Chaos, division of countries/states, and major decreases in mortality. All these words are used to associate with plagues and pandemics that have hit our earth. Of course they have hit all kinds of people, but is there a group of people who got hit the worst? Specifically, let us focus on our most recent pandemic, Covid, but as well as its predecessors. Insight into their origins, solutions that were produced, and other information.
“When policies, programs, and systems that support health are equitable, poor health outcomes can be reduced, health disparities can be prevented, and the whole of society benefits. Some racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.” (CDC) (Center for Disease Control) In this excerpt written by the CDC, they focused on the reason as to why there are lower class people who are being affected by these epidemics. The only times you would realize that these people don’t have enough access to proper health resources is when it is too late, when the cries for help are too much to bear. Only then could it be on news platforms, billboards and posters around your city. A fitting example of such disparities can be found in the occupations or job conditions these people work in like restaurants, grocery stores, hairstylists, retail workers etc. These settings don’t come with a foot rub and a jacuzzi to lay in, so you bet the employees are working their tails off. “People who work in these settings have more chances to be exposed to COVID-19 because these types of jobs require frequent or close contact with the public or other workers, involve activities that cannot be done from home, and may lack benefits such as paid sick days.” (CDC) This shouldn’t only be limited to the United States either, moving onto the eastern hemisphere, the same can be found in England. William Mude, Victor M. Oguoma, Tafadzwa Nyanhanda, Lillian Mwanrim, and Carolyne Njue came together to compose their finding on the effects of Covid on minorities titled, Racial disparities in COVID-19 pandemic cases, hospitalizations, and deaths: A systematic review and meta-analysis. In this research, relevant databases are used too. “Identify studies reporting on prevalence, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 by race groups between 01 January 2020 – 15 April 2021.” And with that, the end results came out to be Blacks shouldering ’significantly higher burden of Covid-19′, the same was found in Hispanics and the other races in comparison to Whites.
That isn’t the bottom of the barrel either; there are lower socio-economic groups that have suffered worst. The 14th century Black Death is one of the more well-known ancient events that terrorized our world. The ‘old world’ was ravaged by then ‘unknown’ diseases and their livelihood would soon there on change. Bacteria from southern Asian countries were shipped back into western Europe and from there, the bacteria would travel onto small creatures and cause more damage. Because these were the days of nobility, hierarchies and unconventional ruling, there might be certain practices that were done that we find, well, off. Using certain flowers and plants to protect them from ’bad air’, practicing questionable health practices and more Sharon N. Dewitte and Maryanne Kowaleski are the authors of “Black Death Bodies” that go perfectly in depth into the world of the 14th century pandemic. “Lists kept in bishop’s registers recording the appointments of parish priests to newly vacant posts are a more reliable source for studying the chronological and geographical distribution of the Black Death in Eng-land..” (Dewitte) This excerpt details one of many methods that were left for historians to study. The people who lived on land ruled by kings were being maintained by the taxes they paid. So, the people who were written down are on a lower level of the hierarchy and are likely to not be as protected by the highly sought-after fortunes the kings and queens have. With the low-level citizens being hawked by the higher-ups primarily for their taxes, those higher-ups would definitely try to look after themselves better than them, so they could survive. The term “survival of the fittest” works best in this situation. “Although estimates of mortality rates calculated for well-off groups such as wealthy tenants-in-chief of the king and beneficed clergy are useful, mortality assessments for the rural population bring us closer to how many people the Black Death actually killed.” Dewitte tells us about how although a guess of the summed-up groups of wealthy tenants and the clergy is present, the number of the rural population gives a better insight on how many people were killed.
During the 19th century, Europe gets hit with yet another pandemic. This would be the industrial years of major countries like America, Europe and Asia, but with such a rise in new technologies also came new specimens ready to wreak havoc. Vibrio cholerae also known as cholera is a bacterium that’s native to India and deals its damage by causing, “severe acute watery diarrhea. It takes between 12 hours and 5 days for a person to show symptoms after ingesting the bacteria..” (www.who.int) Crowded and smelly describes early 19th century London and its waste management wasn’t really helping either. The majority of their drinking water was from the rivers into which their sewage emptied, and it will take a while before anyone figures that out. The people of back then cold-heartly believed in the miasma theory. The ancient scholars such as Hippocrates can be credited with coming up with this thought. This is where the air we breathe in is bad therefore if they were to get rid of the ‘bad air’ all will be well. Not going too deep into the term itself, each person has their own makeup of the theory, most them having to do with morals and ethics. This was the word that all believed in, until one man by the name of John Snow contradicted the theory by suggesting that the water being ingested could carry the disease. Although he was right, his hypothesis was denied, mainly because he wasn’t a part of the medical elite. Late into the 19th century, Snow’s idea would ‘gradually replace the miasma theory’. “By this time Farr realized the direct cause of cholera had not been the bad air, it was spread thorough the contaminated water supply (Bingham,2104). After that, the germ theory of disease appeared and gradually was able to replace the miasma theory by the second half of the 19th century. The germ theory of disease states that many diseases are caused by the presence and actions of specific micro-organisms within the body. In other words, diseases are caused and spread by the germs (Frerichs, 2002)”(dc.cod.edu) “The contamination of drinking water in dense urban settlements did not merely affect the number of V. cholerae circulating through the small intestines of mankind. It also greatly increased the lethality of the bacteria.” (42) Steven Johnson, the author of “The Ghost Map” mentioned how the spread of this bacterium would hit a place that had a lot of civilians. There are many people in these metropolitan areas, so the ratio between richer people dying compared to locals is higher.
In summary, the effort of looking into past pandemics has shown us that history truly does repeat itself. Eerily enough, it just so happens to be minority groups who are being affected, whether it be in the fourteenth, nineteenth century or current day pandemics. Hopefully, there’s a fix to it somewhere out there.
Citation
Introduction to COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/racial-ethnic-disparities/index.html
Racial disparities in COVID-19 pandemic cases, hospitalizations, and deaths: A systematic review and meta-analysis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248751/
Black Death Bodies https://lms.hypothes.is/lti_launches?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Fuc%3Fid%3D1mleFOyzpVlS69naaxHJP8hj5UDrz9tcl%26export%3Ddownload
Cholera https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cholera
History of The Miasma Theory of Disease https://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1657&context=essai
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It changed Science, Cities and the Modern World By Steven Johnson 2006
