Citizens of Western democracies have grown wearily accustomed to a climate of global ideological division, so it’s hard to imagine being permitted to weather this pandemic in a comforting spirit of national solidarity.
Different Groups at Higher Risk From COVID-19
It has been clear from the earliest stages of the contagion that the coronavirus does not treat everyone equally. Some who contract the disease become very ill. Others appear to be asymptomatic. Some die, but most survive. The elderly have a significantly higher risk of succumbing to the disease, and densely populated cities have been hit harder than rural areas.More recently, analysts have also discovered a disproportionate record of coronavirus-related deaths among African Americans and other “non-white” ethnic communities.
CNN was swift to assign blame for the suffering of African Americans, but it certainly wasn’t laid at the feet of the Beijing regime. The network reported that researchers from Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Mississippi, and Georgetown University have already concluded that “Social conditions, structural racism, and other factors elevate risk for COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths in black communities.”
Turning to the Economic Impact
Turning to the economic impact of COVID-19, the same CNN report also raised the issue of disproportional suffering with regard to job losses. Once again, the primary focus was on a comparison between racial and ethnic communities.In this case, the evidence for racial disparity appeared a little less dramatic. CNN reported that by early May the unemployment rate soared to 14.2 percent for white Americans, 16.7 percent for black Americans, 14.5 percent for Asian Americans and 18.9 percent for Hispanics. The report said that these are record high unemployment rates for all ethnic groups but, in this case, African Americans appear to be a fortunate exception.
Nevertheless, based on survey and anecdotal evidence, CNN concluded that one thing is clear: “Covid-19 has only magnified the systemic inequalities that persist in the United States. And nonwhite Americans, especially African Americans, have been hit hard on nearly every front.”
Media Ignores Disproportionate Suffering Between Public and Private Sector
While on the subject of unfair burden sharing, it might also have been useful for CNN to look at the comparative impact on the wealth-producing private sector of our economy against that of the wealth-distributing public sector.For public-sector employees and former civil servants on guaranteed benefit pensions, the repercussions of the pandemic are measured almost entirely by the level of threat to physical health and lifestyle. The same could be said for most media and entertainment industry employees who are enjoying an enormous increase in viewers as people retreat to their homes to wait out the contagion. This advantage is doubly true in the case of government broadcasting agencies such as the CBC and BBC.
Coming out of this crisis, public sector employees will be in far better shape to restart their lives than those in the private sector.
This is in no way meant to diminish the heroic efforts of front-line medical care workers, first responders, police, and public security agents who are at higher risk of contracting the virus through contact with infected patients. The same is true for private-sector workers in essential services such as food and fuel distribution. But, we should also acknowledge that workers in publicly funded sectors have been spared the critical side-effect of sudden unemployment and the psychological despair that comes with job loss and a looming incapacity to pay bills and care for dependents.
Over the last two months some 35 million Americans, many in the early stages of promising careers in a reinvigorated U.S. economy, have lost their private sector jobs or businesses.
Under the present circumstances, media purveyors of “disproportionality narratives” might occasionally try to imagine the plight of the millions of racially and ethnically diverse private sector workers whose once happy and productive professional lives have collapsed in a heart beat. CNN’s report appears to have overlooked the forgotten cohort of Americans who have become the principle victims of the pandemic.