The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has officially revealed what many have long suspected: Bame people, and notably black people, are at significantly increased risk of dying from coronavirus.
The ONS report states that: “When taking into account age in the analysis, black males are 4.2 times more likely to die from a Covid-19-related death and black females are 4.3 times more likely than white ethnicity males and females.”
Let that sink in: four times more likely. Black people are four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than our white brothers and sisters. The obvious follow-up question is why?
In terms of identifying the root causes of this huge and alarming disparity, there is a lot to unpack. And there is a lot of soul-searching and remedying to be done.
Knowing our society as well as black people are forced to, I am cautiously confident that the one area that is most likely to be played down in any root cause analysis of this disparity is the area that is probably the most relevant and important: socioeconomic disadvantage.