Oprah Winfrey recently came out to address the severity of the coronavirus’ impact on African-American communities in the context of her own health struggles, as well as the importance of pre-existing conditions and their effects on disease.
According to BET, Oprah claimed African-American communities have been heavily impacted by the coronavirus, especially in areas like Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Chicago.
The outlet claims around 70% of the cases in the aforementioned cities are black Americans, even though they represent only 30% of the population or even lower depending on the area. Winfrey, during her appearence on NBC’s Today program, explained that people who have pre-existing conditions are especially at risk.
Oprah used several different examples to hammer the point home, including those who take diabetes medication, have hypertension, or use an asthma inhaler. Winfrey claims she is no exception to the rule either, because she was diagnosed with pneumonia back in September, and her lungs never got better from it.
When news of the virus came to be, Oprah chose to self-isolate immediately and has since been doing what she can to avoid contact with potentially infected people. Winfrey joked with the host that the moment she heard “pre-existing conditions,” she immediately locked her door and that was it.
Oprah, these days, has been busy with her new show, Oprah Talks COVID-19, on Apple’s streaming service, AppleTV+. This past month, the media mogul chatted with Idris Elba and his wife, Sabrina Dwhore, who both were diagnosed with the virus.
As it was previously reported, Idris was one of the first to come out and dispel rumors that black people were unaffected by the coronavirus. Oprah said on the Today show recently that she was surprised to see Idris would even take the time out of his day to dispel such a rumor, considering the absurdity of it.
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However, apparently, many did. Another star who was vocal about COVID-19 before the pandemic really kicked off was the rapper, Cardi B, who took to her Instagram to say she was genuinely concerned about the virus spreading around the US.
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