Quote (Surfpunk @ 7 Apr 2022 19:20)
I don't know if vaccination rates can explain the differences based on race, as Black life expectancy went up, but they've lagged behind in vaccination rates (at least, through numbers from around October or so). My initial guess would probably trend toward geographic regions with fewer restrictions in place, with other factors balancing things out in other areas.
Here in Germany, our federal bureau of statistics made a very interesting finding: We had almost no excess mortality in 2020 on the population level, but these topline numbers did conceal two counteracting trends in subgroups: there was some excess mortality among the 70+ age group (covid), but at the same time, there was significant undermortality among adolescents and young adults. These two effects offset. The undermortality among younger folks is explained by the lockdowns which reduced the number of traffic deaths and cut down on risky behavior like drinking, brawls behind a bar, parachuting, skiing, motorcycling and all that. Essentially,
covid restrictions did - at least in the short run! - increase life expectancy (at the expense of life quality).
Another factor is the spatio-temporal aspect of covid and how it interacted with ethnicity. Minorities, and blacks in particular, are disproportionately living in urban areas which tended to have tougher restrictions and higher levels of compliance, as well as being hit harder early on, while whites are disproportionally living in rural places. Places like NYC already acquired high levels of herd immunity from infection in 2020 and were thus hit less hard in later waves. Meanwhile, large swaths of rural America barely got into contact with the virus before November or even December 2020. The infectees from that period often times only died in 2021.
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So, my theory of the case is the following:
- in 2020, blue states/big cities, where most of the minorities are living, were hit particularly hard, leading to the observed levels of excess mortality which were higher than those for rural or very white places
- in 2021, the restrictions in blue states/cities cancelled out the excess mortality from covid itself (see my point above), and considering the lower 2020 baseline these groups were coming from, life expectancy for blacks and hispanics went up a notch in 2021.
- rural and/or white places were hit later and not as hard in 2020, and when the virus arrived in full force in very late 2020 as well as throughout 2021, they had comparatively low levels of restrictions and low vaccine uptake. This combination is fairly unique among wealthy nations and dragged the entire national average up.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 7 2022 06:05pm