Epidemics and pandemics are not equal-opportunity killers. Seen through the archaeological record, incomplete as it may be, these waves of death victimized the marginalized and most vulnerable populations wherever they struck.
In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be no different, striking Indigenous, Black and Latinx communities at far greater rates than white populations.
“What’s going on today is nothing new,” said Lynn Gamble, a UC Santa Barbara professor emerita of anthropology and editor of the journal American Antiquity.