![]() counties with the highest COVID-19 death rates, according to data compiled by USA TODAY. John the Baptist Parish, which includes Reserve, has consistently ranked among the top 30 U.S. Since the coronavirus emerged here in March, St. continues to grapple with a virus that disproportionately attacks people of color, residents and activists in Reserve ask why Black Americans have been left in such close proximity to environmental hazards, making them vulnerable in the path of the virus. All are preexisting conditions that render people more vulnerable to COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Īs the U.S. Its residents once worked the local sugar cane fields now they pray for medical help as they endure high rates of cancer, respiratory illness, diabetes and kidney disease. The transition of Reserve from slave plantation to toxin-choked community shows what systemic racism looks like. In August, Wilson’s sister, Shirley Jacob, already suffering congestive heart failure and other ailments, also contracted COVID-19. The cancer had consumed his body in two months, stunning the family. Just four years earlier, Wilson had buried her older brother, James Duhe, who died of liver cancer at age 61. Wilson sat up in bed, cold shivers running through her. His magnetic smile, his love of food and travel, his spontaneous visits – all gone. She hung up the phone and called her other brother, cried, showered and cried some more before finally falling asleep.Īt 2:30 a.m., the phone call came, springing her awake. Wilson’s younger brother, Jules Duhe, had been on a ventilator fighting COVID-19 since April. Your brother won’t survive the night, he told her. – The doctor called on Mother’s Day with the news Karen Wilson had dreaded for weeks.
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