The Inequality Virus: Bringing together a world torn apart by coronavirus through a fair, just and sustainable economy

Berkhout, Esmé; Galasso, Nick; Lawson, Max; Morales, Pablo; Taneja, A.; Pimentel, Diego Alejo Vázquez

doi:10.21201/2021.6409

Cited by 64 publications

(57 citation statements)

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“…Each of these priorities must also include a strong health equity perspective, attempting to address upstream/midstream policy and institutional factors, and to implement downstream rapid responses in ways that ensure the well-being of all of society, including socially vulnerable groups (11,13,14,78). The aim of the EM process is to design a system to protect the most at risk, wherever they are found, regardless of race, color, religion, socioeconomic level, sexual orientation, etc.…”

Section: Discussion: Priorities To Achieve Better Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Framing a recession as being "the economy vs. lives" is a dangerous false dichotomy; as governments can spend less on the social determinants of health, including healthcare, education, roads, sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccines, safety, social security nets, clean energy, etc., statistical lives will be lost in the years to come (75)(76)(77). Importantly, the negative effect of a drop in GDP on population wellbeing and lifespan consistently occur over the long-term, even though not detectable during the short-term due to temporary increased government spending (11,(78)(79)(80). Unemployment and loneliness are two of the strongest risk factors for shortened lifespan and chronic diseases (81).…”

Section: Mistaken Assumption: Lockdowns Have a Favorable Cost-benefit Balancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…When done, these analyses have consistently found lockdowns to have higher costs than benefits (Table 5) (52,53,(75)(76)(77)(85)(86)(87)(88)(89)(90). Of note, these cost-benefit analyses have made assumptions in favor of lockdowns (i.e., marked reductions in COVID-19 fatalities), and very conservative against lockdowns (e.g., not including the predictable effects of loneliness and unemployment on lifespan and chronic disease, of societal disruption on world food insecurity and poverty rates, of interrupted health care on conditions other than COVID-19; and using the highest estimates of the value of QALY or WELLBY) (11,75,81,89). Therefore, despite the difficulties inherent in complex cost-benefit analyses, the results strongly suggest that lockdowns do not have a favorable costbenefit balance.…”

Section: Mistaken Assumption: Lockdowns Have a Favorable Cost-benefit Balancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another consistent association with hospitalization and mortality from COVID-19 is social vulnerability, including risks from poverty or low-income (often associated with essential high-exposure occupations without job security, unemployment, lower education attainment, lack of health insurance, and food insecurity), household composition (e.g., single parent home, people with disability) and type (e.g., household crowding, lack of a vehicle, use of public transport for work commuting), and racial or ethnic minority status (e.g., African American, American Indian, Hispanic, often with limited English-speaking ability) (11,12). People from racial and ethnic minorities have been more adversely affected by the pandemic, and not due to inherent biologic differences.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Minority groups are a proxy for the "structural racism and social inequalities [affecting their social determinants of health] embedded within the economic, political, health care, criminal justice, and other systems and social structures ( 13)" (14)(15)(16)(17)(18). These result in higher exposure to and onward transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (e.g., inability to socially distance, work from home, or even wash hands; multi-generational housing units; densely populated communities), higher susceptibility to severe COVID-19 (e.g., more chronic non-communicable diseases, poor health due to stress and food insecurity, poor access to communication, poor access to healthcare), and lack of timely access to quality healthcare once sick (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). Within these vulnerable groups, people who are older and people with multiple severe comorbidities require specific strategies for focused protection.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in High Income Countries Such as Canada: A Better Way Forward Without Lockdowns

Joffe¹,

Redman²

2021

Preprint

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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused tragic morbidity and mortality. In attempt to reduce this morbidity and mortality, most countries implemented population-wide lockdowns. Here we show that the lockdowns were based on several flawed assumptions, including “no one is protected until everyone is protected,” “lockdowns are highly effective to reduce transmission,” “lockdowns have a favorable cost-benefit balance,” and “lockdowns are the only effective option.” Focusing on the latter, we discuss that Emergency Management principles provide a better way forward to manage the public emergency of the pandemic. Specifically, there are three priorities including the following: first, protect those most at risk by separating them from the threat (mitigation); second, ensure critical infrastructure is ready for people who get sick (preparation and response); and third, shift the response from fear to confidence (recovery). We argue that, based on Emergency Management principles, the age-dependent risk from SARS-CoV-2, the minimal (at best) efficacy of lockdowns, and the terrible cost-benefit trade-offs of lockdowns, we need to reset the pandemic response. We can manage risk and save more lives from both COVID-19 and lockdowns, thus achieving far better outcomes in both the short- and long-term.

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Section: Discussion: Priorities To Achieve Better Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mistaken Assumption: Lockdowns Have a Favorable Cost-benefit Balancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mistaken Assumption: Lockdowns Have a Favorable Cost-benefit Balancementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in High Income Countries Such as Canada: A Better Way Forward Without Lockdowns

Joffe¹,

Redman²

2021

Preprint

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Smarter and Greener Cities After COVID‐19: An Integrated Decision‐Making Framework to Prioritize Investment Alternatives

Cheng

Shah

2022

Advanced Sustainable Systems

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Locking down cities to curb the transmission of coronavirus brought the global economy to a grinding halt. Cities are like engines of growth; when they stop, so does the growth. Therefore, it becomes paramount to build cities that continue to function and do not collapse amidst any crisis. Since economic recovery is underway, this paper examines priority areas for investment to expedite recovery and build back stronger cities. These areas are evaluated based on their contribution to revitalizing public health, economic, social, energy, and environmental sectors. For the analysis, analytical network process (ANP) and fuzzy‐VIKOR are applied. ANP obtains the relative importance of sectors and their respective critical factors after solving a complex relationship among them. The economic sector has the highest weight of 25.8% among the five sectors, while job creation has the highest weight of 10.3% among the fifteen factors. Fuzzy‐VIKOR is used to evaluate different areas and it is found that renewable energy has a greater contribution to the sustainable recovery of major sectors and the long‐term aim of building inclusive green and resilient cities. These insights shall contribute to the conversations already ongoing among city governments, urban planners, civil society organizations, and city dwellers seeking practical solutions to unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic.

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More than the market: Reinventing postpandemic economic relations

Fuentes

2022

Economic Anthropology

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The COVID-19 pandemic offers a lens of intense clarity, highlighting the weaknesses and inhumaneness of a world in which humans must be actively engaged in a capitalist market economy to live. Anthropological understandings of human histories and possibilities challenge contemporary capitalist market economies and suggest renewed social and economic possibilities for a post-COVID landscape.Between December 2019 and July 2021, more than 4.3 million people worldwide died from COVID-19 and more than 200 million were infected with SARS-CoV-2; millions more will have lasting health complications. These numbers only increase as the pandemic continues. Vaccines, developed in record time, were quickly purchased and hoarded by the high-income countries, leaving many low-income countries with a vaccine shortage. During the first year of the pandemic in 2020, unemployment reduced access to food and shelter, and financial hardships dramatically increased across much of the planet. The official global workforce lost nearly 9% of its total working hours and more than 144 million jobs with their concomitant pay. These losses affected women more harshly than men (International Labour Organization 2021). This does not even include the disruptions and damages to the informal global workforce, which in many areas is a substantial component of local and regional economies (Ghosh et al. 2010;Vanek et al. 2014). The distribution of wealth in economies, already more uneven than at any point since recording of global economics began, became even more inequitable during 2020 and 2021; a tiny percentage of the nearly 8 billion humans on the planet control the vast majority of wealth in the global economy and in almost all local and regional economies (Berkhout et al. 2021;Ventura 2021). The failure of contemporary economic infrastructures, health care, and political structures to effectively protect, engage, and support humans across the planet illustrates that the current dominant politico-economic system is precarious and unsustainable.Many people believe contemporary market economies and their modes of competition emerged, or even evolved, as a necessary reality of the world and of being human. This is wrong. Such a view presumes that humans are naturally economic actors and that market economic systems are therefore the natural outcome of our evolutionary trajectory. But most humans do not behave like rational economic actors. For the majority of humans, exchanges are not about profit but rather about making and keeping social connections. The relationships at the center of human social lives are not driven by an urge to obtain equal or better benefit in interactions; there is more to human social lives than can be modeled in economic cost-benefit calculations.

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The Inequality Virus: Bringing together a world torn apart by coronavirus through a fair, just and sustainable economy

Cited by 64 publications

References 0 publications

The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in High Income Countries Such as Canada: A Better Way Forward Without Lockdowns

The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in High Income Countries Such as Canada: A Better Way Forward Without Lockdowns

Smarter and Greener Cities After COVID‐19: An Integrated Decision‐Making Framework to Prioritize Investment Alternatives

More than the market: Reinventing postpandemic economic relations

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