Complicating the Health Risks of the Racial Justice Demonstrations
After months of public health officials, scientists, and others pleading with people to stay inside except when absolutely necessary, it has been something of a shock to see images of thousands of people gathered at marches and protests in the U.S. and abroad in the last two weeks. Based on my personal experience in Brooklyn and on reports from elsewhere, the majority of those protesting racial injustice wear facemasks and act thoughtfully with regard to the possibility of spreading COVID-19.
However, no matter the caution there is almost no doubt that there will be an uptick in COVID-19 cases as a result of the protests. This isn’t controversial; there’s simply no way that such a virulent and widespread pathogen wouldn’t take advantage of this many people gathering—even outdoors. But that’s not the whole story.
For one thing, as Melissa Chan reports for TIME , many of the police deployed to mass demonstrations across the country are not wearing masks, despite their ostensible role as maintaining public safety. Whether negligence or malice, this is unnecessarily putting the public at risk. Other police tactics may be further endangering the demonstrators. The most obvious are the use of tear gas and pepper spray, which, of course, cause a person to unnecessarily dispel body fluids that could carry the virus. But even more basic and common (and already-troubling) tactics may be helping the virus spread: there have been many reports of police essentially corralling marchers or protestors into ever smaller areas as a means of control. People packed into small spaces, even if wearing a mask at all times, are more likely to spread a virus.
While it is absolutely worth having the conversation about protests and COVID-19 risks, it’s essential to recognize that these demonstrations are occurring in the context of a country attempting to reopen. And, as virus researcher Trevor Bedford noted on Twitter yesterday, “things like casinos reopening have not engendered the hand-wringing that the protests have.” Daily case rates in Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, are a bit of a mess, but there’s definitely no suggestion they are falling:
Most importantly, though, is the context of four centuries of systemic racism in the country, a significant portion of which has played out, at least in recent decades, in the U.S. health care system. Black Americans are more likely to suffer serious consequences of COVID-19 than white Americans. But those, many feel, are risks worth taking. Zinzi Bailey, a social epidemiologist at the University of Miami, put it better than I could, speaking to Vox this weekend : “It is hard for me as a public health professional, who also knows my history, to blanketly tell someone to take all these people off the street when they are protesting against 400 years of a different pandemic that happens to not be infectious, ”It’s not something that potentially a white person is going to catch. Right?”
OVER THE WEEKEND
The World Hit 400,000 Deaths
Earlier today, the pandemic hit another grim milestone as the total confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 worldwide passed 400,000. The even worse news is that, after a month and a half of steady decline in daily death tallies, the numbers have been on the rise again over the last two weeks.
That’s been driven largely by a worsening crisis in Latin American countries, especially Brazil, and to a lesser but still serious extent, Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Ecuador. And this may be the last time we have anything resembling accurate numbers for Brazil; the country government announced on Saturday that it would no longer publish updates of the number of deaths and infections. Critics have said this decision is driven by President Jair Bolsonaro’s desire to downplay the impact of the virus on Brazil, which in the last few weeks has become the new epicenter of the pandemic.
New York City, which has been the epicenter of COVID-19 in the U.S., is gearing up to take its first steps towards reopening tomorrow. According to the New York Times, as many as 400,000 workers could return to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores. Data from the city’s health department show that around 20,000 people daily are now getting tested, and the share of positive tests has fallen from over 50% in early April to just 3% in the last week.
It’s a significant moment for New York, and for the country, given the city’s economic importance. It’s also a major test of whether an area hit this hard can reopen while avoiding massive second waves of infection. Mayor Andrew Cuomo announced on Saturday that to help mitigate the impact of thousands of commuters re-entering the public transit system, the state would deploy over 1 million masks as well as 25,000 gallons and 500,000 two-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
“There is no state in the United States that has gone from where we were to where we are,” said Cuomo. “Don't get cocky, don't get arrogant, but all the arrows are pointed in the right direction and we're going to stay New York Tough, smart, united, disciplined, loving.”
Racial Inequality Impacts the Economic Recovery
On Friday, a new U.S. jobs report seemed to suggest good news: the unemployment rate fell to 13.3% in May, thanks to 2.5 million jobs gained. But as TIME senior editor Alex Fitzpatrick has noted, while unemployment for white Americans dropped from 14.2% in April to 12.4% in May, the rate for black Americans increased slightly, from 16.7% to 16.8%. And some worry that the numbers will give Republican lawmakers cover for reducing future financial aid to those suffering.
Minority-owned businesses have similarly suffered more in the pandemic-created economic crisis, writes TIME reporter Alana Abramson. In particular, these business owners have struggled to get money from the Paycheck Protection Program, designed to help mitigate the financial distress caused by COVID-19. The government has been taking steps to reduce barriers to access, but it’s not clear that these will be enough to overcome years of inequities.
Though it seems like COVID-19 has been a public health scourge for a lifetime, it’s still brand-new to science, which is not designed to function at the pace of a pandemic like this. Observation as well as early data suggested that SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, can spread asymptomatically—that is, people can become infected, never get symptoms, and spread it to others without ever even knowing they had it.
A recent study helps answer one of the key outstanding questions on COVID-19: how often does it spread this way? The answer: at least 30%, and more likely 40%-45% of COVID-19 cases worldwide were probably spread by someone who never got symptoms. The takeaway here is everyone should be wearing a mask, even those who feel fine. The World Health Organization took the cue: the same day that study was published, the WHO came out and finally recommended that people who live in areas experiencing “widespread transmission” of COVID-19 wear a fabric mask whenever social distancing of at least one meter (about three feet) is not possible.
In this week’s edition of the Leadership Brief TIME deputy editor Eben Shapiro interviewed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about COVID-19 and the racial justice protests of the last few weeks. Below is a short excerpt. Click here to receive the newsletter in your inbox.
TIME: Would you like to see a stronger more coordinated response at the Federal level to the health crisis?
Nadella: I think we all should be learning, learning from every place. We should learn from New Zealand. We should learn from South Korea. We should learn from Germany. We should learn from the state of Washington. We should learn from New York. The United States is a huge country, so therefore, it’s not a South Korea. It’s not a Germany. It’s not a New Zealand. We do have more diversity, more scope, more scale. Therefore, I think there needs to be a federal response and there needs to be a state-level response.
If we really want to go back to January 2020 where people can go about the world, do their economic activity, then we will need a holistic approach where in every local community through the world, the institutional strength is being added up.
We, as a globe, are only as strong as our weakest link. That’s why I worry a lot about the developing world. Right now, we’re connected, and so, what is happening in Brazil or what happens in India, what happens in Africa will all impact us.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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