Health inequities and the Covid-19 infection fatality rate w/ Te Pūnaha Matatini: April 23, 2020

Kate Hannah is a cultural historian and also the Deputy Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini. This is a centre of research excellence based at the University of Auckland. The name means the meeting place of many faces. Their researchers are from a range of disciplines, all of whom are interested in understanding the links between things to then use maths to try and understand the world. A relationship based way of doing science rather than a reductionist or positivist way of doing it. So, those in social sciences and humanities work alongside highly computational researchers in order to contextualise the mathematics they present. This way of working has been important in their work on Covid19 looking into the many experiences of racism for Māori and Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa, within the healthcare system and other governmental and social systems. Te Pūnaha Matatini released a report last week on health inequities relating to the infection fatality rate of Covid19. It stated, "The communities at the highest risk will be those with elderly populations, and Māori and Pasifika communities, where the compounded effects of underlying health conditions, socioeconomic disadvantage, and structural racism result in imbricated risk of contracting COVID-19, becoming unwell, and death". Lillian spoke to Kate about this and started by asking about the IFR, or the Infection Fatality Rate.