Sydney Goldstein ’22

2020 has brought on an unprecedented level of change and uncertainty for everyone in the United States and beyond. US citizens have been in the midst of multiple crises concurrently: a global health crisis (COVID-19 Virus), a climate change crisis, an economic crisis, and a systemic inequality crisis (racism and social injustice). For many, amidst all of these overwhelmingly large issues, a heightened social conscience has evolved. People have examined the differences in impacts that these concurrent crises have on different subgroups of the US population, and in doing so have recognized the intersectionality of the crises. Various disparities have become evident ; pollution’s more obvious impact on lower-income, primarily non-white communities; systemic racism’s impact on BIPOC Americans in the form of police shootings; and lack of fair educational opportunities in all communities. In regards to health concerns, a pressing issue has been the data showing that COVID-19 has disproportionately reached the lives of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other people of color, resulting in increased deaths, with structural racism as a large proponent of this issue.

APM Research Lab

According to a study conducted by the American Public Media (APM) Research Lab Staff - a team of professionals who produce evidence-based surveys, analysis, and more in frequent partnership with nonprofit organizations among others - the following data taken from COVID-19 death rates expresses the extent to which the virus has impacted the different populations unequally:

• 1 in 1,125 Black Americans has died (88.4 deaths per 100,000)

• 1 in 1,375 Indigenous Americans has died (73.2 deaths per 100,000)

• 1 in 1,575 Pacific Islander Americans has died (63.9 deaths per 100,000)

• 1 in 1,850 Latino Americans has died (54.4 deaths per 100,000)

• 1 in 2,450 White Americans has died (40.4 deaths per 100,000)

• 1 in 2,750 Asian Americans has died (or 36.4 deaths per 100,000)

What has led to a connection between race and number of virus-induced deaths? There is not one single, clear factor that can be pointed to as the reason for marginalized groups to be hit the hardest, and there is not complete consistency in data given that not all COVID-19 data include race. In reality, there are huge, institutional, historical problems that contribute to disparities in deaths and cases among people of color, including but not limited to people’s housing and physical location in the country, increased pre-virus use of public transportation, insufficient access and discriminatory allocation of health care and resources, occupation calling for increased exposure, and preexisting chronic, race-linked medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and Sickle Cell Disease.

The causes for increased mortality in the lives of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people have no easy solution. For example, it would take years of erasing air pollution in cities such as Springfield, MA to eliminate pre existing health conditions such as asthma—a respiratory condition that causes inflamed, mucus-covered airways that lead to difficulty in breathing—causes the impact of the virus to be more deadly, and specifically make it likely to experience asthma attacks, pneumonia, and acute respiratory distress.

Asthma is one of many health conditions that hits Black Americans and Puerto Ricans the hardest with factors such as poverty and lack of health insurance contributing to its widespread prevalence in the US, as well as in-home allergens and pollution. Like asthma, lack of economic stability makes medical treatment for COVID-19 an obstacle sometimes in the way of survival. One common challenge as rapid testing has supposedly become more easily accessible is, without a doctor’s referral, some people are rejected from testing centers, and can be subjected to having to stay at home in close quarters, receiving no treatment. Some healthcare facilities refuse to treat patients for COVID-19 when there is no proof of positive result, but results cannot be confirmed without a positive PCR (polymerase chain reaction: billions of copies of DNA are made to amplify it to a level in which it can be studied, and in the case of COVID-19, copies of RNA are made before going through DNA synthesis to allow for a read via the PCR test) test.

Another contributing factor to the unequal effects of COVID-19 is directly tied to the racial and ethnic makeup of the driving force that is frontline, essential workers, a term that has become more prominent as certain professions have the ability to work from the safety of their own homes, whereas others have no choice but to come in contact with others and risk infection. From meatpackers to nurses to correctional officers and more, Black and Latinx citizens make upwards of 33.8% of the population of frontline workers. These are the people who keep the country’s essential functions up-and-running year-round, who are forced to come in the closest contact with the virus, and who are also on the lower-end of the spectrum in regards to income, adding to the challenge and cycle of difficulty in paying for health care. For essential workers, social distancing comes at a greater cost, or is sometimes completely out of the question for people like health care workers.

One might ask, “But are there really any plausible solutions to a problem so deeply rooted in the country as this one is?” Frankly, there is not a magical, overnight solution, though public health policy officials and politicians continue to put their heads together to work towards breaking down the disparities, specifically stressing in planning the need to account for all groups that make up the country’s population when considering treatment options, recovery, and so on, however, this nationwide challenge is not new. The same disparities were prevalent with the H1N1 global flu pandemic in 2009.

In the hands of policy makers such as California Senator Kamala Harris lies the fate of the US, which can either continue to house health care systems and policies discriminatory against marginalized groups, or which can consist of steps away from the prolonged racial injustice that has allowed COVID-19 to disproportionally take the lives of of people of color. Harris, in April, 2020, introduced the COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force Act that would follow the direction that data has proven the virus has traveled: it would focus on the groups hardest hit, working towards a long-term goal of preventing such drastically unequal impacts on marginalized racial groups.

With initiatives such as Harris’s, data-driven decision makers can use political will to work to create methods in which resources will reach the places of greatest need. This policy and more to come will ensure that no groups will be overlooked as they have for centuries. Other changes that would benefit devastated groups include barrier-free testing, contract tracing effective for all ethnicities, adequate quarantine sites, development of implicit bias understanding in hospitals for better widespread health care outcomes with the foreseeable vaccine must reach all communities.

Bibliography

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