It has surely become clear by now that the Leftist mantra that there are only “trivial differences” between races is WRONG. Even skin color is not trivial. As I have been finding in my series of articles on Covid-19 and Race, the darker your skin is, the less able you are to absorb sunlight and synthesise this into Vitamin D. Mainstream scientists are now arguing in prestigious journals that this is why Covid-19 is so devastating to Somalis in Sweden [Inhabitants of Swedish-Somali origin are at great risk for covid-19, by Susanne Bejerot & Mats Humble, British Medical Journal, 2020] or South Asians in the UK, in the latter case even when you heavily control for factors such as income. These people are Vitamin D-deficient because they have immigrated into an environment to which they are not well adapted. This also is one reason American Blacks and Hispanics seem more likely to die of Covid-19. But what about Native Americans? Surely, nobody could be more adapted to life in the US than people whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years?
In reality, however, we would indeed expect them to be disproportionately affected by Covid-19—but for very different genetic reasons than is the case with Africans or South Asians.
And Native Americans are certainly disproportionately impacted by the WuFlu. The Navajo Nation—in which the Grand Canyon is situated—is “one of the worst hot spots in the country” for Covid-19 [A Life on and Off the Navajo Nation, by Wahleah Johns, New York Times, May 13, 2020]
The New York Times’ Johns, of course blames poverty on the reservation. Poor roads mean that medical attention can take hours to arrive. Cramped living-conditions—in one-room “hogans”—render self-isolation difficult. And 40% of households in the Navajo Nation lack running water, which makes washing your hands more problematic.
At the time of Johns’ article, 102 Navajos had died; this has now risen to 119. There are roughly 357,000 people living in the Navajo Nation, which means 333 deaths per million of population. This is higher than the US as a whole, where the death rate is 256 per million of population, although it is nowhere close to the 774 deaths per million being witnessed in densely-populated Belgium.
But that’s the situation on one reservation, a reservation which—the New York Times Johns’ failed to mention—is sparsely populated, something which would interfere with the spread of Covid-19.
A better idea of how virulent Covid-19 is for Native Americans can be gleaned from their level of representation in deaths in a given state.
Thus in New Mexico, Native Americans comprise 11% of the population, but, as of May 10th, they were 50% of Covid-19 deaths. This means that Native Americans are over-represented by a factor of 4.5. Native Americans also constitute 60% of diagnoses in New Mexico. All of the other races in the state, which is 37% white, are heavily under-represented in terms of Corona virus deaths [Native Americans make up 50% of COVID-19 deaths in New Mexico, by Marjorie Childress, CITE May 11, 2020].
So why is Covid-19 hitting Native Americans so hard? The simplest explanation: outbreaks of influenza, of any kind, are always devastating for Native Americans.
As I reported in February, a group of Chinese researchers presented a study in 2009 looking at racial differences in susceptibility to the H1N1 flu-like virus [Ethnic differences in susceptibilities to A(H1N1) flu, by C. L. Chen et al., African Journal of Biotechnology, December 29, 2009]. As part of the study, they explored the history of race differences in the impact of flu pandemics. They noted that the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 was 3 to 70 times more deadly to “natives” in Canada and the USA, as well as to the reindeer-herding Saami people in Sweden and Norway, as it was to the rest of these countries’ populations.
A key reason: these “native peoples” never developed complex agriculture. They only developed herding and, in some cases, remained as hunter-gatherers.
The Chinese authors noted that many infectious diseases jumped the species barrier from animals to humans in agricultural societies, where people had constant close contact with animals. Flu was one example. So groups that never innovated agriculture, or who only adopted it in a limited form or only relatively recently took it up, have limited resistance to flu. They simply have not been selected to be flu-resistant over thousands of years of evolution.
Which is why, in 2009, the H1N1 virus had a hugely disproportionate impact on Native Americans:
The 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus hit American Indians and Alaska natives much harder than all other racial/ethnic populations combined, with overall mortality rates that were 4-fold higher than rates in all other racial and ethnic groups combined.
Native Americans Have Very High H1N1 Influenza Mortality, RT Magazine (Reuters), December 11, 2009
Native Americans also have particularly poor health. They are much more likely than other Americans to have chronic health conditions—especially diabetes and asthma—which make it more likely that you will develop complications if you catch the Chinese Flu.
Indeed, it has been argued that this poor health, rather than anything genetic, explains the appalling impact of flu on Native Americans [Why are Native Americans more likely to die of flu?, By Ellen Shore, New America Media, September 10, 2010].
But this is obviously wrong. Influenza has been disastrous for Native Americans ever since Europeans brought it the New World [European diseases left a genetic mark on Native Americans, By Michael Price, Science, November 15, 2016], and it was especially catastrophic for them 1918.
And it has been documented that diabetes, for example, was extremely rare among Native Americans until the second half of the twentieth century. One reasonable explanation for the sudden rise of diabetes among Native Americans: they are not adapted to the kind of diet that agriculturalist people have adapted to. The traditional Native American diet is believed to have been high in fiber and low in fat, so Native Americans are not adapted to today’s high fat American diet. So, as they have increasingly taken up that diet, they have developed obesity and diabetes to a much greater extent. [Diabetes Mellitus in Native Americans: The Problem and Its Implications, by K.M. Venkat Narayan, in Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health, 1996].
So high Native American diabetes contributes to, but is not the ultimate cause, of influenza being such a problem for Native Americans. Their diabetes and flu propensity both have a single underlying cause: Native Americans being genetically less adapted to an agricultural ecology.
It should have been obvious that WuFlu would scythe through the Native American population for racial reasons. But our Ruling Class wouldn’t allow us to discuss that at early stage. And people have died as a result.
To conclude with my now traditional moral drawn at the end of my WuFlu articles:
In this case, Native American lives.
Lance Welton [email him] is the pen name of a freelance journalist living in New York.
