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Healthcare

The ‘invisible’ targets of hatred and hardship: Lower-income Asian Americans the focus of new COVID-19 study

The ‘invisible’ targets of hatred and hardship: Lower-income Asian Americans the focus of new COVID-19 study

Boston Globe
Kay Lazar
April 20, 2022

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“Those in Chinatown or the working communities in Malden and Quincy are often invisible,” said Carolyn Wong, a political scientist at the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass.

Wong said she embarked on research to help widen the public’s perception of Asian Americans, who are often stalked by a “model minority myth.”

“The impression that policy makers and a lot of the public have is just looking at the better off [Asian Americans],” Wong said.

“The movies, TV, a lot of media images, or ideas people have about how well off Asians are, come from the successful scientists and medical folks, and those are the ones who are more prominent in the public’s mind,” she said.

Wong and her UMass coauthor, Ziting Kuang, surveyed 192 mostly low- and middle-income Asian Americans in 2020 and early 2021 in Greater Boston and found that roughly 75 percent reported working jobs that placed them at higher risk for COVID, and about 40 percent reported feeling very or extremely worried about being able to pay their rent or mortgage.

A third said they were very or extremely afraid they would run out of food because of a lack of money.

Income inequality, the report found, is the greatest among Asian Americans, displacing Black people as the most economically divided racial or ethnic group in the country.

The large gap in experiences the UMass researchers found between wealthy and low-income Asian Americans mirrors the findings of a 2018 Pew Research Center report that found income inequality rising most rapidly among that group. It found that income distribution among Asian Americans transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among the United States’ major racial and ethnic groups.

Continue reading HERE.

Categories
Healthcare Medicare-for-All, single-payer healthcare, universal healthcare, healthcare disparities, healthcare inequality, corporate Democrats, healthcare insurance

US Ranks 36th Out of 37 Nations on COVID-19 Mortality

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-066768

A new study quantifies the loss in life expectancy due to COVID-19 in nations around the world. The US is in the worst tier, with a drop of nearly two years. Blame lays at the feet of mishandling by Trump, but also long-term degradation of public health and primary care access. Both must be rebuilt.

From abstract:

 

“Reduction in life expectancy was estimated as the difference between observed and expected life expectancy in 2020 using the Lee-Carter model. . . .

 

Results: Reduction in life expectancy in men and women was observed in all the countries studied except New Zealand, Taiwan, and Norway, where there was a gain in life expectancy in 2020. No evidence was found of a change in life expectancy in Denmark, Iceland, and South Korea. The highest reduction in life expectancy was observed in Russia (men: −2.33; women: −2.14), the United States (men: −2.27; women: −1.61), Bulgaria (men: −1.96; women: −1.37), Lithuania (men: −1.83; women: −1.25), Chile (men: −1.64; women: −0.88), and Spain (men: −1.35; women: −1.13)”

 

[Note: All figures are in years; confidence intervals deleted to enhance readability]

COVID-Mort-by-Country-BMJ

Comment and Graph by David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler via http://healthjusticemonitor.org

COVID-19 Death Rates and a Healthcare System Designed to Profit From Illness and Suffering:

These data provide further evidence of the criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. By another measure – years of life lost per 100,000 population – the US was better only than Bulgaria, Russia and Lithuania. Donald Trump’s denialism and malfeasance bear much of the blame for the US’ sorry record on COVID-19. But the gutting of public health capacity, which occurred under both Democrats and Republicans, and our defective health care system, which obstructs access to care and discourages trusting relationships, were and remain major contributors.

6% of health spending should go for public health, double the current proportion. Further, we need to erase access barriers, and build a real and universal primary care infrastructure.

The Current U.S. Healthcare System Seeks to Discard Those Most in Need and is Inherently Discriminatory:


The Democrats, not Trump, continue to lead efforts to dump COVID-19 positive hospital overflow to willing privately-operated nursing homes. And, they are also involved in data coverup and tactics of failing to dis-aggregate data. We know this because of involvement in dealing with Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the high-death rates at Kei-Ail Los Angeles, a nursing facility traditionally in service of Japanese American and Japanese seniors in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-01/hospital-transfers-spark-covid-surge-la-nursing-homes

See more at https://saveourseniors.network


 

Categories
Healthcare

US Surpasses 800,000 Pandemic Deaths

More than 800,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus, the highest recorded national death toll from the global pandemic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59645307

The 800,000 total exceeds the populations of cities such as Boston or Washington DC. The milestone means nearly twice as many Americans have died during the pandemic as in World War 2.

The US death toll far exceeds that of any other country.

U.S. Death Count earlier in December, Prior to Exceeding 800K
More than 40% Were Preventable
Single Payer Would Reduce Pandemic Deaths

TAKE ACTION TO WIN THE HEALTHCARE REFORM WE NEED: https://progressiveasians.org


Categories
Healthcare

The First Year of COVID: Filipinos Were Among Hardest Hit, But Hidden by Data

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/year-one-covid-19-death-toll/the-first-year-of-covid-filipinos-were-among-hardest-hit-but-hidden-by-data/

Filipinos had the second highest mortality rate in the county during the pandemic’s first year — but that cost was largely hidden because the county reported cases and deaths among Filipinos within a broad category of Asian Americans, rather than breaking them out specifically. 

Maya Srikrishnan

Voices of San Diego

In San Diego County, Filipinos accounted for about 7 percent of the 4,000 COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic’s first year, while they make up roughly 6.5 percent of the county population. That made Filipinos the third largest nationality for pandemic deaths in the county during that time.  

Filipinos faced a unique set of risks. Many Filipinos work in the health care sector or in other essential, high-risk employment, like in assisted living facilities. They also tend to live in multigenerational households, and suffer from certain health conditions that increase morbidity with COVID, like diabetes and hypertension. The majority of Filipinos who died, 92 percent, were immigrants, while only 8 percent were U.S.-born. 

But because Filipino deaths and cases weren’t specifically tracked by the county – grouped instead with other Asian nationalities, which had lower numbers of cases and deaths – community advocates and researchers said that the community didn’t get the support and resources it needed. 

Read the Voices of San Diego article HERE.


Categories
Healthcare

Single Payer in CA Would Have Reduced COVID-19 Deaths

If we are to take a simple projection of COVID-19 death comparisons between the U.S.A. and countries with Single Payer, if CA had already implemented a Single-Payer healthcare system prior to the pandemic, we could have potentially reduced COVID-19 deaths by over 60K!

We cannot afford to NOT pass AB 1400. Support the Cal Care Act and the fight to win Healthcare Equality!

COVID-19_USA-vs-SinglePayerCountries

https://nhchc.org/…/Comparative-Analysis_International

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Categories
Healthcare

Newsom Endangers Lives of CA Seniors: Vetoes AB 279

Siding with the corporate-operator-serving California Department of Public Health, California Governor Gavin Newsom parroted CDPH falsehoods to justify his support for corporate evictions of seniors from nursing homes during the ongoing pandemic as well as condoning degradation of services at such facilities.

From Save Our Seniors Network, read about how Newsom completely disregarded the legislative process with the veto of this straightforward bill, which intended to protect senior lives during the pandemic:

https://bit.ly/RebuttalToNewsomVeto

Categories
Healthcare

Disproportionate COVID-19 Deaths Among APIs in CA

COVID-19 Deaths in CA

READ MORE: To live and die
in Los Angeles
COVID-19,
structural
stress, and the path to a
more resilient public health

Categories
Economic Justice Healthcare Working-Class Power

Celebrate May Day and Build API Worker Power!

International Workers’ Day, May 2, 2020

Asian American workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic

https://youtu.be/_1wGMBXcPNMhttps://youtu.be/eIWBm6HRhHg

ko_KRKorean