Abstract
Background:Incidence and mortality from COVID-19 are starkly elevated in poor, minority and marginalized communities. These differences reflect longstanding disparities in income, housing, air quality, preexisting health status, legal protections, and access to health care. The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have made these ancient disparities plainly visible.Methodology:As scholars in Catholic research universities committed to advancing both scientific knowledge and social justice, we examined these disparities through the lenses of both epidemiology and ethics.Findings:We see these widening disparities as not only as threats to human health, societal stability, and planetary health, but also as moral wrongs - outward manifestations of unrecognized privilege and greed. They are the concrete consequences of policies that promote structural violence and institutionalize racism.Recommendations:We encourage governments to take the following three scientific and ethical justified actions to reduce disparities, prevent future pandemics, and advance the common good: (1) Invest in public health systems; (2) Reduce economic inequities by making health care affordable to all; providing education, including early education, to all children; strengthening environmental and occupational safeguards; and creating more just tax structures; and (3) Preserve our Common Home, the small blue planet on which we all live.
Highlights
Incidence and mortality from COVID-19 are starkly elevated in poor, minority and marginalized communities
We see these widening disparities as as threats to human health, societal stability, and planetary health, and as moral wrongs - outward manifestations of unrecognized privilege and greed. They are the concrete consequences of policies that promote structural violence and institutionalize racism
We see the widening disparities that have become so painfully apparent in the COVID-19 pandemic as threats to human health, societal stability, and planetary health, and as moral wrongs – outward manifestations of unrecognized privilege and greed. This ethical assessment opens up new strategies for eliminating disparities and advancing the common good, e.g., the formation of partnerships between scientists, ethicists and communities of faith
Summary
Incidence and mortality from COVID-19 are starkly elevated in poor, minority and marginalized communities. Recommendations: We encourage governments to take the following three scientific and ethical justified actions to reduce disparities, prevent future pandemics, and advance the common good: (1) Invest in public health systems; (2) Reduce economic inequities by making health care affordable to all; providing education, including early education, to all children; strengthening environmental and occupational safeguards; and creating more just tax structures; and (3) Preserve our Common Home, the small blue planet on which we all live.
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