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The Tale of 2 Pandemics

This is the story of two intertwining pandemics, both of which place people of color in a position of extreme vulnerability. We want to examine the compounding effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the racism pandemic under a public health lens.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. While the coronavirus pandemic is a visible illness, it also takes a mental toll on providers, patients, caregivers, and family members. The pandemic of racism similarly affects physical, mental, and social wellbeing while also contributing to increased risk of physical disease and illness. For some, it’s easy to see how racism directly affects people of color and to recognize that it is indeed incredibly harmful. But what many don’t realize is that much like secondhand smoke, racism very much affects others too. While smoking and race are two very different concepts, hopefully this analogy can help underscore the complexity of racism.


Building a Public Health Campaign: The Example of Smoking Cessation


Though the Unfiltered members grew up during a time of mass anti-smoking campaigns, the 1900s were a time when it was fashionable and highly acceptable to smoke. During the 1950s and 60s, the increased risk of disease and mortality became apparent to many, however, Big Tobacco had advertising, economic prowess, and war-time stress on its side to keep smoking as the norm. Doctors focused on trying to treat diseases caused by smoking rather than by trying to stop people from smoking. During the 1980s, an active anti-smoking campaign emerged in response to the Surgeon General’s report on the risks of smoking. Here’s when we truly begin to see the parallels to racism.

In an effort to appear more ethical, the Tobacco Institute, funded by the tobacco industry, launched a program called “It’s the Law” that claimed “to discourage minors from purchasing cigarettes”; however, it had an underlying agenda. The “program focused on the legal responsibilities of the purchaser rather than the vendor, [characterizing] smoking as an ‘adult behavior’ (which may make it more attractive to adolescents)” (CDC Review). It put emphasis only on adolescents buying the cigarettes rather than calling on the seller to stop supplying something that was literally killing the population. Businesses and health professionals began to realize the high costs of paying for smokers’ health bills. Terms such as “secondhand smoke” and “passive smoking” began to appear, underscoring the unintended but far-reaching consequences of smoking that affected everybody, whether they had a choice or not. Adverse effects of smoking permeated every part of society and affected people whether they realized it or not, and it was only when people stopped considering it solely the “smoker’s problem”, did real change start.


How does public health apply to racism?


Similarly, racism is often seen as a “problem for people of color”. Racism’s history of normalization goes back to the profitable industry of slavery. Even when it was made clear that slavery was inhumane, the United States treated its abolition much like the tobacco industry did with smoking cessation. The US government found a way to try to appear moral by using phrases like “separate but equal” and by utilizing programs such as redlining. When segregation didn’t work, the government turned to structural and systemic racism through the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. Now we’re at a transition point: we’re trying to move away from attacking symptoms of racism and towards recognizing the root. Employees at the CDC have petitioned for racism to be declared a public health crisis. With that declaration, we could have the opportunity to launch a powerful anti-racism campaign that stops us from being the passive “vendors” of racism.

COVID-19 & Racism: Similarities and Connections


Turning back to COVID-19, we can now see the similarities between the two pandemics. COVID-19 has become a political issue: wearing face masks has become a symbol of protection for some and oppression for others. Because some see COVID-19 as an issue for people with compromised immune systems or for the elderly, they assume their actions do not affect everyone else. Similarly, some feel racism must be something that only affects people of color. It is easy to see how people politicize health and civil rights to maintain a hierarchical and bi-partisan system, but how do we move away from that? By recognizing that community health, whether in terms of COVID-19 or racism, as its name suggests is literally for the community. Hopefully we shouldn’t have to explain why caring about our neighbors is important.

It’s important to now highlight the intertwining nature of the two pandemics. Because of COVID-19’s origin in China, Asian Americans have experienced increasing racism and have become victims of hate crimes. A report from the Pew Research Center found that 40% of US adults regardless of race said it was more common to express racist views of Asians during the pandemic than it had been before. Asians also reported the highest rates of people acting uncomfortable around them or having a fear of being threatened or physically attacked during the pandemic. Black people are disproportionately affected by the pandemic and also face the compounding effects of negative attitudes towards the campaign for racial justice. They therefore responded with the second highest rates of experiencing people acting uncomfortable around them and fearing physical attack because of their race. Read more from the report here. Examples of the horrific hate crimes are here and here.

In terms of physical effects of the two pandemics, Black, Latinx, and Native people are dying at MUCH higher rates than others. In most states, it’s at a rate of nearly twice the rate of White people, and in at least 5 states, the Black mortality rate is 4-6 times higher than that of White people. Similarly, Latinx people have higher rates of infection than their representation in the population. For example, in Virginia, Latinx people make up about 10% of the population but account for nearly 50% of the cases. The Navajo Nation has the highest infection rate in the country, even greater than New York State; in New Mexico, Native people are 10% of the population but constitute 55% of cases. For a while, some states weren’t even reporting racial/ethnic statistics on COVID-19, limiting a true understanding of the scope of disparity.

But what’s so important to understand here is that it’s not race that’s causing these disparities: it’s racism.

Black, Latinx, and Native people are not genetically more susceptible to COVID-19. Epidemiologist and physician Camara Phyllis Jones explained, “People of color are more infected because we are more exposed and less protected. Then, once infected, we are more likely to die because we carry a greater burden of chronic diseases from living in disinvested communities with poor food options [and] poisoned air and because we have less access to health care” (Wallis, Scientific American 2020). People of color are more likely to work in frontline jobs, to be in prisons, homeless shelters, multi-family homes, and under-resourced neighborhoods. Testing centers and health facilities are not located near communities of color, and people of color are more likely to live in “food deserts” increasing their comparative risk of developing chronic health complications such as respiratory disease, diabetes, and hypertension. It is remnants of historical inequity and maintenance of current structural violence that continues to subject people of color to cycles of poor health outcomes.

On a conflicting and bittersweet parallel, those who are lucky enough to remain employed during COVID-19, have been able to reflect and to truly take the time to see the injustice in the murders of Breonna Taylor, Maurice Gordon, Elijah Mcclain, and the others that have occurred since then. Their deaths were the latest in the long line of murders, but they were among the first to receive the attention that each case before theirs deserved sadly because people could not choose to look away. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed those who continue to assign racism as a problem only for people of color and those who still can’t seem to understand the simple fact that Black lives matter.

While we anxiously await the vaccine being developed by scientists for one of these pandemics, the solution to the other is in our hands. We can choose how we respond to our internal biases. We can stop politicizing health and human rights by trying to elect people who don’t make either a bi-partisan issue. We can choose the narrative that will be the future of this country and switch its course towards one of equality and wellbeing.




Are you interested in writing for Unfiltered? Do you have a topic you want to discuss or tackle? Comment below, post in our forum, or send us an email at bhunfiltered@gmail.com. We want to hear from you and continue the conversation!


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