A Harvard Medical School study concluded that reparations for descendants of slaves could have reduced the spread of COVID-19 among the United States’s black population.

“Almost all of the COVID models you’ll look at have to do with wearing masks, social distancing, closing down businesses — that kind of thing,” said Harvard Medical School professor Eugene Richardson, who is the chairman of a Harvard commission studying reparations. “Yet there are these huge health disparities, notably between people of color and white people, especially in the U.S., and you rarely see racial justice interventions being incorporated into these models.”