From an earlier article I wrote:

Thorough scientific evidence for the correlation of racial / economic discrimination and enhanced vulnerability to pandemics has been available since at least 2011, thanks to an article published by David Satcher in Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved and another article published by Gilbert C. Gee and Chandra L. Ford in Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race.

The Impact of Disparities in Health on Pandemic Preparedness (2011) by Satcher (Surgeon General under Bill Clinton…) includes in its bibliography articles as far back as 2003 on racial /economic status as a risk factor for disease.

Gee and Ford, in Structural Racism and Health Inequities (2011), document the need for further research into how structural (historical and current) racism undermines the health of disadvantaged minorities. Nine years later, we do not seem to have made significant progress in research or practice. And that is the real problem.

The reason we as a nation haven’t made any progress on health inequity and the racially disproportionate harm of pandemics since 2011 is that white Americans are comfortable with our racial contract.