Is the Coronavirus Racist?
21st March 2020
Audacious Epigone looks at the numbers.
Six days later, with the c onfirmed nationwide caseload approaching 20,000, the respective correlations have increased from .40 to .58 and from .09 to .16.
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, of course. When increasing the sample size also increases the strength of the correlation, though, it suggests we’re onto something real.
It’s a schizophrenic world we live in, isn’t it? When members of a minority group are disproportionately the victims of crime or of poverty or of various negative health outcomes, America is indicted for not noticing the discrepancy. Yet for other negative health outcomes, like this one, the indictment comes on account of noticing the discrepancy rather than on account of not noticing it.