Staying Home is a Luxury--Coronavirus Disproportionately Kills the Poor

Family scavenging for food in Paraguay

The New York Times reported yesterday that Staying Home Was A Luxury.

Well. . . duh. Who would've thought otherwise? 

Poor and working class folks are much more likely than wealthier folks to work in essential industries, like food production and distribution; shipping and delivery services; public transit and utilities; even a large segment of the healthcare industry. They cannot stay home. And their kids are more likely to be continuing to attend crowded day care to allow them to continue working.

The poor and working class, especially those who've lost their jobs, have to stand in long, crowded lines to get food from food banks and pantries. The desperately poor and hungry, like the family in the photo above, must brave crowds to get food from whatever sources they can. The homeless are being infected at crowded shelters, even in liberal cities like San Francisco, which has commandeered thousands of hotel rooms for the unhoused residents, but has been slow in getting them into the units. In many cities, like Las Vegas, which has 30,000 unoccupied hotel rooms, they are continuing to force unhoused folks to continue living in the streets and parks.

However, the worst outcomes for the poor will likely be seen in the poorest countries of the global south, where malnutrition is high, and access to clean water and medical care is very low.

Anyone with a computer and internet can check out the real time data on social distancing themselves, on Google's new Covid-19 Mobility Tracker. Check out the comparisons below:

Here was see California, with the 5th richest population in the U.S., with significantly more compliance with the stay at home orders, than Alabama, the 7th poorest. And below, I've compared California's wealthiest County, Santa Clara, with its poorest, Lake County. (Santa Clara County, until very recently, was the epicenter of California's outbreak, until Los Angeles surpassed it. Perhaps their compliance with the social distancing policies are having the desired effects???)