Sunday, August 16, 2020
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Being Born Anew 3rd Sunday of Easter Wesley Chapel UMC Lake City SC R...
Third Sunday of Easter April 26, 2020 |
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19 Luke 24:13-35 |
Sermon Text 1 Peter 1:17-23 |
Sermon “Being Born Anew” |
1 Peter 1:13–25 describes how Christians—those God has caused to be born again—should live now.
1 Peter 1:17-25 New International Version (NIV)
17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.[a] 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All people are like grass,
And this is the word that was preached to you.
Footnotes:
17 You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living.
18-21 Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.
22-25 Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said,
The old life is a grass life,
This is the Word that conceived the new life in you.
23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.[d]
Gathering Prayer
God, you call us out of our fear and distress and into the light of a new day and a new hope. Through their encounter with the risen Christ, the apostles found their voice and proclaimed your truth even at the risk of their very lives. Let us never forget their commitment and courage. May we stand for the right of all people of faith to worship safely as they choose. For we know that we are truly free when all are free. Our faith should not be taken for granted. We have decided to follow Jesus. There is no turning back. Amen
Responsive Reading (Based on Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19)
I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. O Lord, I am your servant; you have loosed my bonds. In the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!
Introduction to the Word (1 Pet 1, Luke 24)
Listen for the word that stands the test of time.
Listen for the word that lives and moves among us.
Listen for the word that God is speaking to us this day.
You have been born anew, Your new life is not like your old life, For you have been born again, I want to spend a little time on this 1 Peter text while most of the church will be reading the Acts Text This morning and celebrating the Sermon of Peter I wanted to take a very obscure text and unpack one of the most powerful Christian doctrines. New Birth, Being Born Again, Being Born Anew and it became apparent that this concept and Doctrine would need to be stretched over more than one Sunday so I looking to develop a three-part presentation of the New Birth.
So, this morning I want to deal with the first few verses of the small preoccupy 1 Peter 1:17-25 and focus on verse 17, 18
Peter, the apostle of Jesus, writes a letter to Christians facing persecution to comfort them with the truth of who they are in Christ—children of God with every reason to rejoice in their salvation and future glory in eternity.
Next, he urges them to live like the holy ones of God they already are by obeying God now, loving each other earnestly, and placing all of their hope in the endless life to come.
Context Summary
We must mentally engage in setting all of our hope in God’s future grace for us. We must choose to act as those who are God’s own people, rejecting the evil desires that drove our actions before we knew better.
Move 1: Our choices matter.
I love the way the Message Bible You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living. We have all in having faith called on God. Our Calling on God indicates we have a belief and understanding that God is A higher Power. In other words, we cannot or should not do this all on our own. You see Life is not a solo venture in life we learn very soon that we need help to get by and who you choose to help you is very important. During Quarantine we have learned just how much we appreciate and depend on others. My mother used to say be careful how you treat that student in your class that is struggling you never know if they are going to be the very EMS worker that picks you up when you have a stroke or the very nurse that takes your blood. The text points out you can choses ancestors who have missed the mark as we will see later in this text or you can choose God. I tell you during this time of fear and anxiety we need to learn who we choose to help us matters. Spoiler alert the correct choice is God.
Move 2: Our God placed a high value on our lives, paying for them with the blood of Christ. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. Can I talk a little about payment do you know we need to pay what you owe? The universe is ordered in souch a way that each of us is responsible to pay what we owe. I have these evil vile student loans for 7 years of higher education I collected about $180,000 in student loans because of the lone amounts and bad habits in re payment however with all the for-Lows and charge offs and the consolidations in (Personal stress alone) the loans have to be paid off, no I don’t think you get it if you use you lights in your house and don’t pay the bill they cut the lights off and because you didn’t pay when you go to get the lights cut back on you have to pay a penalty. And In some places if you have had your lights cut off and you don’t have good credit, they will put you on a Pay as you go plan. God is not about a pay as you Go plain God loved us and loves us so we when go to the light company of life our record has already been paid in full.
Move three Since God has made us New, we must now strive to earnestly give love to each other. Lastly, we have been Born from heaven and or rebirth is a powerful cycle is suggesting that we are called to do things differently with our new lives and new empowerment. The old self has been pushed away and our new self has been called to a higher lifestyle no more silly living for silly stuff.
Could that also be what God is staying now in the mist of the Pandemic that there is no room for silly living in the battle of faith.
By silly I mean is what we see in the definition : exhibiting or indicative of a lack of common sense or sound judgment b: weak in intellect c: playfully also d: TRIFLING, FRIVOLOUS and while it is not as bad a word as some the fact of the matter we are living in a time where life has to be taken serious and for the most part the church the country and the world need to grow up and start taking on the needs on the lest of these the needs of the poor for real!.
Where is your faith when people are hungry,
where is your faith when children are undereducated,
where is your since of truth and truth telling when the needy are left by the wayside.
I close with this understand if you are playing silly games and not taking the time to engage faith you have missed what it means to be born again. Church Grow up and Grow up in God. One of the definitions of silly in the urban dictionary says a way of avoiding saying I love you when someone announces they love you can say oh you are silly instead of professing your love for that person. Well church a lot of us have done that with God and Our Salvation we have announced to God that he is Silly and not done they grown up work of salvation.
Benediction
Easter people raise your voices, for the fear of death can no more stop us from our pressing here below. For our Lord has empowered us to triumph over every foe. May the encounter we have had with the risen Christ give us strength to live as people who no longer fear death as we speak the truth to power and spread the good news of God’s unfailing love. Go in peace and change the world.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
2nd Sunday of Easter Do it Again From Wesley Chapel UMC Lake City
Gathering Prayer
Centering Words (Acts 2, Ps 16, 1 Pet 1)
God of limitless and unbounded love, you came into our midst as one who overcame every boundary and barrier, even that of death. Move among us now as one who can speak healing through wounds, hope in despair, and faith despite our doubts. Breathe resurrection power in the dead places of our hearts and strengthen our witness so that others may come to see because of what we have seen and heard. Amen.
Centering Words (Acts 2, Ps 16, 1 Pet 1)
All the doubt in the world cannot wash away our inheritance from God—an inheritance of love, refuge, and strength.
Call to Worship
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen, indeed!
Even when we struggle to see the good news in the face of poverty, injustice, conflict, and woundedness,
Christ is Risen, indeed!
Even when our hearts hurt and we struggle to find hope to get us through another day,
Christ is Risen, indeed!
Even when we are faithful and yet we see little proof of our labor,
Christ is Risen, indeed!
Glory be to God who has overcome death and gives us faith, hope, and love that overcome all things. Amen.
Sermon
Several miles outside of the city of what is today Chennai, India, lies a sacred memorial called the Saint Thomas Mount. It is the traditional place where Thomas the Disciple was martyred after having journeyed there to plant one of the early churches and spread the good news of Jesus Christ. The courage it took to journey so far from home and to sow seeds of the gospel in what is today southeastern India must have required great faith. South and Southeast Asia have a combined population of over 2 billion people today. Around India, many countries are characterized by huge cities containing neighborhoods that contain millions of people living close together in often highly unhygienic conditions. Even the most basic protocols for warding off COVID-19, such as hand-washing and social distancing, are all but impossible to practice. “India is a hugely populous country. The future of this pandemic will be determined by what happens to densely populated countries. It’s important that India takes aggressive action at the public health level and at the level of society to control and suppress this disease,”
In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, churches across the country finally closed their doors March 23, more than a week after the Vatican decided to have Holy Week services behind closed doors.
On March 24, the Indian government ordered people not to leave their houses for three weeks.
Yet already, many have chosen to ignore government directives, underscoring the task Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ahead of him. Assuming the World Health Organization’s 3.4 percent fatality rate compared to confirmed infections, India could have almost a million confirmed cases by the end of May, with more than 30,000 deaths. Some estimates are as much as double those numbers. Yet in India like in the United States this is a time for the Faithful to take the journey of Faith. This is a time for us to understand that if sickness and death must come, we are called to face both on the battlefield serving the Lord. But the Hope of the Faithfull is that Jesus brings life not Death in his resurrection and that the real miracle of the Empty Tomb and the seeing of the Resurrected Christ is Power and not fear.
Van Gogh is reported to have said this: "If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
Thank goodness he did.
Chances are you sometimes get into psychic wrestling match with a little voice in your head that chips away at your confidence and dials up your doubts.
What if you mess up? You'll make a fool of yourself? What will people say? You're just not smart enough, talented enough, capable enough, experienced enough?
Self-doubt is part and parcel of the human experience. As it should be. We don't have to look too far to see that too little self-doubt can be outright dangerous. Yet left unchecked, the fear that fuels our doubt can drive us to be over cautious and keep us from taking the very actions that would help us and serve others. I see far too many capable and talented people selling themselves short because they fear they don't have what it takes to succeed. Doubt sits triumphant. Actions go undone.
We don't pick up the phone and make the call. We don't extend the invitation. We don't raise our hand for promotion. We don't say "Enough!". We don't push back, say no, say yes, move on, dive in or pick up the pen.
Doubt is often seen as the opposite of safe.
But in John 20:19-31, we see that doubt can be a pathway that opens up and ultimately leads to great faith.
Just one week after we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we are faced with the timeless story of “Doubting Thomas.” Jesus appears to his disciples, and they get to see physical proof of his resurrection.
Yet, later, when Thomas asks to see proof because he was not there when Jesus appeared the first time, he seems to be chastised by Jesus and, in our tradition, branded as a doubter.
What Thomas was asking was for Jesus to “Do it Again” and we need to be clear in life you are not always going to get a second chance. I know in the fairytail life that a lot of us want to live in, if we miss something folks are going to jump to give us a second or third chance. In reality Rev and Friends many times in real life if you are not at the meeting if you are not at the table if you are not on the zoom call or the Conference call you might Just miss what the holy Spirit is doing.
And I agree with the traditional understanding that maybe the reason Thomas was not in the upper room was he had subcume to his fear and doubt.
I also want to announce that one of the most powerful forms of Doubt is Self-Doubt
Yet while none of us are immune to self-doubt (with the exception of some serial narcissists that come to mind), we all have the ability to keep it from directing our decisions, continuing our silence and shaping our lives. So how do we banish the doubt? We don’t. What we do is learn how to reclaim the power it has held over us. Let’s look at some ways this Sunday you can unlike Thomas overcome your Doubt during this season of Quarateen.
1. Embrace Doubt as Part of Being Human
As you think about the things, you’d most love to achieve or change in your life right now, just know that self-doubt is there to protect you from the humiliation of falling flat on your face. So, follow the advice of Dr Kristen Neff, self-compassion expert and "Don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up." Far better than beating up on your inner critic is to befriend it; to acknowledge that it's just trying to keep you safe and spare you humiliation. Embracing self-doubt as an intrinsic part of the human experience is crucial to reclaiming the power it has held over you... until now. You are human. You will mistake. You will doubt yourself. It's what you do next that matters. Which brings me to the second step…
2. Doubt Your Doubts
Self-doubts are just your fears made manifest in order to protect you from loss. Yet the irony is that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, doubt often makes you lose out on what you may have gained by fearing the attempt. Your doubts are not the truth. Rather they are fear-fueled stories you create about who you are, what you’re worth and what you’re capable of achieving. So, let me repeat just one more time to make sure you got it:
Your doubts are not the truth.
In fact, more often than not, they’re just the opposite. So the next time you start to doubt yourself, take a moment to challenge that thought; to doubt your doubts! Ask yourself “What if just the opposite were true?” What if, in fact, you were more than prepared for a bigger role? If you had everything it takes to build that business? If what you had to say was extremely important? If you were more than talented/worthy/clever/(fill-in-the-blank) enough to pursue this goal?
3. Call Out Your Critic
Often, we hear our doubts relayed through the voice of our ‘inner critic.’ You know the one… it’s constantly pointing out your faults, questioning your worthiness (it’s the chief culprit for the Imposter Syndrome), and urging you to play it safe. While you can’t permanently silence it, you can dilute its power by giving it a name. Doing so helps you distinguish who you are from the fear and doubt you feel. Think up a name the best describes the scared part of you that wants you to live small and stay safe. You may even want to write a short letter to it to tell it you're no longer going to let it run the show. "Dear Doubting Deborah, it's time..."
4. Make Your Mission Bigger Than Your Fear
Why would you bother to speak up and risk rocking the boat or being rejected? Why would you lay your reputation on the line? Why would you take a chance on that dream? Only when you are clear about your big ‘Why’ can you find the courage needed to step through your doubts and risk failing. You need to be able to find a clear and compelling answer to the question “For the sake of what am I willing to be brave?” Doing so will help crystallize why you must take action despite your doubts, knowing that if you let them win, you will run the bigger risk of one day looking back and wondering ‘What if I’d tried?’ Letting self-doubt sit in the driver’s seat is a sure-fire recipe for regret and resentment.
5. Build A Tribe of Believers
You shape your tribe and your tribe shapes you. After all, mastery of life is not a solo endeavor. When you surround yourself with people who bring out your best and embolden your thinking, you can do more, be more and give more than you ever could otherwise .
The people you hang out with will either fuel your self-doubt or fuel your confidence. So, if you’re ready to make a change or take a chance, make sure you surround yourself with people who will help you to stay in action despite your doubts. Avoid those who won’t!
If we look closer, particularly to the end of the passage, we see that in fact it is about the reader and not Thomas himself. Because, like Thomas, the reader will not have had a physical encounter with Jesus, nor will they have an exhaustive memoir of his life. What the reader has is the gospel, the story of the good news of God through the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reader or hearer of the gospel fills their faith because they believe without the need to see. Nobel Peace Prize recipient and author Elie Wiesel famously spoke of his experience interviewing Holocaust survivors noting, “When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.”
This Easter season, we are witnesses to the resurrection power of God’s love.
Benediction Go and be a witness because of those who risked and journeyed, struggled and loved. Go and be a witness to what God’s love can do in the world to overcome broken systems, strained relationships, and human greed. Go in the love, grace, and peace that God gives, and may we be the church in a hurting world. Amen.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
The first thing I learned was that the virus is not new and that folks knew about this virus long before it was announced to the public.
COVID-19 is a well-defined disease
While “we’ve come a long way,” there are still “a lot of holes in our knowledge” of COVID-19, said Dr. Bauchner. However, the “virus has been very well defined. It’s been very well defined since early January.
“The entire DNA sequence was laid out by the Chinese in the public domain and that’s critically important so you can develop diagnostic tests and begin to do vaccine and other drug development,” he said, adding “that was a huge advance” and that Anthony Fauci, MD, “has said it’s a key knowledge transfer that then allows vaccine development to begin.” https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/letting-science-speak-lessons-learned-covid-19
I've also learned that we have the resources in this country to do what we want to do and that a lot of this saying that we don't have the money os smoke in the air. We have the money now does that mean that much of the money we are spending to deal with the virus will be available because people will die from the virus sadly yes but the government never hesitated to release trillions of dollars to handle this virus
There is tremendous capacity in the U.S.
“We’ve learned that the U.S. has tremendous capacity to expand resources when necessary,” he said. This is because intensive care units around the country have doubled or tripled in size.
“The early concerns about a tremendous ventilator shortage has not occurred and that’s in part because we were able to obtain more ventilators,” said Dr. Bauchner. “But more importantly, people began to share them.”
Learn more about treatment strategies from the front lines of COVID-19 care in California, including freeing up ventilators. I have also come to see that the same game of poverty and racism is still in effect even when we are all suffering African Americans and Black Americans suffer more Dr. Maybank on Oprah Talks: AMA Chief Health Equity Officer and Vice President Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH, was featured on a special presentation of Oprah Talks on Apple TV+ to discuss the effects the COVID-19 pandemic is having on African-Americans across the country. The full episode aired on OWN at 11 p.m. ET. Episode segments:
—Social Racism and COVID-19: Dr. Maybank on Oprah Talks "When America catches a cold, black folks catch pneumonia."
Growing up in Denmark, South Carolina, my father, Cleveland Sellers Jr., would regularly repeat this notion to offer much-needed perspective in different policy discussions throughout the years. And time and time again, my father's evergreen sentiments have proven to be correct.
Growing up in Denmark, South Carolina, my father, Cleveland Sellers Jr., would regularly repeat this notion to offer much-needed perspective in different policy discussions throughout the years. And time and time again, my father's evergreen sentiments have proven to be correct.
The destructive impact brought on by the coronavirus pandemic is being felt in every corner of America. Each day, our lives and livelihoods hang in the balance as millions of Americans file for unemployment and friends and loved ones die by the hour. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/opinions/surgeon-general-comments-covid-19-black-communities-sellers/index.html
COVID-19 was called the great equalizer. Nobody was immune; anybody could succumb. But the virus’ spread across the United States is exposing racial fault lines, with early data showing that African-Americans are more likely to die from the disease than white Americans.
The data are still piecemeal, with only some states and counties breaking down COVID-19 cases and outcomes by race. But even without nationwide data, the numbers are stark. Where race data are known — for only 3,300 of 13,000 COVID-19 deaths — African-Americans account for 42 percent of the deaths, the Associated Press reported April 9. Those data also suggest the disparity could be highest in the South. For instance, in both Louisiana and Mississippi, African-Americans account for over 65 percent of known COVID-19 deaths.
1. African-Americans are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is highly contagious, even before symptoms appear (SN: 3/13/20). So to curb the virus’ spread and limit person-to-person transmission, states have been issuing stay-at-home orders. But many individuals are considered part of the critical workforce by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and must continue to work. That includes caregivers, cashiers, sanitation workers, farm workers and public transit employees, jobs often filled by African-Americans.
For instance, almost 30 percent of employed African-Americans work in the education and health services industry and 10 percent in retail, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. African-Americans are less likely than employed people in general to work in professional and business services — the sorts of jobs more amenable to telecommuting.
2. African-Americans have a higher incidence of underlying health conditions.
Among those at highest risk of getting severely ill with COVID-19 are patients with other serious health problems, such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease(SN: 3/20/20). Over 40 percent of African-Americans have high blood pressure, among the highest rates in the world, according to the American Heart Association. By comparison, about a third of white Americans have high blood pressure. Similarly, African-Americans tend to have higher rates of diabetes.
Part of that heightened risk has to do with African-Americans’ disproportionate exposure to air pollution. Such pollution has been linked to chronic health problems, including asthma, obesity and cardiovascular disease (SN: 9/19/17). In an April 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sampson and fellow Harvard sociologist Robert Manduca showed that poor African-American neighborhoods have higher levels of lead, air pollution and violence than poor white neighborhoods (SN: 4/12/19).
3. African-Americans have less access to medical care and often distrust caregivers.
Inequities in access to health care, including inadequate health insurance, discrimination fears and distance from clinics and hospitals, make it harder for many African-Americans to access the sort of preventive care that keeps chronic diseases in check.
According to a December 2019 report from The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York City and Washington, D.C., African-Americans are still more likely to be uninsured than white Americans. And African-Americans who are insured spend a greater fraction of their income on premiums and out-of-pocket costs, about 20 percent, than the average American, who spends about 11 percent.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has taken tens of thousands of lives around the world. Here in the U.S., we at the AMA have repeatedly and consistently demanded urgent action to address the tragic shortages of essentials such as timely diganostic testing, personal protective equipment and ventilators that are impeding our physicians’ efforts to save lives. There is another shortage that desperately requires our nation’s attention: a lack of public data on the racial and ethnic dimensions of this deadly respiratory illness.
So far, less than a dozen states have publicly shared information on the racial and ethnic patterns of COVID-19. Yet what has emerged so far paints an alarming portrait.
Michigan’s newly released data raises particular alarm with a disproportionate percentage, 35% and 40% respectively, of cases and deaths happening among blacks. In Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County, half of the cases and 81% of the deaths were amongst blacks, when blacks only make up only a quarter of the population. In Chicago, seven in 10 COVID-related deaths were among blacks while blacks constitute less than one-third of the city’s population. https://youtu.be/KFCo_VLcFvI
African-Americans can also face hidden biases to care.
For instance, an algorithm used to determine which patients should receive access to certain health care programs inadvertently prioritized white patients over African-American patients(SN: 10/24/19), researchers reported in October 2019 in Science. That disparity arose because the algorithm used health care spending as a proxy for need, but African-Americans often spend less on health care because they are less likely to go to a doctor. In part that may be because African-Americans have a long-standing distrust of the medical establishment due to events such as the Tuskegee experiment (SN: 3/1/75), in which hundreds of African-American men with syphilis were denied treatment for decades.
“These long-standing structural forms of discrimination that African-Americans have faced in the [United States] are manifesting in what we’re seeing with COVID right now,” says epidemiologist Kiarri Kershaw of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
The commitment to fair access to care runs throughout the AMA Code of Medical Ethics. Principle IX enjoins physicians to “support access to care for all people.” Opinion 1.1.2, “Prospective Patients,” instructs physicians to uphold ethical responsibilities not to discriminate on the basis of “personal or social characteristics that are not clinically relevant to the individual’s care,” as does Opinion 8.5, “Disparities in Health Care.” Both Opinion 11.1.1, “Defining Basic Health Care,” and Opinion 11.1.4, “Financial Barriers to Health Care Access,” define health care as “a fundamental human good” that entails obligations to promote access to care on the part of individual physicians, the medical profession, and society at large.
The crisis conditions of a pandemic can acutely challenge this commitment, especially for patient populations already minoritized or marginalized with respect to access to care. The extraordinary burden on staffing created by a pandemic and shortages of critical clinical resources can undermine entry into the system of care itself, and, for patients who do gain entry, access to life-sustaining resources.
Emergency departments can quickly be overwhelmed by seriously ill patients suspected to be infected, along with the insured “worried well” who fear they might be but aren’t ill yet, relegating uninsured patients who are seeking primary care services to the end of the queue. Extended waiting times, especially in crowded waiting rooms, increase their risk of exposure and infection beyond the problem that brought them to the ED. For many of these patients, receiving care in other forms, such as telemedicine, realistically won’t be an option for nonclinical reasons, such as lack of access to Broadband.
Data from US south shows African Americans hit hardest by Covid-19
- Louisiana reports 70% of coronavirus deaths are black
- Alabama says African Americans dying at disproportionate rate
- Coronavirus – live US updates
- Live global updates
- See all our coronavirus coverage
The coronavirus is disproportionately infecting and killing African Americans across much of the south, a region where black Americans are more likely to live in poverty and suffer from chronic disease, a Guardian analysis of several southern states reveals.
Louisiana, a major US hotspot, was the first southern state to categorize Covid-19 deaths by race. On Monday Governor John Bel Edwards announced that a shocking 70% of deaths were among African Americans, despite making up only 33% of the state’s population. The virus has spread to nearly every parish in the state, but the worst of the outbreak has been focused on New Orleans, a majority-black city with one of the country’s highest metro poverty rates.
In Georgia, an incomplete data picture still shows African Americans – who make up 33% of the state’s population, compared with 60% for whites – are being hit disproportionately hard by the virus.
On Wednesday Georgia’s department of public health began releasing the racial breakdown of confirmed coronavirus cases. Twenty per cent of the 9,901 confirmed coronavirus cases are black, compared with 15% who are white. But the vast majority of cases – 64% – are of an “unknown race”.
In Alabama, a similar story is playing out.
Data released on Tuesday by the state’s department of public health showed black Alabamians are being infected and killed by the virus at a disproportionate rate. Black and white patients made up an equal proportion of deaths, at about 44% each. But, of the over 2,000 infections confirmed statewide by 6 April, only 37% were black, while 50% were white.
Alabama’s population is about 27% black and 69% white, according to the latest census data.
South Carolina is reporting 36% of Covid-19 cases are African American, compared with 56% white. Those numbers appear to be based on about 1,000 cases, less than half of the state’s current coronavirus tally of 2,417. The department of health did not respond to requests for updated data or a racial breakdown of coronavirus deaths.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)