Steve Huffman, a Republican state senator in Ohio, has been fired from his job as an emergency room doctor after asking earlier this week whether the "colored population" is being hit harder by the coronavirus pandemic because they "do not wash their hands as well as other groups."
Huffman posed the question to Angela Dawson, executive director of the Ohio Commission on Minority Health, during a hearing on whether racism should be declared a public health crisis. He said he understood that "African Americans have a higher incidence of chronic conditions and that makes them more susceptible to death from COVID. But why does it not make them more susceptible to just get COVID? Could it just be that African Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups? Or wear a mask? Or do not socially distance themselves? Could that be the explanation for why the higher incidence?"
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