Truthout
Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
Addressing how the pandemic intersects with issues of social, economic, environmental, racial, gender and disability justice.
Series Introduction
Since COVID-19 hit the United States, it’s been at the top of every news outlet’s headlines. However, the disparate impact and deep injustices that the crisis has wrought often go unmentioned. So do the underlying oppressive systems that allowed the pandemic to reach the magnitude that it has. Truthout is taking on these injustices with a broad-ranging series, “Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19,” which addresses how the pandemic intersects with issues of social, economic, environmental, racial, gender and disability justice. Through investigative reporting and dynamic analysis, we’ll paint a real picture of this pandemic’s implications — and sketch a bold new image of what a post-pandemic world could look like. In this series, journalists, activists, organizers and thinkers, many of whom have been brutally impacted by the crisis themselves, will share stories and insights that point the way toward a transformed future.
Right-Wing “Herd Immunity” Logic Has Infiltrated US Politics and Public Health
A toxic worldview has exploited pandemic despair to win new converts to the politics of the far right.
More People Die Young in US Due to Health Care and Welfare Cuts, Study Finds
By the time COVID-19 hit, about 600,000 more people in the U.S. were dying each year compared to its peer nations.
DeSantis Claimed Pandemic Success in Florida as “Excess Deaths” Skyrocketed
More people died in rural Florida and across the U.S. during the pandemic's first two years than officially reported.
COVID Hasn’t Disappeared — But Empathy, Care and Solidarity Have
Governments worldwide are abandoning people to a debilitating disease with one simple trick: saying it no longer exists.
Denial Isn’t an Effective Health Care Strategy, Say People With Long COVID
Gaslighting and disbelief make long COVID worse for people living with long-term effects from the virus.
University of California Workers Center Disability Justice in Union Organizing
Workers built solidarity by rejecting the “deserving vs. undeserving” disabled model and scarcity approach to access.
I’m Immunocompromised. I Know Ableism Is Oppression. We Need Disability Justice.
To protect the growing immunocompromised population, we need to practice collective care.
Prison Deaths Increased by 50 Percent in the First Year of the COVID Pandemic
In six states, the rate of deaths in prisons doubled between 2019 and 2020.
6.7 Million Children Could Lose Health Coverage as COVID Protections Expire
GOP efforts to end pandemic emergency orders early would create “wide-ranging chaos” across the health care system.
I’m Immunocompromised. Here’s How I Feel About Masking in 2023.
The hardest part of all this is that no one seems to care whether I live or die.