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“The vulnerability of African-Americans to the coronavirus is a national emergency.” The Economist, May 30, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic, aided and abetted by racial disparities from the 50+ year chronic disease epidemic, has harmed blacks much more than whites.  Who is really surprised, crocodile tears aside, that blacks are dying at much higher rates than whites from the virus?   

As The Economist implies, African-American health has been worse than white health for centuries--but do whites really even care?  Major investments have been made in government programs, but the dismal outcomes remain.  

When it comes to public health, it’s not about what you say you care about, or what you try to do--it’s about the results. 

Exhibit A that it can be done: we reduced smoking by ⅔ in the course of more than five decades of hard policy and program work.  Smoking among black men declined even more than among white men--and by 2008 black teens smoked at half the rate of whites.

What will we do about our inactivity & unhealthy nutrition epidemic--which is much bigger, costlier & deadlier than the COVID-19 pandemic?  It damages African-, Native-, and Latino-American health disproportionately, every year--as well as harming whites on a massive scale.  

Let’s please not bother with happy-talk (yes, including The Economist magazine itself), unless we are committed to moving the needle dramatically. When it comes to health, words do not speak--sustained actions do.

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