On March 21, the Trump administration drew on a federal law on public health to effectively shut the borders to all migrants and asylum seekers in order to avert the “serious danger” of a communicable disease arriving from abroad.

That makes it all the more bitterly ironic that the United States, with the largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, is now consciously spreading the pandemic beyond its borders by continuing to deport thousands of immigrants, many infected with the coronavirus, to poor countries ill equipped to cope with the disease.

President Trump and his senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, have long shown themselves impervious to criticism of the effectiveness and morality of their hard-line policies. Yet in this pandemic, mass deportations are not only cruel but also dangerous to public health abroad and at home. Dangerous because seeding and fanning the pandemic in any country, let alone those suffering from corruption and poverty, will only prolong the health crisis and worsen the conditions that led to mass migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Haiti and Mexico.

The US health system has failed black and Latino populations for decades. Now they’re paying the price.
It has been clear for some time that the coronavirus pandemic is killing black and Latino Americans at disproportionately high rates, but new data from the last few days reveals just how devastating the Covid-19 crisis has been for people of color.

Starting in New York City, the American epicenter of the outbreak: Black New Yorkers are dying at twice the rate of their white peers; Latinos in the city are also succumbing to the virus at a much higher rate than white or Asian New Yorkers. The same trends can be seen in infection and hospitalization rates, too.[img]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kPZ_KJnzj-r3QyGJhz-hZvvSNNg=/0x0:2122x840/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2122x840):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19909334/Screen_Shot_2020_04_17_at_1.06.01_PM.png[/img]

Words cannot express how we all are beyond indebted to the health workers around the world. You are putting your lives at risk for the sake of saving all of us. You have given a new, profound meaning to the term "the ultimate sacrifice."
Within the cancer community, health providers and patients alike have undoubtedly suffered the worst of the coronavirus's double burden. We all know that cancer does not wait for Covid-19 to end. Its destructive work is genetically mapped out with precision. In fact, cancer thrives when the system is broken.
As a mother of a cancer survivor, I know only too well the worry of an infection for an immunosuppressed cancer patient. To add to that the anguish of having essential services for diagnosis or treatment canceled or delayed, when we all know that timing is crucial when it comes to cancer, is beyond imaginable. And to know that our precious health workers' lives are at heightened risk because of the scarcity of inexpensive protective equipment is harrowing and shocking, to say the least.
Having said that, it has been extremely heartening to learn about how our cancer community has innovated and adapted to address the real challenges people face on the ground, day in and day out. The stories that have been shared are nothing short of heroic, with both personal and collective herculean endeavors being made to ensure that cancer diagnosis and treatment are not run over by the destructiveness of Covid-19.
Ironically, the fight against the coronavirus has required us all to don masks — and yet, it has taken the coronavirus, at a tragic and exorbitant human cost, to actually unmask and unmuzzle too many uncomfortable truths about a global health system that desperately needs investments and improvements to equitably care for all the patients who rely on it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/opinions/covid-19-unmasks-what-cancer-patients-have-long-known/index.html

doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait for a cure for racism.
Bleep U.S
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/trump-george-floyd-coronavirus.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

The COVID-19 virus was once called the “great equalizer” because of its potential to infect anyone and everyone at pandemic speed. But data on mortality rates tell a different story.

Instead of affecting everyone equally, the coronavirus is amplifying the racial disparities in health outcomes across the United States. The disparities result from the country’s own pre-existing condition: an environment where people’s living and working conditions are anything but equal when it comes to pollution levels and protection from harmful toxins.

These disparities are most visible in urban environments that have become pandemic hot spots. There, the coronavirus kills a higher percentage of minorities than it does of the cities’ overall populations.

More from Brittany Gibson

In the nation’s pandemic epicenter, New York City, black and Latino people die at about twice the rate of the total population. In Chicago, the disparity is even more dramatic: Black people account for about 70 percent of coronavirus deaths but make up roughly 30 percent of the city’s population.

In early April, before Wisconsin went ahead with in-person voting, about 80 percent of Milwaukee’s coronavirus fatalities were black people, though the black share of the city’s population is just 25 percent. Since then, seven more coronavirus cases have been linked to voting on Election Day, but the full impact of virus spread is not yet known.

While these statistics shocked many, environmental-justice experts and advocates were not surprised.

“You can’t equalize from a gross place of inequality in a pandemic,” says Michael McAfee, president and CEO of PolicyLink, in an interview with the Prospect. “I think the story line that is being missed is that we are here by design, we are here by our arrogance, we are here by our lack of leadership, we are here because our institutions have stopped caring and knowing how to serve those most in need. Our disinvestment is coming back to haunt us, but it was hiding in plain sight already.”

About 70 percent of black people in the U.S. live in counties where pollution levels exceed federal standards.

Although there are regulations and limits on harmful toxins used in industries ranging from energy to farming, those rules are not always followed and the impacts disproportionately affect minorities. About 70 percent of black people in the U.S. live in counties where pollution levels exceed federal standards and thus violate federal law, according to the EPA.

Black and Hispanic people are also more likely to work essential jobs, meaning they are still going to work, risking coronavirus exposure with limited protections and protective gear. In many cities, minorities make up a major share of essential public-sector employees, operating and maintaining buses and subways, working in public hospitals and clinics.

The wide range of environmental factors at home and at work—as well as differences in access to regular health care—have long been determinants in people’s health. Before the coronavirus, it was known that black people are more likely to have asthma or develop cancer because of regular exposure to harmful toxins. Black children are also more likely to die from an asthma attack than their white peers. And black people are also more likely to have lung disease than white people, even though they are less likely to smoke cigarettes.

Black people make up a disproportionate share of the population in 22 percent of U.S. counties, and those localities account for more than half of coronavirus cases and nearly 60 percent of deaths, a national study by an AIDS research group found.

The study also found that socioeconomic factors such as employment status and access to health care were better predictors of infection and death rates than underlying health conditions.

Gregorio Millett, vice president of Amfar, the Foundation for Aids Research, said the findings suggest that black people will be more vulnerable to the pandemic as states begin to reopen businesses and public spaces.

“It’s clear that there’s a disproportionate impact of covid-19 diagnoses and deaths among African Americans,” Millett said, adding that the authors of the study released it early in the hope of influencing policy decisions about reopening businesses. “All of my colleagues fear that with these policies to open up communities, that the brunt of the covid-19 epidemic is not going to be borne equally on all communities, that we will likely see greater covid-19 deaths as well as cases in African American communities.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/06/study-finds-that-disproportionately-black-counties-account-more-than-half-covid-19-cases-us-nearly-60-percent-deaths/