Weathering

Not the Positive Kind

So, testing and data in regards to COVID19 is still not what it needs to be in order to make those of us who tend to rely on facts for our survival to feel more comfortable going about our daily lives. However, there appears to be head-scratching evidence indicating the virus decimates segments of the population more than others. Apparently, black Americans are disproportionately succumbing to the onslaught of this viral contagion.

Obviously, all the data is not in, but the early data is eye opening.

In Louisiana, where 32% of the population is African American, those residents account for about 70% of coronavirus deaths.

In Michigan, African Americans are 14% of the state's population and represent about 40% of the deaths. Many of the cases are in Detroit, where four out of five residents are black.

In Chicago, 72% of the people who have died from Covid-19 are black, though they make up 30% of the population, officials said.

The podcast I listened to this morning, called The United States of Anxiety, featured a public health researcher who believes she has a hypothesis of why this would be the case, besides the obvious ideas that might come to mind - lower socioeconomic status, number of people sharing a household, comorbidities ( which is just a fancy medical term for additional contributing factors like diabetes or obesity). The public health researcher, Arline Geronimus, suggests ‘biological weathering’ could be a major contributing factor.

I’ve never called it biological weathering but I have thought about this concept for a very long time.

Who hasn’t noted presidents aging 15 years over the course of their term?

Even a cool cucumber like Obama aged dramatically. The stress and strain of being the president of the United States would chip away at anyone’s resiliency.

Quite a long time ago I read a book titled The Good Life. A chronicle of Helen and Scott Nearing’s sixty years of self-sufficient living. They moved from New York City to the backwoods of Vermont in the midst of the Great Depression and they homesteaded a maple orchard that had been abandoned and ‘gone to seed.’

I mention it because the part that captured my imagination was their steadfast belief that the crippling part of our culture was the dogged pursuit of fame and fortune - while being beset by the inherent responsibilities of living. They intended to seek sustenance through a “self-respecting, decent and simple life.”

One of their self-imposed dictums was that you should work no more than fifty per cent of your time here on earth. They believed the other fifty per cent should be split between social aspect and activities, recreation and rest and recovery. They were “socialists” and, in Warren Beatty’s movie Reds, you’ll see Scott Nearing as part of a montage of American socialists voicing their beliefs at various intervals of the super long movie.

I embraced the 50/50 concept without embracing the homesteading idea. I could not have lasted a season trying to live off the land. I did, however, latch on to the 50/50 ratio for maintaining my sanity. I liked the ratio for reducing the ‘biological weathering’ that is endemic to our society and that I am familiar with - the obsession with time, the devotion to objects, the pursuit of fame for fame’s sake, the pursuit of anything because everybody else is doing it…

Of course, I am nothing like the Nearings. They took a hardscrabble orchard and brought it back to life. They built their house out of the stones they found on the land. They did all of that while building a community and learning numerous, useful skills.

I was just trying to dodge as much ‘biological weathering’ as possible.

But it is my white privilege that allows me to speak of biological weathering in this particular way. This is not what Arline Geronimus, the public researcher, wanted to point out on United States of Anxiety about why black people might be dying at a higher rate with the novel coronavirus.

For black Americans, they also experience the sort of biological weathering I was speaking of because they, too, are stuck in this maddening culture where time is money but - additionally - they experience a structural racism which bears down on them incessantly. Weighing on them like those lead vests you have to don when getting x-rayed.

Structural racism in the form of. . .

The police pulling black Americans over for “driving while black.”

A black doctor accosted by a police officer as he’s trying to deliver PPE while wearing a COVID19 mask in - what I can only assume - must be the ‘wrong neighborhood’.

When they enter a hospital, health care workers may look past their symptoms and ailments either dismissing or overlooking them. Apparently, this is not uncommon during pregnancies and is a contributing factor toward a higher infant mortality rate.

And then there are all the lesser ‘slights’, too numerous to detail, that happen on a regular basis as they go about their daily lives.

It’s erosion at the cellular level chipping away upon the immune system. Black Americans enter the battle with COVID19 with immune systems compromised in advance, even if appearing healthy otherwise. This is the public health researcher’s hypothesis.

Reminds me of something I read a while ago and I paraphrase,

“As a white person, you may have experienced hardship. But you have not experienced hardship because you are white.”

###

Spoken word titled “Letter to Your Flag” which is a very powerful performance from a teen ager. Fierce and on point. Worth a listen in light of today’s commentary.

Also, for no apparent reason, here’s the sound of a Rufous Potoo in its native habitat in Ecuador. Excellent bird website where you can listen to the songs and sounds of all kinds of birds.