The story in Chicago, that happens when you peel back all of the jargon and the numbers and the overrepresentation, is one of losing the fabric of the city. In the 22 families that we were able to speak with, you really learn how much, A, they loved Chicago, how much they did for the city. We’re talking about veterans, teachers, nurses, everyday folks that are really the workers at the heart of what makes the city so great. And so, in examining these first 70 deaths, we were able to understand how sophisticated structural racism exists in a place like Chicago and how it’s quick to sort of throw off the arrows in trying to understand how entrenched things are. And it is easy to just say, “Well, these folks just were sicker and worse off than other folks, and that’s an inevitable consequence.” And what we learned is that it looks very different when this is your lived experience.
There were three things that we learned from speaking to these families and looking at the data in Chicago. One was that the one-size-fits-all approach to COVID care doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, especially those that are already facing other complications. And so many folks waited until their symptoms were very severe to seek care. That was one thing that really gleamed.
The second thing was, you know, the thing that most Chicagoans know, which is the uneven distribution of hospitals throughout the city. Many of the folks who were among the first to die lived in neighborhoods
— source democracynow.org | May 12, 2020