By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, June 8, 2020
Across the US, two public health crises — one new and one ages old — have merged into a devastating tandem. Systemic racism undergirds COVID-19 health disparities and the plague of police violence, both of which kill Black Americans at disproportionately high rates.
As protesters have taken to the streets to march against police brutality and to remember George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people who have died at the hands of law enforcement officers, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued plowing its destructive path. The US passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths at the end of May, and in some states like California, the daily number of new coronavirus cases is persistently trending up.
Black people make up 6% of California’s population but represent 10% of deaths from COVID-19, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. And now some health experts worry that the protests will accelerate the spread of the novel coronavirus, further burdening communities of color.
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