August 10, 2020 - Most Crowded = Most COVID

 Willamette Week has a terrific article this week by Latisha Jensen, looking at the incidence of COVID-19 in East Portland (from 82nd Ave. onward), where people tend to live in the most crowded conditions.  In fact, if you look at most crowded rental housing, by zip code, and then look at most cases of COVID-19, by zip code, the similarities jump out:

Thanks to the housing shortages in Portland, impoverished people have been moving east of 82nd for some years. So east of 82nd, there are more multigenerational families living together, more refugees, more poorly-paid essential workers, and more people who have to share sleeping quarters, meaning that exposure and viral load opportunities both go up.  (If you are wondering why way out towards Fairview, the COVID-19 counts are high, I'm guessing that was a big fruit-packing plant outbreak. But the article doesn't go into that, just those East Portland zip codes.)

Three families are profiled, and their stories are compelling.  The Somali woman who spent most of her life in a Kenyan refugee camp, and who is now raising her eight kids as a single mom, pretty much stopped me in my tracks.

Also arresting was this breakdown by race and ethnicity:

"Pacific Islanders have 239.6 cases per 10,000 people—more than double the number of any other demographic. Following them are Hispanic residents with 120 cases per 10,000 and Black people with 79.9 cases per 10,000. For white people, the rate is just 19.7 cases per 10,000."