{"id":300882,"date":"2020-03-24T19:44:55","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T23:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=300882"},"modified":"2020-03-25T09:20:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T13:20:45","slug":"will-inequality-worsen-the-toll-of-the-pandemic-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/03\/will-inequality-worsen-the-toll-of-the-pandemic-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Will inequality worsen the toll of the pandemic in the U.S.?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"People

Observing social distancing out of concern about the coronavirus, people stand spaced apart while waiting outside a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles on March 24 in Boston. <\/p>

AP Photo\/Steven Senne<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tWill inequality worsen the toll of the pandemic in the U.S.?\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tAlvin Powell\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tChan\u2019s Bassett warns that responses must include steps to ease the health and economic impacts on the poor\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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This is part of our <\/em>Coronavirus Update<\/em><\/a> series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring.<\/em><\/p>\n

A Harvard public health professor warned Tuesday that the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. could rank among the world\u2019s worst if the nation fails to take steps to ease the health and economic impacts on America\u2019s poor, who face challenges rare among developed countries.<\/p>\n

Mary Bassett, Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights and former health commissioner of New York City, said the country\u2019s longstanding structural inequality threatens to further complicate strategies by public health and government leaders to manage the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Bassett listed several reasons why the situation in the U.S. appears more potentially dire, including that the nation has the world\u2019s largest prison population, often housed in densely crowded conditions; a low-income population in which health conditions that increase the risk of COVID-19 complications, such as respiratory ailments, are more common; a lack of universal health care; and a social safety net much thinner and more porous than those in other Western democracies, which may leave many workers having to choose between letting their families go hungry or going to work sick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. has particular vulnerabilities that make it possible we will have the worst coronavirus epidemic of all,\u201d said Bassett, who directs the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health<\/a>\u2019s Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Bagnoud\u00a0Center for Health and Human Rights. \u201cThese are not issues that are unsolvable, but they do require resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n

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