With the limited role Vitamin D seems to play, and the much bigger effect off socio economic status, low income neighborhoods getting hit much harder, it seems the correlation is more linked to income than vitamins.

The USA has data by race as well
https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race

However you need to put it into context of how the virus is spreading through the population:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html

No surprises there, minorities always get the short end of the stick when stuff goes bad.

Most of that was accounted for in this study and when adjusted for age brought the number down from 4 times as likely for black people to die to twice as likely.

Well, for quite a while now the top 3 countries with total infections has gone like this: 1.USA 2. Spain 3. Italy.....With the way new cases are looking to me....

Within the next week or two, the top 3 will be: 1. USA 2. Russia 3. Brazil. We'll see if my prediction is good or bad.

Where are the numbers? Number of confirmed infected by ethnicity? What is confirmed is that low income neighborhoods are hit much harder due to work and living conditions. The attack rate of the virus is much worse in densely populated areas as well, lower income, more densely populated.

It's still a meaningless statistic, saying 2 times more likely for black people to die, when there is a big disparity in living and working conditions which has a direct impact on the spread of covid19. Even if we could divide nr of black deaths / number of positive black tests, we still wouldn't know all that much since lower income also means lesser means to get tested.

What it does show is that minorities are among the higher at risk groups due to social distancing challenges in more densely populated lower income areas. Sadly the correlation between minorities (not all) and lower income is still very real.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html

Raw Numbers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52574931

Co-morbidities (wealth related) and more public facing jobs (wealth related) are thought to be the biggest reasons for the 1.9 number but a lot of people are suggesting it still wouldn't be enough to get it down to 1.

Now here is some good news!


https://calgaryherald.com/cannabis/cannabis-shows-promise-blocking-coronavirus-infection-alberta-researcher/

Cannabis extracts are showing potential in making people more resistant to the novel coronavirus, says an Alberta researcher leading a study.

After sifting through 400 cannabis strains, researchers at the University of Lethbridge are concentrating on about a dozen that show promising results in ensuring less fertile ground for the potentially lethal virus to take root, said biological scientist Dr. Igor Kovalchuk.

“A number of them have reduced the number of these (virus) receptors by 73 per cent, the chance of it getting in is much lower,” said Kovalchuk.


Caveat: said Kovalchuk, whose Pathway RX is owned partly by Olds-based licensed cannabis producer Sundial Growers and partnered with Alberta cannabis researcher Swysh.

 it’s generally the anti-inflammatory properties of high-CBD content that have shown most promise, he added.

“We focus more on the higher CBD because people can take higher doses and not be impaired,” said Kovalchuk.

The study under Health Canada licence using artificial human 3-D tissue models has been seeking ways to hinder the highly contagious novel coronavirus from finding a host in the lungs, intestines, and oral cavity.

https://torontosun.com/cannabis/cannabis-shows-promise-blocking-coronavirus-infection-alberta-researcher/wcm/a5372400-044f-4364-990b-4424c16598a0

Israeli researchers have begun clinical trials of CBD as a treatment to repair cells damaged by COVID-19 by using its anti-inflammatory abilities.

It’s thought CBD could enhance the traditional effect of steroids in such treatment of patients in life-threatening condition and also bolster the immune system.

After reading that link I'm pretty confident it can be enough to get it down to 1

The ONS suggested some of the risk might be caused by other social and economic factors that are not included in the data. And it said that some ethnic groups may be "over-represented in public-facing occupations" and so more at risk of being infected while at work. The ONS plans to examine the link between coronavirus risk and occupation.

Not adjusted yet, taking some factors into account is not the same as adjusting for the different rate of spread in different neighborhoods.

Accounting for rough measures of health and wealth changes it a little, bringing the risk down to just under twice as likely. But the analysis doesn't address the impact of exposure at work or current health conditions. Helen Barnard, acting director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said workers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were also more likely to live in overcrowded homes, increasing the risk of the virus spreading to their families.

She said that the UK entered the crisis with "a rising tide of low pay, insecure jobs and spiralling living costs" and "we must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in after the virus passes". A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said it had commissioned Public Health England to examine different factors such as ethnicity, obesity and geographical location that may influence the effect of the virus. "It is critical we find out which groups are most at risk so we can take the right steps to protect them and minimise their risk," she said.


They come the the right conclusion.


What matters is where is it spreading the most. Two factors are at play amplifying each other. The virus has a higher attack rate in lower income areas due to more crowded living conditions and more public-facing occupations fueling the spread, and lower income is generally linked to lower health/immunity making the effects worse.

Not quite the way it works after all this slow down. You need to take the current daily reported cases and start from there again with the 4.5 day doubling rate based on highest doubling rates in reported deaths. That's the doubling rate for R0 2.2. Early on it was doubling at a much higher rate due to starting / catching up on testing, catching a lot of ongoing cases that could have been infected as much as a month earlier or even longer.

So at a rate of adding about 25K cases a day currently, going back to full spread, which is very close to 3x increase in infections every week.

75K new daily cases after a week
225K new daily cases after 2 weeks
2 million new daily cases after 4 weeks
162 million new daily cases after 8 weeks

About 2 months to reach herd immunity and mass graves :/

Household composition was taken into account. Co-morbidities were partially taken into account. They used data from 2011 so more recent health issues wouldn't be counted until 2021.

"To ensure that a broad range of factors were taken into account, we also adjusted for region, rural and urban classification, area deprivation, household composition, socio-economic position, highest qualification held, household tenure, and health or disability in the 2011 Census (Panel B). Therefore, the fully adjusted results show differences in risk between ethnic groups that are specific to those ethnic groups and are not caused by any of the factors listed on which members of the groups might differ."

I've been sifting through the available data and that 4.5 day doubling rate is the fastest I could find based on reported deaths, before measures were in effect, based on available mobility data. It takes on average 20 days to die from covid 19, so any deaths reported up to 25 days after mobility trends change can still be regarded as a result of unhampered growth. Russia's mobility data didn't change until the start of April where a sharp drop occurs, thus any reported deaths until about April 25th can still be considered as part of the 'normal' progression stage.

But yeah, it's hard to guess since population density, living and work conditions play a major role. It will spread fastest in city centers and low income neighborhoods while progressing slower in the suburbs and much slower in rural communities.

See that latest study of the Imperial college, they take a lot of factors into account
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-05-04-COVID19-Report-20.pdf
The more precise the narrower or more specific the results are for each subdivision.

It's a definite problem for any herd immunity strategies. It may reach saturation point in a city center, yet the suburbs will still progress and can still infect the remaining non immune people in the city centers. It's why vaccination only works if you do it evenly on a mass scale. On the flip side, you likely also need less immunity in rural areas to reach local herd immunity, but it will take a lot longer to reach that point the natural way.

Fine tuning social distancing based on location would have the same effect. More restrictions inside cities, less in rural areas to keep the spread under the 1.0x factor.