“I literally could not get warm in my own home,” Bowen said Friday. “I walked around with a winter hat on for days trying to stay warm. Your body is fighting this fever.”

One of those in Milwaukee who died, 69-year-old Lenard Wells, was a former Milwaukee police lieutenant and a mentor to Bowen and others in the black community.

Bowen said he’s worried that black people are not taking the virus seriously because they’re not getting accurate information. He said families need more resources so they can afford to stay home and safe.

Even if they are presented with all the best information possible, it remains difficult for people in Milwaukee’s poor black community to remain safe because of the densely populated neighborhoods they live in and their economic situation which may force people to leave home for work when it’s safer to stay put, said Garoon, the public health expert.

“If you don’t have options you don’t really have choices,” Garoon said. “We need to be real about how incredibly difficult their lives can be on an every day basis without a pandemic. … We need to be seeing government step up on a much more massive scale and providing the assistance that actually allows people to choose to stay at home.”

There is a lot of misinformation in Milwaukee’s black community about the coronavirus, in particular the availability of testing, said Tara Jackson, program manager for the All of Us research project run through UW-Madison’s school of medicine and public health. The project works to collect data for the National Institutes of Health to learn about why some people get sick and others do not.

A lack of public transportation, nearby grocery stores and health care are further barriers to helping people stay safe, said Jackson, who lives in a predominantly black Milwaukee neighborhood.

“People from the community are saying they’re confused,” she said.

Minority and economically disadvantaged communities in Madison, the state’s second-largest city, are also being disproportionately affected by the virus, the city’s mayor and county executive said Friday. The worst is yet to come, warned Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi.

“In the coming days and weeks our community will face harsh realities and difficult choices,” they said.