In New York City, COVID-19 Is a Poor Man’s Disease

Chase Tralka crunched some number from New York City and came up with this:

There are some technical issues with using zip codes as a proxy for the income of individuals, but this is still striking. Those who are well off can isolate themselves pretty easily and avoid the worst effects of COVID-19. Those who aren’t well off, and have jobs that require their physical presence, are a lot more vulnerable.

This is also a partial explanation for the high infection rate among African Americans. Aside from everything else, they have much lower median household incomes than whites ($40,000 vs. $70,000). All by itself that makes a big difference, and outside of New York City it makes an even bigger difference than this chart suggests.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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