Why Covid has been the great magnifying glass instead of the great equalizer
At the first anniversary of Covid directly impacting all the workforce of the company I work for, I was looking for resources about the impact of the pandemic in different groups, to share internally. I ended up just finding a ton of information related to how unequal that impact has been, so I compiled it in this piece, with my own interpretation, and now putting out there too, hoping it can be helpful.
In the early days of the pandemic, the calls to raise awareness on the virus’s danger needed to reach a wide as possible sector of the public, all over the world. Some of that messaging by government authorities and even celebrities described Covid-19 as the great equalizer, because face to face with the virus, everyone is equally vulnerable to get infected. But that narrative didn’t hold long, and we could all quickly notice that. I personally remember reflecting back in April 2020 on how different the situation was in people I knew depending on the nature of their work, the space they had at home, and the family composition. Months after there is much more data on this.
Over the course of the pandemic, and from early on, numbers have shown a disproportionate impact on people of ethnic minorities. As an example, by May of 2020 data showed that in multiple states the proportion of deaths accounted for by black people was much higher than their share of the population: 70% vs 30% in Louisiana, 38% vs 12% in Missouri, it happens too in NC, MI, IL.
A careless analysis would lead to think there could be intrinsic factors affecting the health vulnerability of people from these groups, but public health experts have been pointing to exogenous factors more related to socioeconomic conditions as the ones driving this disparity. The main factors described in this NYT podcast are:
- Proximity to the virus: being more likely employed in essential, front line jobs.
- Discrimination embedded in the health care system itself
- More underlying conditions that make covid worse: caused by worse environmental conditions in places they live (air pollution) and the long term physical toll driven by racism related struggles.
After a year from the start of pandemic, and two infection waves in the UK, a study compared how different ethnic groups fared between the two waves, showing the proximity to the virus as the most likely driver of these differences. While black Africans and black Caribbeans did see a drop in Covid death related rates between the two waves, Bangladeshi remained the same and Pakistani saw a rise in death rate. These two groups are more likely in the UK to work in high exposure jobs as taxi drivers, shopkeepers and proprietors.
Ultimately, what Covid seems to be doing is surfacing and augmenting the already existing inequalities based on gender, ethnicity, and income level, as these charts from inequality.org show
How this inequality within countries extrapolates at global scale
Today vaccines are rolling out, finally giving us a chance to make up for these inequalities by setting priority criteria that is not based on gender, race, or income level, but rather prioritizing groups of the population under higher risk based on age, underlying health conditions, and their exposure to the virus, getting healthcare and education professionals vaccinated first. Unfortunately the socioeconomic conditions can still play a big factor due to lack of access to good information that some minorities have.
But the unequal impact of Covid doesn’t stop at the disparities within countries, and what we will start seeing now is how much slower the vaccines rollout will be in countries with weaker institutions and more people with low income. The wealthiest countries, while pledging commitment to support equitable and affordable access at global scope (much needed in a highly interconnected globalized world), moved fast on getting agreements to stock up enough doses for themselves first.
The Covax initiative started working early on ensuring that vaccines can reach as many people as possible around the world, especially in countries that were less likely to afford getting vaccines by their own means for their people. Apart from the humanitarian and moral value of pursuing this goal, there are economic reasons that make it extremely necessary given how the global economy is currently set up to work.
Just a few weeks ago, on March 3rd, Rwanda became the first country to receive doses through Covax. On March 10 Moldova became the first country in Europe to do so as well. The program aims to deliver at least 2 billion doses by end of 2021, but that also means some of the countries for which this is their only chance to get vaccines, will not be getting herd immunity until 2022 or 2023, a time when wealthier countries are expected to be fully operative. With no coordinated action to address the pandemic at the truly global level it needs to, we risk turning this into a great divider.
Sources:
- Madonna calls coronavirus is ‘the great equalizer,’ in bathtub video
- COVID-19 and Health Disparities: the Reality of “the Great Equalizer”
- Why Is the Pandemic Killing So Many Black Americans?
- Covid mortality in England still higher for some ethnic minorities, study finds
- Ethnic differences in COVID-19 mortality during the first two waves of the Coronavirus Pandemic: a nationwide cohort study of 29
- Get the facts Inequality and Covid-19
- Covid-19: Pre-purchasing vaccine — sensible or selfish?
- The great global vaccine divide — podcast | News
- The Economic Case for Global Vaccinations: An Epidemiological Model with International Production Networks
- First COVID-19 COVAX vaccine doses administered in Africa
- More than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023
