Adrienne Lathan figured she had a cold. On March 16, the 48-year-old started to feel sick just days after her 7-year-old grandson, Terrence Lathan Jr., began exhibiting symptoms of a cold. But after three days, Lathan, a technology support technician for Milwaukee Public Schools, was concerned. As an asthma patient and someone who had been watching the news about the burgeoning coronavirus, she began to worry this “cold” wasn’t really a cold. She called her doctor at Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital to make sure. The doctor told her to self-quarantine for seven days at her home on the city’s northwest side, which she shares with her grandson, his father, Terrence Lathan Sr., and a female cousin, and to reach out again if her symptoms got worse. Over the next five days, the high fever (102 degrees), body aches, headaches, dry coughs, congestion, shortness of breath and painful diarrhea continued. None of the treatments seemed to work. NyQuil. DayQuil. Tylenol. Theraflu. Nothing. After visiting a drive-thru testing center (the first of three times she would be tested over the next month), Lathan tested positive for the coronavirus on March 27. She was admitted to Columbia St. Mary’s on March 31. Adrienne Lathan during her hospital stay at Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital. Lathan family At the hospital, the symptoms persisted. Lathan had problems catching her breath. She had to keep the lights off in her room because they hurt her eyes. She kept the room’s television off because it kept showing coronavirus coverage. An X-ray showed she had pneumonia in both lungs. The stress and anxiety caused her blood pressure to rise. One day she woke up and a response team was standing around her bed. “They actually thought they lost me,” she said. In the middle of a pandemic that has touched all but one continent, Milwaukee has emerged as a leading example of how the coronavirus, and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has disproportionately affected African Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that African Americans, who account for 13% of the U.S. population, make up 31% of coronavirus hospitalizations. A Washington Post analysis of state health department data also found that “counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.” In Wisconsin, black people make up 6.7% of the state population, but make up 24% of all coronavirus cases and 35% of coronavirus-related deaths. In Milwaukee County, where African Americans make up 27% of the population, African Americans make up 42% of positive cases and 52% of coronavirus-related deaths. The rate of coronavirus cases (positive tests per 100,000 people) in Milwaukee County stands at 275.5, by far the highest rate in the state. Milwaukee’s notorious history as one of the most segregated cities in America, combined with a history of inadequate health care, housing and government action, has made the industrial city of 600,000 a test case of how black Americans are being exposed to and dying from a disease that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others once referred to as “the great equalizer.” To be sure, Milwaukee is not unique among major U.S. cities. In Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago and Washington, African Americans comprise the majority of COVID-19 deaths despite not accounting for a majority of the population in their respective cities. In New York City, African Americans are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white residents in the city. In early April, the CDC released a report on COVID-19 hospitalizations from March 1 to March 30, which showed that of a sample of 180 adults who tested positive for the coronavirus, 90% had a preexisting health condition. Those top five conditions were hypertension, obesity, chronic metabolic disease (e.g., diabetes), chronic lung disease (e.g., asthma) and cardiovascular disease (e.g., coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure). A look at those underlying conditions paints a dismal picture for African Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, African Americans are 40% more likely to have high blood pressure than white Americans; 1.3 times more likely to be obese (about four out of five black women are obese); 60% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes; and, at one point, were almost three times more likely to die from “asthma-related causes.” Nearly half of all African American men and women have some form of heart disease, according to the American Heart Association. “This virus obviously affects people who have significant comorbid conditions more than those who do not.