January 20, 2021
The Biden administration can’t undo the damage of a pandemic allowed to run amok, but it can start to bring it under control.
Now that US president Joe Biden has been sworn into office, one of the first items on his agenda will be to curb the spread of Covid-19. The official Biden website states that “public health emergencies require disciplined, trustworthy leadership grounded in science,” and has already uploaded a seven-point plan on the White House website.
It’s a stark contrast to former president Donald Trump’s administration; his office never issued a formal plan to end the pandemic, even after Trump got Covid-19 in October. And though Trump touted a plan to release vaccines, the actual number of shots in arms is running behind schedule.
Our Pandemic Response Must Center Racial Justice
Authors: Bisola Falola & Brett Davidson,
Open Society Public Health Program, December 8 2020 - In November, during one of his daily press briefings, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, after praising some local leaders for enforcing social distancing restrictions, assigned blame for the rising number of COVID-19 cases elsewhere in the state. If you socially distanced and you wore a mask and you were smart, the governor said, none of this would be a problem. He continued: If you didn t eat the cheesecake, you wouldn t have a weight problem. Cuomo was widely - and rightly - criticized for fat shaming, but it is also highly concerning that the governor decided to blame individual behavior for the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, rather than focusing on the role played by more important social and structural factors. The truth is that the COVID-19 pandemic, which in the United States has disproportionately harmed communities of
Biden makes tackling racial, ethnic inequities during coronavirus pandemic a priority
Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post
Dec. 15, 2020
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Sandy Brown, 60, of Flint, Mich., visits the bodies of her husband, Freddie Brown Jr., 59, and her son, Freddie Brown III, 20, both victims of covid-19, at Dodds-Dumanois Funeral Home in Flint on April 10.Photo by Brittany Greeson for The Washington Post.
Long before Yale researcher Marcella Nunez-Smith began to study racial inequities in health care, she lived them.
She grew up on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a place, she said, where people too often die too young from preventable conditions.