Black people are two and a half times more likely to be hospitalized and 1.7 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than whites.

That stat from the CDC is shocking, but it's not exactly surprising.

Not to people like LA Times reporter Marissa Evans.

On January 1st, my dad, Gary Evans, told our family of five that this was going to be our year.

And by January 29th, he died in the ICU.

Gary is now one of nearly 97,000 black people in the United States who've died from COVID-19 complications.

And while Marissa is willing to accept her father's death, she says she refuses to accept that losing all these black men is normal or okay.

I'm Gustavo Ariano. You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times. It's Friday, April 8th, 2022.

Marissaverianz. Marissa Evans covers health care and communities of color in California for the Los Angeles Times.

Marissa, welcome to the Times.

Thank you.

My condolences on the passing of your father, and I know it's a painful subject, but can you share what happened with him and COVID-19? My father and I had our initial New Year's Day call.

He was eating apple pie.

And he said, you know, this is going to be our year.

That Monday, I got a call from him, and he said he had had this cough,

and Clint, my brother, you know, said, you need to go get tested.

I was on CVS. I was on Walgreens, you name it, anywhere where you can kind of get one of those

next day tests, those rapid tests, and it was just, it was like not available, not available.

By January 6th, he figured out he had tested positive.

I distinctly remember I was driving when he told me.

My heart sank a little bit because our immediate family had stayed safe for so long.

So I'm like just drilling him with questions. Okay, like, are you coughing? Are you feeling any aches? Are you feeling any pains? He's like, well, I'm talking to you, so I feel fine. I feel fine. You know, it's just like a bad cold. And I kept telling him, it's not a bad cold. It's COVID. At the time, like, the mindset wasn't...

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