As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the novel coronavirus a pandemic, this is the fifth column of a six-part MSNBC Daily series that reflects on the million American lives lost, the political polarization and the declining trust in public health measures that followed the virus’ spread and assesses the country’s preparedness for the next pandemic.
“Doc, I’m really scared. Everyone’s calling out sick. I’ve been wearing a mask, but I had to go to work. I’m around so many people every day.”
This was my patient, Mr. D. He was a 48-year-old Black subway worker with a medical history of diabetes and high blood pressure. It was March 2020. A deadly pandemic was spreading across the U.S., and Mr. D. was in my urgent care center in Brooklyn complaining of cold symptoms.
A deadly pandemic was spreading across the U.S., and Mr. D. was in my urgent care center in Brooklyn complaining of cold symptoms.
What started as a trickle of patients in that urgent care center turned into a flood within weeks.
I’d arrive for my 12-hour shift long before the clinic’s doors opened at 8 a.m. to find a line of masked patients waiting to be seen. The most common symptoms were headaches, nasal congestion, cough and, in more severe cases, fever and shortness of breath.
On most days, I saw more than a hundred patients per shift, including a few very sick ones who were too scared to seek care at New York City’s overcrowded and understaffed emergency rooms.
One thing became obvious: My patients were getting browner and browner. Many were essential workers like Mr. D, and many had chronic diseases.
As a health equity advocate, I knew that systemic inequities, including racism, shaped our health. What I was witnessing in New York was happening across the country in areas with high populations of Black residents.
By early April 2020, just weeks after stay-at-home orders were instituted, data emerged showing that Black people in nearly every state had higher Covid-19 infection rates and higher death rates. This trend was seen in hot spots like Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina and New York.
The higher rates of infection and death weren’t the result of anything Black people had done to make ourselves sick; they were an example of how systemic racism plays out in our lives — affecting, among other things, what jobs we have, where we live and our access to care.
White families whose children attended my children’s public school in New York fled to their second homes upstate or to other parts of the country. In neighborhoods across the city, many white New Yorkers cleared out, leaving Black and brown New Yorkers to fend for themselves and become disproportionately infected by Covid-19.
On my days off, I’d run past Brooklyn Hospital and see rows of large white morgue trucks, full of the bodies of New Yorkers whose lives had already been claimed, including one of my beloved neighbors, a kind elderly Black man. It felt like the twilight zone.
I worked tirelessly in the urgent care center and took note of reports of Americans in other parts of the country who vacationed, partied and attended crowded county fairs. As statistics showed the virus was having a more destructive impact on people who looked like me, a resounding message from much of white America was: “Not my problem.” Many Americans — some inside the medical establishment — have long believed the myths that Black people are biologically different: that we have thicker skin and a higher pain tolerance, that our kidneys and lungs function differently, and in the early days of the pandemic, that belief was expressed in white people generally taking fewer precautions against the virus than Black people did.
From April to early June 2020, Black, Latinx and Asian Americans were more likely to wear masks in response to the coronavirus. White men were the least likely.
For example, from April to early June 2020, Black, Latinx and Asian Americans were more likely to wear masks in response to the coronavirus. White men were the least likely to wear masks during the same period.
A 2022 study published in Social Science & Medicine found that white Americans surveyed in fall 2020 cared less about the pandemic and were even less likely to follow safety precautions after learning about the disproportionate impacts Covid-19 had on Black communities.
The researchers found that white Americans who believed there were greater racial disparities in Covid-19 were less fearful of the disease and less likely to support safety precautions. In contrast, those white Americans who acknowledged the structural causes of these disparities were more fearful and supportive of safety measures.
However, understanding why and how racism impacted Black Americans’ health made white Americans less empathetic.
Can you believe that?
Contagious diseases require an all-hands-on-deck approach. No public health strategy works without all parts of the system working together. If everyone is not on board, then there are gaps, and people get infected, sick and die.
When the pandemic hit, I was reminded of the concept of “ubuntu.” A simple yet profound concept that dates back to 19th-century South Africa, it means, “I am because we are.” Ubuntu stresses the importance of community and the interconnectedness of all human beings.
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu drew on the concept of ubuntu to lead South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which helped South Africa reckon with its history of apartheid.
These assumptions — that it’s ‘not my problem’ — are dangerous.
Maybe if the U.S. had reckoned with its racist history the way South Africa did, white Americans in April 2020 would have acknowledged the interconnectedness of all Americans and wouldn’t have believed the pandemic’s high toll in Black communities meant they wouldn’t be affected.
These assumptions — that it’s “not my problem” — are dangerous, not just because they deny the humanity of Black people and our suffering, but because a lack of ubuntu leads to greater harm to everybody.
As the months passed, I saw Covid-19 continue to spread, no longer doing disproportionate damage to communities of color. It wasn’t just a Black problem anymore, or a Latinx problem, or an Asian problem. It was everyone’s problem, as it always had been. But by then, too many lives had been lost, too many communities devastated, and too much suffering had gone unnoticed until it was no longer avoidable.
Sadly, we were unable to follow up with Mr. D. Despite our clinic’s attempts to reach him, including multiple calls, there was no response. He was among a number of patients we had been unable to contact during those chaotic days, despite our best efforts to reconnect and provide the necessary support.
The pandemic showed us how fragile our individual safety is in the face of collective harm, but it also revealed how deeply embedded systemic racism is in every corner of our society.
It was the chronic conditions, the lack of access to health care, the unsafe working environments — all exacerbated by years of neglect and inequality — that turned a containable virus into a death sentence for so many.
The pandemic was a wake-up call. It should have been a moment for collective reckoning. But even now, five years later, I wonder: Has white America learned anything from this? Will it confront the structures of inequality and racism that made the pandemic’s impact so much worse for Black communities and other communities of color? Or will it go back to pretending that it is isolated, that the suffering of others is not its concern?
