of the American prison population, where preventative measures are often inadequate and conditions can be crowded, according to the study.

Had reparations been enacted before the pandemic, the researchers wrote, it may have narrowed the racial wealth divide, easing overcrowding so black Americans were better able to socially distance themselves and expand “work” frontline ”between racial groups.

Covid strategy should include repairs, study finds

Acknowledging these structural causes in the U.S. response to the pandemic is critical to alleviating some of the disproportionate burden Covid-19 has taken on black Americans, Richardson said.

Non-Hispanic black Americans account for over 26% of all Covid-19 deaths, but just over 12% of the US population. The percentage of deaths from Covid-19 is higher than the percentage of the native Hispanic and Native Americans and Alaskans population, according to the CDC.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease specialist in the United States and adviser to President Joe Biden on Covid-19, has claimed that institutional racism has contributed to the virus’s disproportionate impact on black Americans. But the first months of the country’s response to the coronavirus failed to take these disparities into account.
When Biden took office last month, his administration said he was “determined to embed racial equity” into the US Covid-19 response by extending the moratorium on CDC deportations and opening more sites for vaccination in areas with high populations of black residents and people of color.

The repairs, say Harvard researchers, would be a worthwhile addition to existing strategies, and its effects would extend well beyond the end of the pandemic.

CNN’s Nicole Chavez and Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.

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