[ Healing the dual miseries of COVID-19 and economic insecurity
requires relief sufficient to ensure that all individuals, their
families and their loved ones can live through this pandemic. The time
to go big is now.] [[link removed]]

ATTACK AMERICA’S OVERLAPPING MISERIES: WHY GOING BIG ON RELIEF IS
AN ECONOMIC, PUBLIC HEALTH AND MORAL IMPERATIVE  
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Nancy Krieger, Christian Testa, Pamela D. Waterman and Jarvis T. Chen

February 17, 2021
New York Daily News
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_ Healing the dual miseries of COVID-19 and economic insecurity
requires relief sufficient to ensure that all individuals, their
families and their loved ones can live through this pandemic. The time
to go big is now. _

Oji Abbott 'Chef O' sits in front of his restaurant Oohh's and
Aahh's, one of the many on U Street, June 15, 2020, in Washington,
DC., Brendan Smialowski/AFP // PressReader.com

 

A strange split vision is at play as the new Biden-Harris
administration and its congressional supporters and opponents wrangle
over proposals for economic relief and a stimulus bill for a U.S.
economy devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Politicians and
economists are arguing
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the amount of relief and who should be eligible. Meanwhile, medical
and public health professionals
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scrambling for the fiscal, material and technical resources and
personnel urgently needed for COVID-19 treatment, testing, contact
tracing, vaccines and vaccine distribution, and also to track cases,
hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations.

But for the people and communities afflicted, the miseries of
COVID-19 and its economic determinants and impacts are concurrent, not
split
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People and communities don’t experience fears, suffering and loss
one day in relation to COVID-19, and on another day in relation to
their economic circumstances. Instead, they are commingled and
collectively take a toll on community well-being. Any relief bill that
actually provides relief must address these jointly lived realities
— especially in a context in which U.S. billionaires have increased
their net worth by more than $1 trillion during the pandemic
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In just a year, COVID-19 has reached every corner of the U.S., and
has infected nearly 28 million people in the U.S. and killed more
than 480,000
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Yet a clear picture of the concurrent plagues of COVID-19 and economic
insecurities is hard to come by. One reason is that publicly reported
health agency COVID-19 data rarely if ever include any socioeconomic
information
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Another is that public health national, state and local reports on
COVID-19 rates in relation to community characteristics
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on U.S. Census data collected in years prior to the pandemic
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and thus do not capture the pandemic economic shocks.

To bring into focus the split vision that looks at COVID-19 with one
eye and economic misery with another, we have looked jointly at the
toll of COVID-19 deaths
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real-time representative data on food insecurity and housing
insecurity, from the real-time U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey
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The picture is stark
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For both U.S. states and the 15 largest metropolitan statistical
areas, the overlap of misery is clear
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Higher cumulative COVID-19 death rates in the third wave of the
pandemic (from Oct. 1, 2020, to Jan. 10, 2021) co-exist with higher
food insecurity among households with children under age 18 and higher
rates of renters being unable to pay their last month’s rent (for
Oct. 28, 2020, to Jan. 18, 2021). For example, during these time
periods, Vermont’s COVID-19 death rate equaled 157 per million, food
insecurity affected 12.8% of households with children under 18, and
15.9% of renters were behind in their rent. For Arkansas, with a death
rate of 888 per million, such food and housing insecurity affected
20.2% and 19.4% of its population, respectively.

Moreover, the extent of these hardships varies by education, by
racialized group, by place — and by all three together
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Consider the case of food insecurity, referring to the percent of
household with children under age 18 who sometimes or often have not
had enough food to eat in the past seven days. Since October 2020,
among persons with at least a bachelor’s degree, averaging across
U.S. states, such food insecurity has affected fully 25% to 30% of
Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic persons, versus 16% of white
non-Hispanic and Asian non-Hispanic persons. By contrast, among
persons with at least a bachelor’s degree, it has affected under 5%
of white non-Hispanic and Asian non-Hispanic persons, and 8% of
Hispanic and 12% of Black non-Hispanic persons.

Across the 15 largest metropolitan statistical areas, the highest
occurrence of this food insecurity — upwards of 40% — occurred
among Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic persons with less than a college
degree living in the greater Boston area, whereas the lowest
prevalence — only 1% — occurred among white non-Hispanic and Asian
non-Hispanic persons in the Seattle area.

Similar patterns occurred for housing insecurity, albeit with an even
greater advantage for white non-Hispanic persons with at least a
bachelor’s degree, with this problem affecting only 2% of such
people in the Atlanta area, versus 40% to 45% of Hispanic and Black
non-Hispanics people with less than a college degree in, respectively,
Greater Philadelphia and the Chicago area.

Government of, by, and for the people, especially “to promote the
general welfare,”
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government that ensures the conditions for all people to thrive.
Healing the dual miseries of COVID-19 and economic insecurity requires
relief sufficient to ensure that all individuals, their families and
their loved ones can live through this pandemic. The time to go big is
now.

_[Nancy Krieger is a professor, Christian Testa is a statistical
analyst, Pamela D. Waterman is a project director, and Jarvis T. Chen
is a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.]_
 

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