The Politics of Pandemics

 We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas . . . Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it." --Arundhati Roy, “The Pandemic is a Portal”:

How Does COVID 19 Reveal Political Realities?

• Narratives from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
• Little data collected-disadvantage
• Rates of Morbidity for Blacks lower and mortality higher
• May have caught first wave in Spring and Summer and been immune to deadlier second wave in Winter
• Structural violence and crowded living conditions led to greater susceptibility to first wave
• Racist Discourses-1918 (and today?)
• Negroes are biologically immune (not human like us-if they dont get it)
• Negroes are inferior (if they die)
• Negroes are virus vectors but dont get the illness
• Black medical schools and institutions founded in the 1880s were regulated through policies in 1910
• Black nurses could not join the war effort in WWI
• During the pandemic they treated white patients, not black
• Counter Narratives- Black Voices
• Created their own medical responses within their communities
• created their own counter-narratives which directed Blacks to take precautions and debunked racist narratives
• Exacerbating factors
• great migration and ghettoizing in crowded northern cities
• Jim Crow Laws

COVID-19 Comparison

• affecting Black, Hispanic and Native American populations in similar ways due to structural violence
• As a result of continued redlining, minority residential environments bear substantial barriers to health optimization, such as reduced green space access, disproportionate tobacco and alcohol marketing, low perceived neighborhood safety, and food deserts MAPS
• Similar racist narratives being put forth
• poor hygiene
• greater immunity (physical superiority/mental inferiority)
• vectors for disease (people or communities of color)
• narratives of personal responsibility as a key driver of health outcomes 
• These accounts place the burden of differential outcomes on minorities rather than acknowledging the lasting legacy of structural racism. 
• They also detach minority health from that of the majority rather than viewing it as part of the nation's collective mission.
• Challenges
• long-term COVID-19 sequelae (pathological conditions resulting from a disease)
• pre-existing conditions in minority communities
• exacerbation of underlying chronic conditions, 
• mistrust in the health care system
• misinformation in poor communities
• Responses
•  1) examine the historical arc contextualizing current disparities in vulnerable communities; 
• 2) recognize the inherent strengths in these communities, empowering them to participate in research and generate solutions alongside those who traditionally hold power; 
• 3) acknowledge the contributions of frontline workers in communities of color; 
• 4) prepare for future public health emergencies by enhancing minority civic participation; and 
• 5) use a restorative justice framework to acknowledge and make amends for the structures contributing to disadvantages in these communities