Shameful failure

A century since the 1918 flu claimed an estimated 675,000 lives in the United States, COVID-19 is about to claim its 500,000th life in the nation. According to February 12 projections from the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), we’re on track for 614,000 deaths by June. With no drastic action, we will surely surpass the 1918 toll before returning to anything resembling normal life. We also will have created the most shameful episode in US public health history.

Our nation’s failed response to COVID-19 should long perforate our pomposity about being the greatest nation on earth. We’ve been the greatest of fools, and we have the planet’s greatest death toll to show for it. We’ve collectively turned our back on our own victories in public health that have saved millions of lives and added 30 years to average life expectancies in the United States during the 20th century.

We have so rejected the lessons of the past that the coronavirus is on track to wipe out more than a year of average life expectancy in the United States. We have so ignored systemic racism that COVID-19 will take three years off the life expectancy for Latinx people, and two years for African Americans. Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Princeton estimate that the pandemic may result in the greatest decline in US life expectancy since the 1918 pandemic, and the biggest decline among developed nations, further cementing us in last place among wealthy nations.

Worse, we cannot say we were blindsided. Early in the pandemic, scientists warned of a rapid spread. Experts in systemic racism and environmental justice warned that COVID-19 could particularly devastate Black and Latinx communities because of a host of pre-existing health disparities, more congested and polluted living conditions, less access to quality health care and disproportionate representation in essential health and commerce service work with high risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

Yet, the inaction of the nation invited the virus to bury us. The gap between lower Black life expectancy and higher White life expectancy will grow by nearly 40 percent from 3.6 years to 5, destroying progress made on this gap over the last 15 years.

Excerpted: ‘America's Response to Covid-19 Should Long Perforate Our Pomposity About Being the Greatest Nation on Earth’

Commondreams.org