The Covid-19 Pandemic Meets the Pandemic of Covid-1619

The disproportionate number of Black and Brown people dying in the US since the COVID-19 pandemic began has resulted directly from the savage inequalities racial capitalism reproduces not only in the US for profit healthcare system, but also in its housing, education, criminal justice system, food security, and employment policies. Just as Black communities received substandard care in segregated hospitals during the 1918 flu pandemic, so, too, the deadly virus of racism during the time of the pandemic in 2020-2021 has led to obscene disparities between Black and Brown people and white people in COVID-19 testing, infection, and death rates. In vivid contrast to dozens of countries who managed to quickly bend the coronavirus infection curve downward (for example, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, and Taiwan), in the US community transmission rose quickly and drastically. As a result, while the US accounts for only four percent of the world's population, it has experienced over twenty percent of confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Apparently, this is what Trump meant by making America great again.