Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T23:57:45.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“I Can't Breathe”: Connecting COVID-19, Protests, and Global Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2021

Matiangai Sirleaf
Matiangai Sirleaf*
Affiliation:
Nathan Patz Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

COVID-19 has exposed the underlying racial hierarchy in the United States and elsewhere. Tragically, one study indicates that Black and Latinx people have COVID-19 mortality rates as much as nine times higher than White people in the United States when age is taken into account. Several commentators have attempted to account for these glaring health disparities by pointing to preexisting health conditions like hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and the higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease among Black people, which can make for greater and more severe and deadly complications with COVID-19. Yet, structural factors ensure that Black people are “more likely to encounter those things that we know compromise health–like inaccessible or biased health care providers, inadequate schools and education systems, unemployment, hazardous jobs, unsafe housing, and violent, polluted communities.”

Type
COVID‐19 Part II: Understanding the Disparate Impact on Marginalized Communities
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 114 , 2020 , pp. 373 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mary Bassett, Jarvis T. Chen & Nancy Krieger, The Unequal Toll of COVID-19 Mortality by Age in the United States: Quantifying Racial/Ethnic Disparities 1, 2 (Harv. Ctr. Pop. Dev. Stud. Working Paper No. 19-3, June 2020), available at https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1266/2020/06/20_Bassett-Chen-Krieger_COVID-19_plus_age_working-paper_0612_Vol-19_No-3_with-cover.pdf.

2 See, e.g., Kristen M.J. Azar, et al., Disparities in Outcomes Among COVID-19 Patients in a Large Health Care System in California, 39 Health Affs. 1253 (2020); Manish Pareek, et al., Correspondence, Ethnicity and COVID-19: An Urgent Public Health Research Priority, 395 Lancet 1421 (2020), at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30922-3/fulltext.

3 Khiara M. Bridges, The Many Ways Institutional Racism Kills Black People, Time (June 11, 2020), at https://time.com/5851864/institutional-racism-america.

4 See Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony 187 (2001).

5 Elise Gould & Valerie Wilson, Black Workers Face Two of the Most Lethal Preexisting Conditions for Coronavirus—Racism and Economic Inequality, Econ. Policy Inst., at 4 (2020), available at https://files.epi.org/pdf/193246.pdf.

6 See Matiangai Sirleaf, Racial Valuation of Diseases, 68 UCLA L. Rev. (forthcoming 2021) (manuscript on file with author).

7 Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness as Property, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1707, 1721 (1993).

8 Devan Cole, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Invokes Internment of Japanese-Americans in Debate Over State's Stay-At-Home Order, CNN (May 5, 2020), at https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-coronavirus-hearing-japanese-american-internment/index.html.

9 Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Cases in the U.S., Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html.

10 Motoko Rich, As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Sentiment, N.Y. Times (Jan. 30, 2020), at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/world/asia/coronavirus-chinese-racism.html (citing Coronavirus Chinois: Alerte Jaune, Courrier Picard 24 (Jan. 26, 2020)).

11 Coronavirus: Men Wanted Over Racist Oxford Street Attack on Student, BBC News (Mar. 4, 2020), at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-51736755; Christina Capatides, Bullies Attack Asian American Teen at School, Accusing Him of Having Coronavirus, CBS News (Feb. 14, 2020), at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-bullies-attack-asian-teen-los-angeles-accusing-him-of-having-coronavirus.

12 WHO, Proceedings of the Special Committee and of the Fourth World Health Assembly on Who Regulations No. 2, 1 (1952).

13 See Norman Howard-Jones, World Health Organization, The Scientific Background of the International Sanitary Conferences 1851–1938, 1 Hist. Int'l Pub. Health 11 (1975).

14 See Jeremy Hugh Baron, British Biological Warfare, 327 BMJ 261 (2003).

15 Compare International Sanitary Convention, Art. 5A, with Art. 5B, Dec.15, 1944 (modifying the International Sanitary Convention of June 21, 1926).

16 See WHO, International Health Regulations, Art. 1 (3d ed. 2005).

17 See J. Benton Heath, Global Emergency Power in the Age of Ebola, 57 Harv. Int'l L.J. 1, 29 (2016).

18 See WHO Regional Office for Europe, Ebola Outbreak in West Africa Declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (2014), at https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/pages/news/news/2014/08/ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa-declared-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern.

19 See generally WHO, Factors that Contributed to Undetected Spread of the Ebola Virus and Impeded Rapid Containment (Jan. 2015), at http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/factors/en.

20 See Sierra Leone Shuts Borders, Closes Schools to Fight Ebola, Reuters (June 11, 2014), at https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-ebola-leone/sierra-leone-shuts-borders-closes-schools-to-fight-ebola-idUKKBN0EM2CG20140611; Seven Die in Monrovia Ebola Outbreak, BBC News (June 17, 2014), at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27888363.

21 See 2014–2016 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, Ctrs. for Disease Control, at https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html.