Below is my response to comments made by readers to my article in the Chartist with regards the high number of deaths in ethnic minority communities, ‘A COVID New World of ever-growing inequality’.

Am I saying that the virus discriminating in terms of people’s race?

No, the virus is exacerbating inequalities in our society. Poverty correlates with poor outcomes, for example, due to poor housing conditions etc.

Direct quotes from the article:

“Looking at a map, the clusters of coronavirus victims in my ward bathe in the open wounds of politically created deprivation – an observation verified by statistics. The IFS report on the coronavirus, ‘Are some ethnic groups more vulnerable to COVID-19 than others?‘, states: “After stripping out the role of age and geography, Bangladeshi hospital fatalities are twice those of the white British group, Pakistani deaths are 2.9 times as high and black African deaths 3.7 times as high. The Indian, black Caribbean and ‘other white’ ethnic groups also have excess fatalities, with the white Irish group the only one to have fewer fatalities than white British.”

“a study carried out by Tim Cook, Emira Kursumovic and Simon Lennane (HSJ 22/04/2020) on the 106 NHS workers who had died from Covid-19. The report found that a staggeringly high proportion of deaths were of individuals from the black and minority ethnic community.”

“Our medical evidence reminds us that people with pre-existing health conditions are most at risk. Health inequality analysis demonstrates why,”

Am I being unpatriotic by publishing the article and being political?

Mark Twain, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’  He goes onto say, that the most valuable asset we had: the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.