You can't just slap a bandage on it

Pols arrive at realization they have to address causes, not just cures, for coronavirus crisis

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot and Gov. Pritzker have both made a point of addressing racial disparities in the coronavirus pandemic. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

Let’s go back to earlier this week, to a significant moment that passed almost unnoticed.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot both took note of the way the coronavirus pandemic is weighing heavily on minority communities, here in Illinois and especially in Chicago.

That was news. Lightfoot pointed at statistics showing that African Americans make up 30 percent of Chicago’s population, but accounted for more than half of Chicago’s confirmed cases of COVID-19, 52 percent, and more than two-thirds of the city’s deaths attributed to the disease, 69 percent, and said, “Those numbers take your breath away. This is a call to action for all of us.”

Later in the day, at his daily coronavirus briefing, Pritzker agreed. But the amazing thing that went unnoticed is that neither stopped there. Both laid blame at what Pritzker called “generations of systemic disinvestment in communities of color, compounded by the disparities in health-care delivery systems and access.”

That strikes us as significant. Think of any disaster, and the usual approach of political leaders is to address the damage and then send people back as soon as possible to something resembling the previous status quo. Sometimes the end result is even something worse, as when African Americans living in New Orleans were largely blamed for being unprepared for Hurricane Katrina — for not having cars to enable evacuation or the money and other resources to swiftly get out of town — and then were systematically prevented from returning to the previous status quo, as the city privatized education and cleared large swaths of land for redevelopment.

Lightfoot and Pritzker, however, went right to the root causes for why African Americans were suffering the worst from the coronavirus crisis.

“This new data offers a deeply concerning glimpse into the spread of COVID-19 and is a stark reminder of the deep-seated issues which have long created disparate health impacts in communities across Chicago,” Lightfoot said. “While this data is extremely troubling, we are determined to lessen the impact of COVID-19 by engaging communities that have traditionally been overlooked and that have suffered disinvestment and neglect for generations.”

It’s worth repeating Pritzker’s entire statement that earlier quote was drawn from: “The loss of each and every single individual offers a unique, unbearable pain for all of the lives that they touched. And cumulatively they reflect the disproportionate burden that this virus places on some communities more than others. We’re facing a crisis, and we have to face it honestly. Communities of color — and particularly black communities in the city of Chicago, suburban Cook County, and cities and towns all across this state — disproportionately shoulder the health-care conditions that lead to worse outcomes with COVID-19. And to put into words what is often left unsaid, that’s a product of generations of systemic disinvestment in communities of color, compounded by disparity in health-care delivery systems and access.”

“To put into words what is often left unsaid, (the covid-19 crisis) is a product of generations of systemic disinvestment in communities of color, compounded by disparity in health-care delivery systems and access.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Illinois Information Service)

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, pointed out that 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths have involved people with preexisting conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease — all of which are more prevalent in the African-American community due to a historic failure, economic and social, to address chronic disease and its causes.

Pritzker stepped back to address couple of mendacious internet rumors: first, early on, that African Americans were supposedly “immune” to COVID-19, “that is obviously false,” then the exact opposite, “that this adversely affects African Americans because COVID-19, by its very nature, has some disproportionate effect on the African-American community.”

Pritzker rebuffed both those rumors in no uncertain terms, saying, “Here’s the reason that we think it has a disproportionate effect on the African-American community. It’s the things that Dr. Ezike was saying — underlying conditions that exist, the poor health care that has been provided because of years of disinvestment in communities of color. These have both come together. This virus has had this terrible effect on the African-American community because of those two things.”

He called diabetes and hypertension “co-morbidities that can cause greater problems with COVID-19.” At the same time, “The safety-net hospitals are challenged in our state, and the availability of health care in communities of color has been at a lower quality or lower availability than in other communities.”

Both Lightfoot and Pritzker have moved quickly to do the immediate things available to any leaders in a time of crisis. They’ve worked on outreach to the African-American community to explain the dangers of the virus and the need for social distancing. They targeted those communities for treatment as well, with Pritzker reopening hospitals recently closed in Melrose Park and Blue Island serving communities of color — hospitals that perhaps, everyone understands now, should have never been closed in the first place.

Both have already signaled that, when this immediate crisis inevitably passes, they’re prepared to return to address the root causes that made it worse than it had to be. And the real root case, generations of racism aside, is poverty, which creates the poor diet and insufficient health care that lead to chronic disease like diabetes and high blood pressure. That is an affliction that knows no race, and there are communities across Illinois that are as much in danger as Chicago’s West and South sides should the pandemic spread there.

Which is just another reason to stay home, for now, as the most immediately effective thing to do.

Across the nation, though, there appears to be a growing consensus that we can’t just slap a bandage on this disaster and send people back out there when it’s over. Even as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was dropping out of the presidential race this week, he was winning converts to his basic concept that health care is a right for everyone, because ultimately in a pandemic no one is any safer than the person most vulnerable to falling victim to it. We’re already seeing proposals to lower the qualifying age for Medicare, to expand coverage for Medicaid, and to find a way to make health care readily available to all.

So let’s stay home, slow the spread of the coronavirus, and when this has passed let us resolve to address the core issues that made the pandemic worse than it had to be.