Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Between Two Monsters: The Scylla of the Pandemic and the Charybdis of Poverty

In my May 25 blog post, I referred to Scylla and Charybdis, two sea monsters found in ancient Greek mythology. In this article, I am again using that story to highlight the exceedingly difficult problem of dealing effectively with the covid-19 pandemic without consigning millions to poverty—and to death because of starvation. 

The Two Monsters in the U.S.
As was widely noted at the end of May, the number of deaths in the U.S. from covid-19 topped 100,000 people—and now that number is already nearing 115,000. It has also been noted, although not so widely, that the number of deaths is disproportionately higher among non-white and financially poor people.
According to a 5/28 article in The Guardian, “Figures compiled by APM Research Lab from 40 states show that African Americans are being killed at almost three times the rate of white people.
“Black Kansans are seven times more likely to die from the virus than white Kansans. In Missouri, Wisconsin and Washington DC the ratio is six times.”
That same article goes on to quote William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign (whom I first wrote about in this 9/15/16 blog post).
Barber emphasizes that covid-19 is a disease of the poor. “People are being forced to work, putting profit over protection,” he says. “This pandemic will highlight how poverty—and our willingness to let people remain in it—presents a clear and present danger for all of us.”
The wealthy can practice social distancing, work from home, etc. But what if you have only an over-crowded—or no—home to go to, and no paying work at all if you stay home?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of U.S. workers earn less than $15 an hour and nearly 70% have less than $1,000 in savings. Most of these people must show up for work if they are going to be paid.
Caught between the monsters of the pandemic and poverty, many must go back to work in unsafe conditions and take their chances of not getting sick.
The Two Monsters in the LICs
Worldwide, when the number of deaths reached 100,000 in the U.S., there were more than 350,000 deaths from covid-19. But more than 64% of those deaths were in just five of the wealthier countries: the U.S., the UK, France, Spain, and Italy.
But just this month, as the number of deaths worldwide topped 410,000, Brazil became the country with the third most deaths—and the surge has just started in the LICs (low-income countries) of sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.
Most of the attention of us citizens in the USA has been on the domestic crisis—and that is especially true of DJT. As the headline in a June 3 WaPo editorial expresses it, “Trump irresponsibly abandons the WHO while the pandemic surges in less developed nations.”
A week earlier, a Boston U. epidemiologist wrote an op-ed piece titled “The coronavirus pandemic will turn into a poverty pandemic unless we act now.” The author contends that “the long-term health costs of an economic depression could ultimately far eclipse what covid-19 has wrought.”
That is especially true for the LICs. According to that article, a regional director of the WHO for Africa said last week that the coronavirus pandemic will move about 27 million Africans to extreme poverty.
Earlier, a May 28 article in a newspaper of India said, “The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic could push as many as 86 million more children into poverty by the end of 2020.” (The image above accompanied that article.)
A report issued by Gospel for Asia the day before World Hunger Day on May 28 declared, “It’s estimated that nine million people will die in a coronavirus-worsened ‘scandal of starvation’ this year.”
The U.S. and countries around the world have made great efforts to avoid/control the monster of the covid-19 pandemic. Isn’t it time we also make a more concerted effort to avoid/control the monster of poverty? 

13 comments:

  1. Well, let's see: We have government dominated by a minority political party made up largely of white nationalists who don't care what happens to the poor or African Americans and sure as hell don''t care what happens to people outside the USA. Nope. Nothing is going to be done unless we have a sweeping change in November at elections that we can see are already stacked against most Americans.

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    1. Disagree with your sweeping statement that Nobody cares.
      America has done more for the poorer countries in the world than Any other group in the world.
      I would rather you say there are a lot of people who don't care.

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  2. Thanks for posting comments early this morning, Anton. I don't know if they are pessimistic or realistic, but I certainly agree that a sweeping change in the U.S. government is critical for things to improve significantly for PoC in this country and for the majority of people in the LICs of the world.

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  3. Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago shares these comments:

    "Thanks, Leroy, for your comments, with which I fully agree.

    "Almost everyday on the news, we see images of grieving people of color who have lost loved ones to gang violence and senseless shootings. Much of this is rooted in poverty and in the consequences of systemic racism. Now we have the Covid-19 crisis, which has made matters even worse.

    "Until we elect politicians who are truly committed to confronting the serious challenges we face as society, such as racism, economic inequality, climate change, etc., matters will only get worse and America will continue its slow decline."

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    1. Eric, your comments are much the same as Anton's (above), and I wish all of my Thinking Friends and others more widely could realize the truth of your and Anton's comments.

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  4. My initial decision to write this blog post came after reading an article in the May 23 issue of The Economist -- and then I ended up not even citing anything from it. Here is the link to that important piece:
    https://www.economist.com/international/2020/05/23/covid-19-is-undoing-years-of-progress-in-curbing-global-poverty

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  5. Here is a brief, and appreciated, comment from Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky:

    "The question we must ask, Leroy. Thank you for highlighting it so powerfully!"

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  6. And then I received the following from local Thinking Friend Marilyn Peot:

    "Your [blog posts] are heart-wrenching. Keeping the Truth before us is uncomfortable but necessary. During these days of quarantine, there is this heavy cloud of horror passing over our planet...and getting our attention. Thank you for keeping us honest and down on our knees."

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  7. Ed Kail, another local Thinking Friend, makes this very brief comment:

    "I say 'AMEN!!'”

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  8. When the ship Titanic struck that famous iceberg on its maiden voyage, all the good options were in the past. We are in the same place with COVID-19 and world poverty. When the Titanic hit the ice it already had a smoldering fire below deck. Not a bad metaphor for the world's handling of world poverty. When the owners and captain of the Titanic ignored iceberg warnings, and all the accumulated wisdom about icebergs, that was a powerful metaphor for how many nations, especially the United States, ignored the accumulated wisdom concerning pandemics, especially coronavirus pandemics, leaving many nations, including USA, in terrible position to handle the wreckage.

    One only needs to compare COVID-19 in America, Russia, Brazil, etc. with Taiwan, South Korea, and New Zealand to understand just how badly we mangled our response. Even China, where it all began in confusion, ended up handling COVID-19 far better than much of the rest of the world. Look at the governments of the countries with the highest death totals and a story of incompetence, corruption, and cruelty emerges with Trump in USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Putin in Russia. Somehow all three countries have exceeded the death totals in India and China, which are by far the most populous countries on earth. The only question left is, Is police brutality a metaphor for COVID-19 brutality; or is COVID-19 brutality and metaphor for police brutality? Either way, the world moans, "I can't breathe!"

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    1. Thanks for your erudite comments, Craig.

      You have often written about problem of climate change, so I also wonder if the current displays of brutality may be metaphors of the world in the future moaning "I can't breathe" because of global warming.

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  9. Earlier today, Thinking Friend Frank Shope in New Mexico emailed me comments, which he gave permission for posting here:

    "Poverty is such a monster. It is extremely difficult to escape and is passed on from one generation to another. I have been part of The Poor People's Campaign and am participating in the June 20th protest. In my work here in New Mexico the largest issue is helping people understand poverty and the ways it is exploited by politicians and other structures who want to edify themselves.

    Poverty is the monster that releases the demons of abuse and takes hold of families passing the pain and suffering of poverty from one generation to another. Without outside resources that impact family and community systems in positive ways. The poor will continue to be marginalized.

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  10. Local Thinking Friend Bob Leeper forwarded this blog post to a friend of his, John C. Hall, MD. Dr. Hall then wrote me the following comments and gave permission for me to post them here:

    "Read your article with great interest. I have been taught that poverty is a true form of violence to those who endure it. 70% of bankruptcy cases in usa are due to inability to pay medical bills. So you have the double hit of illness that turns to poverty and illness. It is truly one of the American nightmares that many(including some in the medical field) seem to ignore.

    "If we want to make America become a land of opportunity this problem must be addressed. Universal health care, in my opinion, is the only solution. Working as a medical volunteer for 35 years, I can attest to the fact that we are never going to be able to claim to be a leader of the free world until we can achieve health care for all. Now we have a president who wants to be leader of the rich tyrants who suppress half of the world.

    It is hard to imagine, but at this time in our history maybe enough people can see that we have the greatest health care on earth for the rich but not the poor. This makes it one of the worst health care systems in the world---check life expectancy, perinatal death rates for mother and child, percent of population with no health care. All this seems incompatible with the country I want to see my grandchildren live in."

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