COVID Blog June 20, 2020

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COVID Blog June 20, 2020

June 20, 2020

As of June 20, 2020, there are over 8.4 million people diagnosed with COVID-19 and over 445,000 deaths worldwide. In the US, there are over 2.2 million infections and more than 118,000 deaths.

The number of cases is surging in many states, particularly those in the South and Southeast. In Oklahoma, which has been in the news because of the planned Trump rally on 6/20, there were 450 new cases on Thursday, 150 more than the previous high earlier in the week. California had several days this week with over 5000 new cases, the most during the pandemic. Florida and Arizona also had the highest number of cases to date. As I’ve mentioned before, tracking # of hospitalizations is a good way to distinguish between increasing number of cases due to testing or due to new infections. In Texas, the number of people hospitalized with COVID is approaching 3000 per day, doubling what it was 3 weeks ago.

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Of Pandemics, Policies, and Police

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Of Pandemics, Policies, and Police

June 5, 2020
Tung Nguyen, PIVOT president

Health disparities researchers have known for several decades the main underlying causes of such disparities. We call them the social determinants of health, and they include poverty, education, the environment, and healthcare access.

Racism is often thought to be one of those determinants as well, because chronic exposure to racism cause the body to change through the release of stress hormones and neurotransmitters. Acute exposure to racism can lead to death, as in the case of the recent killings of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others. From a health disparities perspective, the George Floyd shooting was an acute exposure to racism, with the 4 police officers serving as the vectors that delivered the disease of racism and its ultimate health outcome, death.

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