What could be more sad? The extent of parental deaths due to the pandemic is a staggering number and growing. I quote from this piece herein: 

"Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics." 

This will be a societal problem far into the future, no doubt, disproportionately impacting children of color. I'm sure there are various places to make a donation to help an orphaned child. 

What I readily tracked down was the Child Mind Institute that provides research-based, crisis support to young children.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘He isn’t going to come back’ — Across Texas, COVID orphans struggle with loss of one or both parents 

Rebecca Carballo, Megan Rodriguez, Staff writers

Dec. 2, 2021Updated: Dec. 3, 2021 9:15 a.m.

Six-year-old Ayden Villegas looks at pictures of his father, Robert Villegas, who died in January after a three-week battle with COVID-19. Villegas’ widow, Valerie, a hospice nurse, is raising their children — five boys and a daughter — on her own.

Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer

Rozie Salinas’ Christmas tree is covered in dinosaur ornaments, at the request of her 6-year-old grandson.

Decking the halls of her northeast San Antonio home with the colorful figurines is a way for Salinas to make happy memories for Raiden Gonzalez. She adopted the boy after his parents died last year from complications of COVID-19.

Since then, Salinas and Raiden have been through a lot: memorial services for his parents, a move to a new home and two birthdays for Raiden, who was just 4 when his parents died. Along the way, the boy and his grandmother both contracted the coronavirus themselves.

The holidays are especially difficult.

“He was crying, asking how come he can’t have his parents back and that he just wished that they were adults again and not angels,” said Salinas, 48. “It’s just kind of hard to explain to him why he can’t have them back.”

Theirs is no isolated struggle. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. — including 14,000 in Texas — lost at least one parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic, according to a recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The long-term repercussions are expected to be profound. Single-parent households are more likely to slip into poverty and to suffer from unstable housing, low educational attainment and mental health problems. Orphaned children suffer elevated rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Pediatrics study described the loss of parents or other family caregivers as one of the “severe unrecognized consequences” of the pandemic.

Valerie Villegas of Portland with the youngest of her six children, Nicholas, 2. Her husband, Robert, 45, died of complications from COVID-19.

Mark Mulligan /Staff photographer

It has affected minority children disproportionately, the study found. Researchers determined that from April 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, the risk of losing a parent or a grandparent caregiver was 1.1 to 4.5 times higher for children in racial and ethnic minority groups.

In Texas, 58 percent of the children who lost parents were Hispanic and 16 percent were Black, the study found. Hispanics make up 39 percent of the state’s population and Black people 12 percent, according to the 2020 Census.

Some minority groups have larger families, which means the loss of a parent affects more children. But other factors were at work, too.

More than 70 percent of Black and Hispanic men work in front-line jobs in retail, warehousing, meat packing and health care, occupations where the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is greater, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as non-Hispanic whites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

Rozie Salinas and her six-year-old grandson Raiden Gonzalez, 6, are pictured in the backyard of 

their home in San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 1, 2021. Last year, Raiden lost his parents Mariah and 

Adan Gonzalez to COVID-19. Salinas has been caring for Raiden since his parents died and just 

formally adopted him at the beginning of this year and they recently moved into a new home 

with the help of funds from a GoFundMe that was created when their family’s story received 

national attention following the passing of Raiden’s parents.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Other epidemics, such as the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, claimed the lives of many parents. What sets COVID-19 apart is how quickly the disease can progress, leaving families with little time to steel themselves for a devastating loss.

“With COVID, often someone is dead within several days or two weeks,” said Susan D. Hillis, lead author of the Pediatrics study and a senior adviser for the CDC. “And so, suddenly, there’s this shock without adequate time to prepare families.”

‘He isn’t going to come back’

Robert Villegas was cutting his son’s hair in their home near Corpus Christi when he started breathing heavily. His wife, Valerie, a hospice nurse, knew something was wrong. A check of his oxygen level confirmed it: It had fallen dangerously low.

The Villegases headed for Northshore Emergency Center. Unable to go inside because of COVID-19 restrictions, 3-year-old Robert Jr., his haircut still unfinished, said goodbye to his father. It was the last time he saw him.

Valerie and Robert Villegas were just starting to make plans in case one of them died. They never had time to prepare a will. They didn’t have life insurance.

Robert, a truck driver, was 45 when he died. He’d brought in half the family’s income. His death created a huge financial burden on the family, one that widened when Valerie took a three-month, unpaid leave from her job to care for her children.

Unemployment assistance and Social Security survivor benefits kept the family afloat, but money was tight as Valerie tried to keep six children, ages 1 to 18, fed and clothed. Day care for her two youngest cost more than $700 a month.

“My kids never knew what it was to have the lights turned off or the water turned off,” Villegas said. “And they experienced it a good few times this last year.”

In the spring, she returned to work at hospice after being named director of nurses, an administrative role with a higher salary. Now, she’s able to stay on top of the bills, but there isn’t much left over. There won’t be as many Christmas presents under the tree this year, she said.

While the family’s finances have stabilized, the children are still struggling with the loss of their father. Robert Jr., now 4, has angry outbursts, usually when after he hears someone talk about his father.

“He is just starting to realize he isn’t going to come back,” Villegas said.

‘Struggling to be OK’

Tiffany Sanders, 46, of Pearland, lost her husband, Stephen, to COVID a year ago. He was a consultant for oil and gas companies and contracted the virus on a business trip. The family was blindsided. Stephen, 41, had no underlying health conditions and regularly wore a mask.

He was close to their daughters, now 13 and 15. Sanders said her younger teenager is having a particularly hard time.

“It’s been a struggle to get her to a place where she can still keep her dad alive in her heart and honor him by living the best life that she can,” Sanders said. “She’s still struggling to be OK with having any kind of joy in her life.”

Sanders sought counseling for her two teenage daughters, but it took three months to get even a virtual appointment. Her 13-year-old waited nearly 10 months to see a therapist in person.

Stephen Sanders was the sole breadwinner for the family. Tiffany is supporting the family with the payout from her husband’s life insurance policy and Social Security survivor benefits.

She plans to return to work eventually but wonders whether she’s still employable after 15 years as a stay-at-home parent. Before she had children, she worked in international relocations, helping oil and gas companies move employees to operations in other countries.

“I’m going to have to go back to work. My husband left me money, but I’m only 46 years old and it’s not going to last,” Sanders said. “But I’m not trying to think that far ahead. I can barely get through one day.”

‘Too many memories’

Raiden’s father, Adan Gonzalez, 33, died in June 2020 after being hospitalized with COVID-19 for almost a month. He was a truck driver and was in training for a new job.

His wife, Mariah, died four months later at age 29. As Salinas remembers it, her daughter complained she wasn’t feeling well and was taken to the hospital — and by the next day, she was dead.

For a time, Raiden didn’t want to sleep alone. In September, Salinas moved them from a home she’d been leasing to their “forever home” two miles away. Since then, Raiden has been able to sleep by himself.

“That house that we were at, there were just too many memories in there,” said Salinas, who is a customer service representative for a health insurance company.

A GoFundMe helped pay for their new home and for a more reliable car.

Salinas said Raiden sometimes has “little breakdowns” at home and struggles to focus on school the next day. She’s searching for a therapist for him and is seeing one herself.

“It’s OK. Like I tell Raiden, we’re going to get through this one way or the other,” Salinas said. “If we have to struggle a bit, it’s OK. We’re going to get through it. I just want to make sure that he has a good life and has a good childhood. That way, he’s got his memories to be able to go back and talk about.”

Their Christmas tree includes a little memorial to Raiden’s parents. A glittery gold ornament shaped like an M for Mariah and a silver A for Adan hang front and center on the tree. Between them is an ornament with a picture of a smiling Raiden.

rebecca.carballo@chron.com

megan.rodriguez@express-news.net

Written By

Rebecca Carballo

Written By

Megan Rodriguez

Megan Rodriguez covers Alamo Heights, Olmos Park and general assignment stories for the Express-News.

"The people claiming to be ‘freethinkers’ in the pandemic might actually be sheep," By Dominic J. Packer & Jay J. Van Bavel

Here is a piece to chew on. In captures a paradoxical feature of North American identity, namely, that "individualistic norms can create a 'herd of independent minds.'” What mediates this tension between the individual and the herd is the following: Inasmuch as so-called individualism leads to a nation of specialized roles, we become more—not less—dependent on one another. 

The pandemic should have served as a reminder of just how dependent we are on each other, translating into actions that support the well-being  of the whole. Countries that have gone down this path have fared better in terms of COVID infection rates and deaths. Those that have not, like the U.S., have paid a high price for the illusion of independence that is itself a manifestation of conformity. It's helpful to see how research supports this.

-Angela Valenzuela

Op-Ed: The people claiming to be ‘freethinkers’ in the pandemic might actually be sheep

A demonstrator at a protest against vaccine and mask mandates near the state Capitol in Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 20. Social researchers find that American individualism is just another norm determined by the group.

(Cedar Attanasio / Associated Press)

BY DOMINIC J. PACKER & JAY J. VAN BAVEL | Nov. 15, 2021 | Los angeles times

Now two years into the pandemic, we continue to hear constant fights about the fundamental antagonism between being an independent individual and being a good group member. You must be either a “freethinker” or a “sheep”!

But research suggests this is not the case and that the two often go hand in hand. Indeed, individualism may be the ultimate form of American conformity.

Individualism is a core part of American identity, with individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. This contrasts sharply with the collectivism expressed in other parts of the world, where the needs of the group are often prioritized over individual rights.

Yet even in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” noted an apparent paradox in the American way of life: an unprecedented individualism was combined with mass involvement in “voluntary associations.” Far more than citizens in his native France, Americans were joiners, belonging to “associations of a thousand … kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.”

As we found in our research, the groups we identify with, including our nation, shape our understanding of what it is to be a person. The ways in which we strive to be an independent self are influenced by the norms of the groups we care about. Over time, these values fundamentally become part of who we are. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has said, “In constructing an identity, one draws, among other things, on the kind of person available in one’s society.”

American identity has strong norms of independence, emphasizing personal autonomy, responsibility and individual rights. Does this mean that American individualism is just another norm determined by the group?

Research suggests that indeed it is. In one study, for example, social psychologist Jolanda Jetten and her colleagues measured how much American and Indonesian citizens identified with their respective countries. Respondents were asked, for example, how glad they were to be an American or Indonesian and how connected they felt to their fellow citizens. The researchers then assessed these citizens’ levels of individualism by asking them how much they agreed with statements like, “One should be independent of others as much as possible” or “When faced with a difficult personal decision, it is better to decide yourself rather than follow the advice of friends or relatives.”

American citizens were more individualistic than Indonesians, which aligns with a large body of research on cultural differences. Crucially, Americans who were strongly identified with their country reported higher levels of individualism than Americans who identified less. It was the opposite in Indonesia, where citizens who identified strongly with the nation were less individualistic than those who were weakly identified.

In other words, it was identification with their nation — intersecting 

with the nation’s social norms — that determined individualism.

This study is entirely consistent with what social scientists and commentators have long noted about a paradox in American identity. In the memorable phrasing of art critic Harold Rosenberg, individualistic norms can create a “herd of independent minds” — people who strive for independence are often doing it to fit in.

It also turns out that autonomy and interdependence are highly intertwined. A study of 42 nations (as well as comparisons across the 50 U.S. states) found that in places where people are more individualistic, they also become more dependent on others.

This counterintuitive pattern might appear surprising. But it occurs because the more individualized and specialized our roles, the more dependent we become on other people to function effectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a stark reminder of just how interdependent we all are. Our individual vulnerability to COVID-19 is highly dependent on the actions of the people around us and, with the rise of variants, responses around the world. As we noted in an April 2020 study, fighting a pandemic requires large-scale cooperation — which means having people get vaccinated, wear masks and take other precautions to protect their communities.

A major problem with public health communication during this pandemic has been the failure to dispel the false choice between personal freedom and collective well-being. New Zealand, for instance, found that the populace acting collectively to mitigate the virus early on has actually allowed far more freedom overall during the pandemic.

Evidence suggests that countries with norms that place greater value on independence, like the U.S., (what the social psychologist Michele Gelfand calls “loose cultures”) have had a harder time coordinating their citizenry and slowing the spread of the virus, ultimately suffering higher rates of infection and mortality. Yet the autonomy people believe they are proving by refusing to conform to health protective behaviors is largely an illusion, itself a type of conformity.

Independence and interdependence are not antagonistic, and we need to exercise both at the same time. It is our collective strength that allows for our individuality to flourish. There’s no clearer example of this fact than what we’re living through now.

Dominic J. Packer is a professor of psychology at Lehigh University and Jay Van Bavel is an associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. They are authors of “The Power of Us: Harnessing our shared identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony.”

My Hometown of San Angelo is in Trouble as Doctors Say Texas Leaders Failed To Stop COVID-19 From Spreading

More on necropolitics, politics that are about deaths and dying. Tragically, Texas is a leader in child deaths. Such horribly misplaced priorities by our state's governor. I my hometown of San Angelo, Texas, infections have surged to approximately 2,000 with an astounding 22,000 total infections county-wide. This means that the rural areas are significantly impacted. Forget going to San Angelo any time soon.

Sadly, a 63-year-old minister and family friend, Pastor Edward A. Lopez, who
officiated many years ago at my grandmother's funeral, is one of these fatalities. His family's words expressed in his obituary are particularly unnerving:

"Reverend Lopez believed in the Lord and in medicine. He was fully vaccinated but COVID-19 ravaged his lungs and kidneys due to others not exhibiting the same wisdom. The family wants to thank Shannon Hospital COVID-19 ICU staff for the excellent care given with a special appreciation to Dr. Wood and Emily (Emy) Emmons, RN. Due to COVID-19, the funeral services will be for immediate family members only. Please get fully vaccinated, wear a mask, social distance and wash your hands."

When have you seen an obituary like this? He didn't "lose" his life. It was taken away by Gov. Abbott's necropolitics.

Despite being a very small percentage of the population of all COVID deaths, it is nevertheless the case that even a fully-vaccinated person can die from this terrible virus. 

If the governor or his party aren't going to help prevent preventable deaths, then we must all assume our own individual responsibility. 

This is so saddening. Peace, blessings, and solace for Pastor Lopez' family, church members, and community to which he dedicated his life. 

May he rest in peace.

-Angela Valenzuela

Doctors Say Texas Leaders Failed To Stop COVID-19 From Spreading

Hospitals across the state are running low on pediatric intensive care unit beds. Texas’ Department of State Health Services says only 81 of them remain — and just a couple hundred more regular ICU beds are available in the state of 29 million people.

PAUL FLAHIVE, TPR

 | POSTED ONSEPTEMBER 3, 2021, 11:36 AM

File Photo: Gov. Greg Abbott leads a roundtable discussion on public safety priorities at the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in January 2021.

Texas schools have amassed more than 50,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in students in just a couple of weeks. More than a dozen school districts have closed temporarily as a result of the disease, and Texas is a leader in child deaths from COVID-19 with 59 as of Sept. 3.

But state leaders have spent weeks of the surge pushing through controversial bills around abortion, voting restrictions and bail reform while Gov. Abbott has been fighting local governments over their efforts to stem the spread of the disease.

Hospitals across the state are running low on pediatric intensive care unit beds. Texas' Department of State Health Services says only 81 of them remain — and just a couple hundred more regular ICU beds are available in the state of 29 million people.

"Governor Abbott has failed us. A republican state legislature has failed us,” said Dr. David Portugal a cardiologist in Sugarland, Texas. "These leaders should be held accountable and be asked to explain how they can justify taking actions that are killing their fellow Texans."

Portugal and other Texas members of the advocacy group the Committee to Protect Health Care called on the governor to rescind his executive order barring local governments from mandating masks in schools. They are just a few of the many healthcare workers and local governments frustrated by the state’s lack of action on preventing the spread of COVID.

State officials recently admitted the bans were unenforceable by them, leaving it to local district attorneys. But the continued litigation and threats to school districts has left confusion and patchwork of policies that many doctors see as exacerbating the COVID surge.

"Hospital staff and resources are stretched to the breaking point," said Dr. Elena Jimenez-Gutierrez, an internal medicine physician in San Antonio.

The surge has led to canceled surgeries, overwhelmed staff and preventable hospitalizations and deaths.

"Doctors and other health care workers see every day how too many Texans are needlessly getting sick, including many children when we know this disease can be prevented," she said

The governor's office has recruited more doctors and nurses from out of state to help. He authorized more monoclonal antibody therapy centers — though doctors say the wait to get the treatment is as long as 10 days.

Abbott promotes vaccination as the real prevention. He got vaccinated on TV. But he draws the line on mandates — vaccines or masks — which are very unpopular with conservative primary voters as he faces two far-right challengers early next year.

"We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health and we will do so without treading on Texans personal freedoms," said Abbott in an April tweet where he also announced he would ban private companies from asking for proof of vaccination.

He reissued the order last month.

"Among Texas children who are eligible, the seven-day moving average of doses administered has gone from just over 10,500 in July to now over 15,700. We continue to strongly encourage all eligible Texans to get vaccinated," said Renae Eze, the governor's press secretary.

She also pointed to recent legislation that made remote learning possible for immunocompromised kids. She said schools have learned and implemented safety precautions, too.

And yet the number of cases continues to rise. And those kids are also an unfortunate disease vector for their teachers. Two teachers in Connelly Independent School District died recently, causing the district to shut campuses.

San Antonio is still fighting to regain its emergency powers. Andy Segovia is the city attorney and he says the Texas disaster act — which the governor is using to suspend local power — is about the state helping to coordinate in the wake of a disaster.

It’s novel because usually the governor’s acting on an emergency not saying government has no role, said Segovia.

Five mortuary trailers were dispatched to San Antonio to assist hospitals across the state that had run out of room. San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the forethought on deaths should have been used to stem the spread.

“The fact is, the state is planning that more people are going to die of COVID. So much so that they anticipate local hospitals across the state are not going to be able to handle the amount of death they are going to see,” said Nirenberg.

Eight counties across the state are using refrigerated trucks to store the bodies of the dead. Bell County which includes Temple, Texas, has requested a second FEMA trailer with an extra storage capacity of 50 bodies. Several smaller trailers have been donated by the state funeral directors association.

As more schools see spikes in COVID transmissions, more teachers and students will become infected and could die.

Doctors and many local leaders wish the state would do more to prevent that.

Terribly sad news out of Waco. Read this and cry.

-Angela Valenzuela

#necropolitics

Texas school system closes after 2 teachers die of COVID-19

September 1, 2021

Mary Erazo cleans desks as a custodial crew works to clean classrooms of Dolph 

Briscoe Middle School in San Antonio, March 9, 2020.

Josie Norris, The San Antonio Express-News / 

Staff Photographer

WACO, Texas (AP) — A Central Texas school district closed its schools until after the Labor Day holiday Tuesday after two teachers died last week of COVID-19.

Connally Independent School District officials closed its five suburban Waco schools for the rest of the week after the Saturday COVID-19 death of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School, said Assistant Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.

Chansler's death came days after David McCormick, 59, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High, died of COVID-19, Bottelberghe said.

It was not immediately known if either teacher was vaccinated.

Connally High School football coach Terry Gerik says the Cadets will play La Vega as scheduled Friday night.

The school has had 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases since classes began Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. She added that more cases had been confirmed in the last few days, but she did not know if any have been directly traced back to Chansler.

"We have not found any correlation” between the two deaths, Bottelberghe said. “They were at two different grade levels even though they worked under the same content area, but we have recognized that there has been an increase in spread as far as throughout our student body at those two grade levels.”

In a Monday email, Superintendent Wesley Holt said the hope “is that the closure and holiday break will provide those who are positive with the virus or exposed to others with the virus, the time to isolate and recover. This closure will also allow time for deep cleaning and sanitizing of all CISD facilities.”

The rolling seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases in Texas was 15,400 cases as of Sunday, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths in Texas was 200 per day.

I echo Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea's statement. There are indeed no words for this, for Gov. Greg Abbott's recklessness. My heart goes out to this family for their incredible loss. This should never have happened.

"Necropolitics" is what we should call this. Via his mandate against requiring masks, he traffics in death. 

-Angela Valenzuela

#Necropolitics 

#Covid

Austin Public Health reports first child death from COVID-19

---

by Fred Cantu, CBS Austin Staff

Tuesday, August 31st 2021

AUSTIN, Texas — The health authority for Austin Public Health reported the first child death Tuesday from COVID-19 for the Austin area during a joint briefing with the City Council and Travis County Commissioners Court.

Local Health Authority Dr. Desmar Walkes announced the death during the weekly Austin Public Health covid update for local leaders. She said the child had a “comorbidity.” That’s a separate serious health issue that could result in death.

While hospitalizations are seen to be plateauing, there has been a surge in COVID-19 cases in schools.

Dr. Walkes told council members and commissioners that case numbers in schools have gone up tremendously. "We do know that the case numbers in our schools have gone up tremendously in this past week, and so we're cautiously optimistic about whether this plateau that we're seeing is going to persist or whether we're going to see another increase in our cases."

RELATED: Del Valle ISD parent says 3 of her children tested positive for COVID first week of school

She said school numbers reflect not using last year's mitigation techniques. "We found a marked increase in school cases across the state of Texas with schools reopening and not using the mitigation efforts that we used last year to decrease case spread in that environment and congregant setting when children are in close quarters and not social distancing," Dr. Walkes said.

Just in the last week they counted 817 pediatric COVID cases in Travis County schools and identified 17,240 close contacts and 67 clusters. But they note Texas Education Agency does not mandate that the close contacts quarantine themselves following an exposure.

Children under 12 currently are not allowed to be vaccinated, but it's possible that could change by the end of the year.

MORE| More TX students tested positive for COVID-19 last week than at any time last school year

County Commissioner Brigid Shea blasted Gov. Abbott for his fight against mask mandates, "I don't even have words for how reckless and dangerous it is that the governor is preventing school districts from requiring masks for a population in elementary and secondary school that legally cannot be vaccinated."

WATCH the briefing here.

A Milestone of Misery: More Than 100K US Latinos Have Died From COVID-19 by Dr. Rogelio Sáenz

Dr. Rogelio Sáenz captures well the devastating impact of COVID on the Latino community in the U.S. Just reading this makes me sad. It seems that we all know of, or have, someone close that lost someone dear to them. And not just in this country, but in Mexico and Latin America, as well.

So much trauma. So much loss. Our families will be impacted by, and recovering from, this for many years, indeed decades, to come.

-Angela Valenzuela

A Milestone of Misery: More Than 100K US Latinos Have Died From COVID-19

By Rogelio Sáenz

April 15, 2021, 6:04 PM

In this June 13, 2020, photo, a man walks past Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Guadalupe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

More than 100,000 U.S. Latinos have now lost their lives to COVID-19. This past week we went over this lamentable threshold. It took about ten months for 50,000 Latinos to die from the pandemic, but it only took four months to add another 50,000.

While Latinos have died from COVID-19 in every state except in Vermont (where very few Latinos live), a little more than half of the 100,000 Latino deaths have occurred in California and Texas. More than 29,000 Latinos have died in California and more than 23,000 in Texas. In fact, more Latinos than whites have died from the pandemic in these two states. The numbers are also quite large in five other states, including New York with nearly 11,000 deaths, Florida with nearly 7,900, Arizona with more than 4,700, New Jersey with a little more than 4,600, and Illinois with close to 3,400 deaths. These five states along with California and Texas account for more than four of five Latinos who have lost their lives to COVID-19 (Figure 1).

I have been tracking the impact of the pandemic on Latinos since back in late March. With more than 100,000 Latinos succumbing to COVID-19, it is time to reflect on what has taken place during the pandemic.

One thing that is pretty clear is that while the Latino numbers are quite devastating, they hide the horror that has befallen the Latino community. At first glance, it appears that the pandemic has taken Latino and white lives evenly. There are 3.3 times as many whites as Latinos in the country and among people who have died from COVID-19. However, Latinos with a median age of 30 are a much more youthful population compared to whites whose median age is 44. More than one in five whites are 65 or older compared to one of 13 Latinos. As such, whites are much more concentrated in ages where the risk of dying from COVID-19 is particularly high.

Once we adjust for these age differences, Latinos thus far have died at a rate that is 2.4 times higher than whites. The situation is much worse in California where Latinos are dying from the pandemic at a rate that is 3.5 times higher than whites.

The demography of COVID-19 fatalities is quite revealing. Nationally, nearly nine of ten whites who have died from the pandemic were 65 or older compared to fewer than two of three Latinos. Among the Latino dead, 26 percent were 50 to 64 years of age compared to 10 percent of whites. And more than 9 percent of Latino deceased were less than 50 years of age compared to fewer than 2 percent of whites. These major variations reflect the disproportionate presence of Latinos on the frontlines where they do not have the luxury of being able to work from home.

How the Pandemic Defeated America, by Ed Yong

This must-read piece is a great weekend read. Yong has a credible, in-depth analysis of how this pandemic has brought our country to its knees.

-Angela Valenzuela

How the Pandemic Defeated Americaby Ed Yong The Atlantic | August 4, 2020

The U.S. has little excuse for its inattention. In recent decades, epidemics of SARS, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 flu, Zika, and monkeypox showed the havoc that new and reemergent pathogens could wreak. Health experts, business leaders, and even middle schoolers ran simulated exercises to game out the spread of new diseases. In 2018, I wrote an article for The Atlantic arguing that the U.S. was not ready for a pandemic, and sounded warnings about the fragility of the nation’s health-care system and the slow process of creating a vaccine. But the COVID‑19 debacle has also touched—and implicated—nearly every other facet of American society: its shortsighted leadership, its disregard for expertise, its racial inequities, its social-media culture, and its fealty to a dangerous strain of individualism.

SARS‑CoV‑2 is something of an anti-Goldilocks virus: just bad enough in every way. Its symptoms can be severe enough to kill millions but are often mild enough to allow infections to move undetected through a population. It spreads quickly enough to overload hospitals, but slowly enough that statistics don’t spike until too late. These traits made the virus harder to control, but they also softened the pandemic’s punch. SARS‑CoV‑2 is neither as lethal as some other coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS, nor as contagious as measles. Deadlier pathogens almost certainly exist. Wild animals harbor an estimated 40,000 unknown viruses, a quarter of which could potentially jump into humans. How will the U.S. fare when “we can’t even deal with a starter pandemic?,” Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina and an Atlantic contributing writer, asked me.

Despite its epochal effects, COVID‑19 is merely a harbinger of worse plagues to come. The U.S. cannot prepare for these inevitable crises if it returns to normal, as many of its people ache to do. Normal led to this. Normal was a world ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for one. To avert another catastrophe, the U.S. needs to grapple with all the ways normal failed us. It needs a full accounting of every recent misstep and foundational sin, every unattended weakness and unheeded warning, every festering wound and reopened scar.