Via Nature, an important article by Amy Maxmen: Will COVID force public health to confront America's epic inequality? Excerpt:
On a hazy day in November, Hardeep Singh received a text message from the COVID-19 testing system at Foster Farms poultry company saying that his mother had tested positive for the coronavirus.
He got the alert because his mother, a 63-year-old line worker at one of the company’s meat-packing plants in California’s San Joaquin Valley, doesn’t speak English and doesn’t own a smartphone.
Singh couldn’t reach her as she continued to handle chicken parts alongside her co-workers. Her supervisors didn’t tell her, either. In fact, they assigned her more shifts for the week.
Singh broke the news to her that evening, and convinced her not to return to work, where she might spread the infection to others. But he couldn’t reach anyone at the company for another five days, to ask whether she qualified for paid time off while she isolated.
Singh’s mother ended up being among the more than 400 employees at the plant who were diagnosed with COVID-19 last year, and one of about 90,000 cases linked to food-production facilities and farm work across the United States. Because the sector feeds Americans and powers part of the US economy, agricultural workers such as Singh’s mother have been considered essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That important role comes at a cost. One study1 found that food and agricultural workers in California had an almost 40% increased risk of dying last year, compared with the state’s general population. And within that imbalance lies another contrast. Latinx food and agriculture workers experienced a nearly 60% increase in deaths compared with previous years; the increase for white workers was just 16%.
The reasons for such disparities, say public-health researchers, include discrimination, low wages, limited labour protections and inadequate access to health care, affordable housing and education. These are some of the ‘social determinants of health’, a concept that has been around for at least 150 years, but which has gained recognition during the pandemic.
