The Narrative tells us that blacks and Hispanics die of covid more than whites because of systemic racism. (As for Asians, well, they are invisible to the media, so who cares about them?)

Yet, as I’ve been pointing out, something virtually nobody expected happened over the course of 2020: black deaths fell sharply from the first wave to the third wave. Nobody gives blacks credit for taking steps to improve their health and safety because, evidently, that would undermine the assumption that blacks are always the helpless victims of white malevolence.

Remarkably, over the first weeks of 2021 for which we have fairly complete data, according to the CDC’s report on weekly deaths above 2015-2019 trendline from all causes (not just Covid), whites and blacks have been quite similar in not being hit all that hard, while Hispanics and Asians are similar in getting slammed.

This fits neither The Narrative nor most counter-narratives either.