Replying here on vaccine policy to this post,
Looking at over represented deaths by population subgroup isn’t the best way to see how to save lives. For example, if you compare the death rate per case from the CA numbers above,
Latino = 14.3k/1.115M = 0.0124 or about 1.25 deaths per case
White = 9.7k/415k = 0.0235 or about 2 1/3 deaths per case
Said another way, among people equally likely to be infected otherwise, these numbers show that if you vaccinate 100 such Latinos with a perfect vaccine you will save 1.25 people, while if you did it with whites, it would save 2.3 people. This is because, as you might expect, the white population demographic is CA is much older than the Hispanic one and age is a much bigger risk factor than race for covid.
age is the strongest predictor of mortality, with risk climbing after age 55. Patients under the age of 50 with COVID-19 have only a 1 percent chance of dying. Those 85 and older have at least a 34 percent chance of dying if they get COVID-19.
This is partly why doing things like vaccinating prisoners or front line workers instead of the elderly doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if you think stopping one younger aged farm worker from getting it prevents the spread to 20 others, it would still be better to vaccinate an 85 year old since you’d expect 0.35 deaths from the latter vs 0.18 deaths from the whole group of the former. These are currently equal priority under the CA vaccine scheme.
The reason you’re seeing over representation by race is because for whatever reason, some groups are more likely to get infected (due to line of work, lack of adherence to precautions, systemic racism, or whatever), but that’s different than their health risks.