"The coronavirus spreads very quickly within households, and so close ties among extended households have emerged as detrimental factors for Hispanic Americans. A Health Affairs study also found that Hispanic Californians were eight times as likely as white residents to live in a 'high exposure-risk household,' which scientists defined as one or more essential workers and fewer rooms than inhabitants.
'The stereotype is that Latino families care about family more, but it's not really about that -- it's about the need to pool together resources,' said Zulema Valdez, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced. 'There's a whole web of a social safety net that the family is providing.'
A death creates a hole in the net. 'They're immediately one paycheck away from homelessness,' Dr. Valdez said.
'Everybody knows someone who has died, or multiple people who have died, and everyone is figuring out how to compensate for the roles and duties that are no longer being done by those people,' she added. 'The hardship is extreme.'
Deaths of wage earners add to hardships minority communities are already experiencing during the pandemic."
Read more on how the virus unraveled Hispanic American families in The New York Times article here.
