Reparations for Black American Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the U.S. and Their Estimated Impact on SARS-CoV-2 Transmission

Abstract

Background In the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19. The potential for racial-justice interventions, including reparations payments, to ameliorate these disparities has not been adequately explored. Methods We compared the COVID-19 time-varying Rt curves of relatively disparate polities in terms of social equity (South Korea vs. Louisiana). Next, we considered a range of reproductive ratios to back-calculate the transmission rates βi→j for 4 cells of the simplified next-generation matrix (from which R0 is calculated for structured models) for the outbreak in Louisiana. Lastly, we modeled the effect that monetary payments as reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. would have had on pre-intervention βi→j. Results Once their respective epidemics begin to propagate, Louisiana displays Rt values with an absolute difference of 1.3 to 2.5 compared to South Korea. It also takes Louisiana more than twice as long to bring Rt below 1. We estimate that increased equity in transmission consistent with the benefits of a successful reparations program (reflected in the ratio βb→b / βw→w) could reduce R0 by 31 to 68%. Discussion While there are compelling moral and historical arguments for racial injustice interventions such as reparations, our study describes potential health benefits in the form of reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk. As we demonstrate, a restitutive program targeted towards Black individuals would not only decrease COVID-19 risk for recipients of the wealth redistribution; the mitigating effects would be distributed across racial groups, benefitting the population at large.

Transmission‐dynamicsmodels for theSARSCoronavirus‐2

“…Of particular relevance to COVID‐19, poor people are more likely to be engaged in high‐risk, “frontline” labor, making it more likely that they will receive infection from both wealthy and poor. Furthermore, poor people live in more crowded housing, making NPIs such as sheltering‐in‐place structurally less effective than they are for wealthy people (Richardson et al, 2020). This latter observation leads to the expectation that the type‐specific reproduction number for poor people will be substantially greater than the analogous number for wealthy people.…”

Modeling the impact of racial and ethnic disparities on COVID-19 epidemic dynamics

“…We assessed a range of values for ϵ because the serosurvey data cannot be used to also fit the optimal ϵ value; given limited numbers of data points, all of the models can fit exactly to the single seroprevalence time point we consider. To inform plausible assortativity levels, we instead used additional data on demographic distributions from the American Community Survey US census [33]. We calculated the exposure index, which represents the average neighborhood’s demographic composition from the perspective of an individual from a given racial or ethnic group (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2), and used these results to fit ϵ .…”

“…These results also suggest that public health interventions for reducing COVID-19 inequities can have synergistic effects for controlling the overall epidemic [33]. For instance, from a transmission-control perspective, age-structured models indicate that vaccination of high-activity age groups – such as young adults – is optimal for controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 [9].…”

“…N i for i ∈ {0, …, 4}) from the 2018 ACS census 1-year estimates Table B03002 (Hispanic or Latino origin by race) subsetted to the following counties: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Richmond Counties for New York City and Nassau and Suffolk Counties for Long Island. For exposure index calculations to inform model assortativity levels, we used the approach of Richardson et al [33] using census data from the 2018 ACS 5-year estimates Table B03002 (Hispanic or Latino origin by race) at the level of “all block groups” within the above counties. Copies of the census data we used are available at https://github.com/kevincma/covid19-race-ethnicity-model/tree/main/data.…”

Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weapon-ization of breaking news

“…Most precisely, Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the US(Richardson et al, 2020). This is a group that excludes white-identified American descendants of (Black) persons enslaved in the U.S., as well as more recent immigrants who are either descended from persons enslaved elsewhere (such as Jamaica, Haiti, or Brazil) or from Africa.…”