In This Together?

I check the local numbers every day. And I’m not talking about the state lottery. It’s now the COVID-19 lottery. Though life is always subject to random events, this aspect of chance looms greater in our lives. Whether I get infected depends on a number of factors, many of which are out of my control. I can wear my mask and keep my six-foot distance when I go out. I can wash my hands religiously and watch Netflix endlessly. But I am still at risk.

A number of years ago, a doctor at Ground Rounds at UMass Memorial Hospital said that your health outcomes are dependent on three factors: genetics, behavior and chance. First is the physical constitution you are born with. Next is the food you eat, the exercise you get and how you care for yourself. Then there is what happens. Perfectly healthy people who that eat well and exercise regularly come down with terminal diseases along with everyone else.

But another factor that determines how healthy you are is becoming more obvious as researchers begin to look more closely at who is getting infected with COVID-19 and how severe the impact. Your race.

We have known from quite early on in the pandemic that older people and people with pre-existing medical conditions are more at risk for serious medical conditions and death from COVID-19. Recently, however, researchers have reported that the Black and Latinx populations are getting infected and dying at significantly higher rates than the white population. In New York City, Black and Latinx are being killed at twice the rate as white people.  In Massachusetts, recently released data shows that Black and Latinx people were twice as likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 as white people. What is going on here?

The COVID-19 virus does not appear to operate differently in Black and Latinx communities, but rather a consistent lack of access to health care and conditions that foster healthy conditions have put these communities more at risk. People in Black and Latinx communities are much more likely to have pre-existing health conditions that put them at risk and much less likely to have access to health care to help them meet these challenges. David Williams, a professor of public health at Harvard put it this way: “Coronavirus has not created health disparities. What it has done is highlight these disparities.”

We’re all in this together, but if you’re rich or famous, you can get tested if you’re concerned you might have the virus. The rest of us have to wait. We’re all in this together, but if you happen to be white or have a large savings account or live in a house with lots of space around it, you don’t have to be quite as worried.

We do depend on each other to work together to slow the spread of COVID-19. We need to care for whoever is afflicted by the virus and its many impacts; physical, economic and personal. These are difficult times. But we must also keep our eyes open to what these times are revealing about the disparities that are often invisible to many of us. Can this time be an impetus to change how we view the basic right to health care? Can this time lead us to treat unseen workers that are now so clearly sustaining us with more respect and better working conditions?

We’ll see.