THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PANDEMIC AND ITS WEIGHING ON THE HEALTH AND CONSCIOUSNESS OF BLACK PEOPLE

The pandemic has been one of the toughest things we as Americans have all had to endure despite race and background.  Nearly 700,000 deaths, lackluster employment, political strife amongst Democrats and Republicans, not to mention racial tension to top it off, 2021 was only a repeat of 2020 in so many ways and it's giving Deja Vu realness. Throw in the Delta Variant birthed at the beginning of this year to stir the pot along with every other screaming Karen in a grocery store refusing to wear their mask because, well, why not, we have the recipe for a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. However, the impact (as with seemingly everything) affects black people much more severely, again leaving us with the short end of the stick. Whether just trying to survive in an already cruel world or just taking some time to oneself, African Americans still are seeing the pandemic affect them more than others health wise. According to Maritza V. Reyes,  (2020) since October 10, 2020 nearly 8 million people have tested positive in the U.S and its territories (Health and Human Rights, 2020). As expected, those numbers do not reflect the impact of African Americans in its totality. Many black people for one reason or another, have been skeptical about many things concerning government mandates or recommendations to take the Covid-19 vaccine sighting examples from the Tuskegee experiment to small pox given to the indigenous people of this land to name a few. Not to mention, a lack of resources and deterrents including but not limited to racism, poverty, reputable websites, books, community centers , political access and insurance. And because of that, we are more likely to perish from this disease more than any other group. In 2018, the Kaiser Family Foundation noted that in the United States, blacks compared to whites were less often to have some form of health insurance at a rate of 11.7% -7.5% (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2018). Reyes also discovered that  when looking at the covid numbers in the state of Kansas in June of 2020 in conjunction with the Covid Data Tracker, there were nearly 94,780 test administered which 4,854 were of blacks and 50,070 were whites, however it was blacks who made up a third of their states death (59 of 208).  Stats like these really do leave an already vulnerable people in unpredictable spaces not knowing who or what to rely on. The infighting between two determined sides of the spectrum yelling in dismissiveness to each other to either "ride out" the pandemic and let nature take its course, while the other demands everyone to be vaccinated so this nightmare can finally end does not help either. Either way, black people as always, find themselves again as the sacrificial lamb, not knowing for certain where to go or who to trust fully.  The patience is wearing thin on a system that has shown us for centuries our lives are expendable at any rate. So we do what we do best. Pray. Pray that the outcome will be much better than the present. Pray that this will not take us out. Pray for the light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, one day at a time.