COVID-19 and Its Impact on Racism

The COVID-19 disease has inflamed the enduring racial crisis by worsening the world’s economic and social conditions. The intersection of these two phenomena presents a clear danger, but our job is to achieve health equity by understanding, learning, and subsequently taking action.

Here are 5 reasons why racism should be remedied immediately:

1. Racism contradicts our belief that public health practitioners promote health regardless of the background.
2. Racial hate can lead to crimes as a result of fear, injury, or death. Often, instances of unfair treatment have resulted in substance abuse, heart disease, and suicide among Asian Americans.
3. The fear of discrimination results in an infected person seeking treatment a little too late. This only exacerbates the coronavirus outbreak and hinders the case fatality rate that’s derived by calculating the sum of COVID-19 related deaths divided by the number of diagnosed cases.
4. Racism in COVID-19 doesn’t just affect the Chinese; it spills over its effects onto other Asian subgroups such as Vietnamese, Japanese, and Koreans.
5. Racism hinders the process of gaining experience and help from other countries. It could prolong the outbreak and further amplify our losses in terms of the economic condition and the death rate.

Here are 6 things that can be done to make racial equity a norm:

1. Avoid connecting disease to social groups. This includes verbal and non-verbal connections, such as calling the COVID-19 disease a “Chinese virus” or showing images of only Asian men wearing a mask.
2. It’s crucial to develop an infrastructure that tracks discrimination in the workplace.Instead, introduce anti racist countermeasures.
3. Promote science-based education. From a very young age, children should be encouraged to learn about race and science to introduce to the subject that medical education is based on equity.
4. Eliminate hate speech online that fuels panic and confusion in public. Social media platforms require a robust structure of monitoring bias and fact-checking to stop the spread of false rumors. Instead, send consistent messages that help promotes facts and eliminate fears.
5. It’s crucial to recognize the efforts invested overseas concerning research and policies to combat the pandemic. Isolation and rejection based on racism do more harm than good.
6. Research on the subject of racism. Educate yourself regarding the social institution that upholds it and how racism causes and contributes to the illness. It will help you realize the contagiousness of prejudice.