Context of this post (April 3, 2020): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR1KXL2jvw0fCIAZSRc9PP41Z0y_Y0ErH-N4w4bQm9Kww3CSHGIzErqjhPA

Why am I not surprised at the overall disparities illustrated in this NY Times article? (I’m assuming that on the whole, it’s accurate.)

As a member of the privileged and relatively healthy population (albeit aging), from the start of this disaster I was aware of how much easier it was for Barbara and me than masses of other people to hunker down and get through this alive. (Our level of education for grasping the issues didn’t hurt, either.) I have feared that our economy and its enablers would at best go through motions (like the $2trillion Congressional bill) of caring for victims while making sure working people, and particularly poor workers, continued to serve the elite’s needs and wealth. I foam at the digital mouth as I try to express my rage at this and so many other dimensions of our health catastrophe.

Living in CT, I find it especially interesting to consider the first graph in the selection I captured from the Times’ article: of all the high-income groups in the major cities depicted here, the CT discrepancies look worst. (Bridgeport is a working-class city with the worst COVID-19 statistics in the State.) I also take notice of the significant spikes in movement among the “bottom 10%” as, I assume, many of them became desperate to provide basic care for themselves and those close to them.

I’m also intrigued that in NYC, the poorest people were only a bit more active than those they were serving—still with spikes, but (relatively) modest ones.

I assume the disparity depicted here is little better in most countries and far worse in many.

While I think this federal administration has handled the problem about as badly as possible and with no concern other than its own well-being and perpetuation, I doubt a Democratic government would have done too much better. Overall, it would likely have had more compassion for victims and paid far more attention to the advice of knowledgeable specialists, but it would still have been trying to calculate (and seek professional advice from) just how far its remedial measures could go without undermining the basis of our economic system and its many high-powered (though not necessarily socially important) businesses and those who benefit financially from them. In this case, lesser evil would have been a lot less bad, but let’s not deceive ourselves about who cares in what ways about whom.

As a reminder, though, that we privileged may be colluding in cutting our own throats, here’s a relevant quote from the Times article: “…public health experts cautioned that the nature of this virus means that inequality in health outcomes puts the entire population at greater risk. Pockets of people who are untested or who don’t get the appropriate medical treatment can quickly become new clusters.”

Am I about to put myself on the front lines of the pandemic with the workers who continue at their tasks at considerable risk to themselves? No, especially not with the heightened vulnerability of my age. Would I have done so if I were much younger? Maybe. When young, I did take certain risks in the cause of social justice. But as with so many speculative matters about what we might do in life, my mantra is that this is a context for which one can’t know what one would do without having actually facing such a choice.

Barbara and I have done a very small thing: we are able to afford weekly housecleaning. We’ve told our cleaner not to come until further notice, but in the meantime we’re paying her. We can afford it—and we would have spent the money anyway.

Do I have answers for how to minimize dangers to the population (not the economy)? Only in very limited ways as modeled by some more pro-active leaders. But (as evidenced by the few countries that have done relatively well in their responses), some strategies already exist but are being ignored, and I strongly suspect that if they knew they could get full cooperation, the most creative of knowledgeable people could brainstorm even more promising strategies, starting with how to keep everyone fed with far less risk to those who provide the food (and maybe even sharing some of that risk among recipients not at highest risk).