This book is the first social epidemiological study of COVID-19 spread in New York City (NYC), the primary epicenter of the United States. New York City spread COVID-19 throughout the United States. The context of epicenter formation determined the rapid, extreme rise of NYC case and mortality rates. Decades of public policies destructive of poor neighborhoods of color heavily determined the spread within the City. Premature mortality rates revealed the "weathering" of policy-targeted communities: accelerated aging due to chronic stress. COVID attacks the elderly more severely than those under the age of 60. Communities with high proportions of prematurely aged residents proved fertile ground for COVID illness and mortality. The very public policies that created swaths of white wealth across much of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn destroyed the human diversity needed to ride out crises.

• Topics covered within the chapters include:
• Premature DeathRate Geography in New York City: Implications for COVID-19
• NYC COVID Markers at the ZIP Code Level
• Prospero's New Castles: COVID Infection and Premature Mortality in the NY Metro Region
• Pandemic Firefighting vs. Pandemic Fire Prevention
• Conclusion: Scales of Time in Disasters

An exemplary study in health disparities, COVID-19 in New York City: An Ecology of Race and Class Oppression is essential reading for social epidemiologists, public health researchers of health disparities, those in public service tasked with addressing these problems, and infectious disease scientists who focus on spread in human populations of new zoonotic diseases. The brief also should appeal to students in these fields, civil rights scholars, science writers, medical anthropologists and sociologists, medical and public health historians, public health economists, and public policy scientists.

Autorentext
Deborah Wallace, PhD, received her PhD in symbiosis ecology from Columbia University in New York City in 1971. In 1972, she became an environmental studies manager at Consolidated Edison Co. and participated in pioneering environmental impact assessment. She became a manager of biological and public health studies at New York State Power Authority in 1974 and remained there until early 1982. In 1980 she completed a MiniResidency in epidemiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center. In the mid-1970s, she also founded Public Interest Scientific Consulting Service, which produced impact assessments of massive cuts in fire service in New York City. She also probed the health threats that plastics in fires posed to firefighters and became an expert witness in litigation for plaintiffs in large fires fueled by plastics. From 1985 to 1991, she worked for Barry Commoner at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College. From 1991 to 2010, she tested consumer products and services for their environmental and health impacts at Consumers Union. She retired in 2010 but continues data analysis, research, and scientific publications. Her first paper was published in 1975, and her last publication, a book, in 2019.
Rodrick Wallace, PhD, is a research scientist in the Division of Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, affiliated with Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry in New York City. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral training in the epidemiology of mental disorders at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He worked as a public interest lobbyist, including two decades conducting empirical studies of fire service deployment, and subsequently received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition to material on public health and public policy, he has published peer reviewed studies modeling evolutionary process and heterodox economics, as well as many quantitative analyses of institutional and machine cognition. He publishes in the military science literature, and in 2019 received one of the U.K. MoD RUSI Trench Gascoigne Essay Awards.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Premature Death Rate Geography in New York City: Implications for COVID-19
New York City has had the highest number and incidence of CoViD-19 cases and deaths in U.S. cities. The foundation of this public health catastrophe lies in the overall public health and socioeconomic (SE) structure of the city.
Premature (below age 65) mortality rate indicates background public health. In year 2000, community districts (CDs) with low population percent of over age 65 had high incidence of HIV mortality and its three associated mortalities (homicide, drugs, liver disease) as well as high poverty rate, high unemployment, low median income, and low percent of adults with college or higher degrees. NYC Health Departments' use of age 65 as the benchmark for premature death departs from that of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics which uses age 75. This departure contributes to an underestimation of premature mortality rates and of public health deficiencies.
This study examines 2017 premature mortality rate of CDs, health outcomes associated with it, and contextual SE factors. Four health outcomes associated with premature mortality rate in multivariate regression: HIV, diabetes, and drug mortality rates and percent of births to teenagers. SE factors associated with premature mortality rate and its health guild were serious housing violations per 1000 units, unemployment rate, poverty rate, percent of adults with college or higher degrees (the only negative association), and indicators of segregation. Much of the context of year 2000 patterns of mortality disparities remained in 2017.
The coronavirus pandemic plays out in NYC in this SE/public health system. Old age and age-related chronic conditions emerged as raised risks for serious CoViD injury and death. Premature mortality indicates a population's rapidity of physiological aging from structural stress: 'weathering'.
1.1 Summary 1.2 Introduction 1.3 Methods 1.4 Results 1.5 Discussion and Conclusion 1.6 References

Chapter 2: NYC CoViD Markers at the ZIP Code Level
This chapter examines the geography of CoViD markers and premature mortality in the four central boroughs of New York City: Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Manhattan and the Bronx, being similar in population, are compared, and Brooklyn is compared to Queens. The poverty belt of Brooklyn hosted high rates of CoViD deaths and premature mortality rates, whereas only the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens showed high rates of both. In Queens, few Zip Code areas suffered from moderate or high rates of premature mortality, but a cluster of areas around LaGuardia Airport had high rates of CoViD deaths. The populations of these five areas included high proportions of the foreign-born (54%-66%).
Manhattan below 96th Street enjoyed wide swaths of areas with low CoViD mortality rates and low premature mortality rates. The areas above 96th Street, however, showed moderate to high rates of CoViD death rates. Harlem, in particular, suffered from both high CoViD death rates and high premature mortality rates. Out of 24 areas in the Bronx, only two enjoyed low CoViD death rates. High CoViD death rates formed a belt across the northern Bronx, but the patchiness of CoViD death rates in the southern Bronx may be an artifact of inadequate testing. The south central Bronx featured a transect of areas with high premature mortality rates, in contrast with rates of CoViD rates. Only one area in the Bronx had a low rate of premature mortality.
From the maps of CoViD and premature mortality rates, the entire Bronx gives clear signals of borough-wide health crisis. The Bronx is the only borough where CoViD death rates have no significant association with any of the socioecono…