I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, February 26th.

Rosary Castro Ortega retired from nursing in 2017, but when the pandemic hit last year, she decided to

pitch in and help. Rosary passed away from the virus on March 29, 2020. She was the first

health care worker in Los Angeles County to die from COVID-19, according to Kaiser Health News.

Rosary was Filipino American, and though she was first to pass away in her county, she was

hardly the last Filipino American to pass away in the United States from COVID.

Filipino Americans make up 4% of nurses in the U.S., but account for almost a third of the nurses who have died from COVID-19 nationwide.

Joining me now to discuss their reporting on how Filipino Americans came to work the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic so much

and why they've been disproportionately affected by the virus, are Tracy Hunt,

correspondent for the experiment, a new series from the Atlantic and WNYC Studios, and Gabrielle Burbay,

who is the associate producer for the experiment, the new episode is called The Sisterhood.

Tracy and Gabrielle, welcome to the talk show side today.

Thanks for coming on.

Oh, thank you so much for having us.

This is so exciting.

Hi, thanks, Brian.

And the statistic that you're reporting is based on Filipino nurses are 4% of nurses in the U.S. but account for nearly one

third of the nurses who have died from COVID-19 nationwide. It's so devastating. Tracy, how much

do we know about why nearly a year into the pandemic? You know, this is, I think, a question

that a lot of people are looking at right now. There's actually a group of Filipino academics

and activists and researchers who are trying to like break apart this data. But it's kind of a combination

of a lot of like just sort of historical factors. I mean, there's a fact that, you know,

...