Letters: COVID-19 crisis calls for emergency action; Pandemic highlights inequality in health care system
COVID-19 crisis calls for emergency action
Even with an empty campus, the closing of non-life-sustaining businesses, and residents practicing social distancing, as of noon Thursday, Centre County still has 59 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
What more can we, Centre County residents, State College locals and Penn State students who remain in the area, do to protect our community and support each other through this unusual season? In addition to following recommendations from local and state government officials and health professionals, a local group of residents have stepped up to offer community aid specific to the needs of Centre County.
The Centre County COVID-19 Community Response (4CR) consists of individuals working (remotely) together to provide needed assistance in English, Spanish, Chinese and Farsi. Their volunteers are helping with everything from providing materials for negotiating rent payments with landlords, to supply drives in front of Schlow Centre Region Library where residents can pick up essential items safely with minimal contact.
While this local response is an incredible display of the empathy Centre County residents have for each other, the need for a group like this is a direct result of the federal mishandling of this outbreak.
Join NextGen Pennsylvania in signing the petition for emergency action to provide federally funded relief instead of leaving communities to fend for themselves. Centre County residents can help each other and the nation by utilizing vote-by-mail accommodations to elect officials prepared to provide the relief 4CR is offering at a national level and who can put empathy for individuals into policy.
Pandemic highlights inequality in health care system
I have had the privilege of working as an HIV prevention counselor for the past three years. As new data is released regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic, I see unfortunate echoes of the past that prove that there is still a lot of work to do.
While far more attention has been paid to the current pandemic at this early stage than was HIV, data suggesting that low-income, black men and women are at higher risk of death from COVID-19, regardless of age, highlights the structural racism that is inherent in our country’s health care system.
During the earliest days of the HIV crisis, the people dying were people that, frankly, no one cared about: gay men; drug users; trans folks; immigrants. That we’ve made so much progress in treating HIV and making it a manageable condition speaks volumes about what we are capable of as a society. That HIV disproportionately impacts black and Latinx men and women speaks to how far our society still has to go.
It is my hope that, in the days and weeks to come, due attention is called by the current pandemic to the inequality that exists in our health care system, and, by extension, our country as a whole. We can truly be a great nation only when all of our citizens are treated as true equals, and this time of crisis serves as a stark reminder that we have not yet reached that point.