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They include diabetes, hypertension, obesity and asthma, all of which weaken resistance to coronavirus.

So do many of the jobs that working-class people of all races hold, particularly working black people, that put them into close contact with potential carriers of the virus, whether they are showing symptoms or not.

Detroit bus driver Jason Hargrove became a tragic symbol for drivers, cashiers, poll workers and other blue-collar workers whose jobs have put them on the front lines of the pandemic. He shot a selfie video expressing his disgust with a passenger who had just coughed in his face. A week and a half later, his union and city officials announced that the 50-year-old married father of six had died from complications of COVID-19.

Yet, we can add another hazard to Fauci's list: paranoid conspiracy theories and myths. As I have had to write on too many occasions in the past, we are an unfortunately paranoid people -- and not without reason.

Having historically been victims of conspiracies ranging from slavery to modern-day housing discrimination, among others, African Americans are constantly reminded of the old sarcastic saying: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that somebody's not really out to get you.

But taken to extremes without foundation, we have a lot to fear from fear itself. Many of us grew up with stories of the notorious "Tuskegee experiments." For 40 years, beginning in 1932, the CDC studied black men with syphilis and without informed consent, withholding proper treatment even after penicillin was accepted as a remedy in 1945.

Some reparations were paid to the families, and nothing that atrocious is known to have occurred since then. Still, lingering suspicions cause too many African Americans to avoid doctors and, in too many cases, jump to unfounded conclusions -- such as the equally dangerous but widespread fable that AIDS was created by humans in a secret laboratory.

The best remedy for dangerous ignorance is well-grounded information, offered by credible speakers in clearly consistent messages. Government researchers and others need to find more detailed and widespread information than we have now. The CDC's current information on coronavirus, for example, is woefully short on information about coronavirus rates among Native Americans and Native Alaskans, among other groups.

The better the information, the more effectively we can push back the plague.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.