Preliminary analysis from several states is showing us a surprising aspect to the COVID-19 virus. It appears that it is hitting Americans of minority ethnic groups much more significantly than it is hitting white Americans. Black Americans in particular are being hit much harder than any other group. In the counties sampled from the article, Black Americans are suffering rates of infection three times higher than the national average and mortality rates six times higher.
Several reasons have been given for this, from higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in the Black Community, to the higher rates of poverty in the Black Community making social distancing harder for members of this community. A third possibility that is being explored is a genetic difference between Blacks, Hispanics, Caucasians and Asians.
We know from many decades of research that different racial groups have more resistance to certain diseases and less resistance to other diseases. For example, syphilis is a prime example of this. Prior to 1495 syphilis was unknown in the Old World, it was a disease that only existed among Native Americans. Smallpox is another example of a disease that killed significantly more of a particular racial group. Smallpox was brought to the New World by Spanish conquistadors and killed millions of Native Americans due to their being zero immunity against the smallpox pathogen. Europeans on the other hand had at least built up a partial immune system response to smallpox and it killed in much smaller numbers.
Something similar may be at play here with Black Americans, there may be some genetic expression in Black Americans genome that is leading to these higher death rates. Of course it could just be the poorer health and/or societal disadvantages that many Black Americans suffer from. It will be interesting to see some reliable data from Africa and compare it to data for Black Americans to see if there is a matching trend.
