Disease, Distribution and Race in the Time of Covid-19

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all of us, but not all of us equally. Far from acting as the great leveller, the disease that itself does not discriminate has revealed and exacerbated startling health disparities across the United States and globally. The early disaggregation of data indicated that Covid-19 mortality rates were more than double in Black populations than in White populations in the U.S., and were one and a half times as high, nationwide, in Latinx, and Indigenous populations. Infection rates, by population group, were also higher. The disparities of the global spread added further complexities. Now, as the Covid-19 vaccine has been developed in record speed, the challenge of distribution must incorporate facts about public health disparities alongside questions of prioritization. Two big questions loom: how much do our concepts of distributive justice and global justice incorporate racial justice? And how much should they?

Matiangai Sirleaf has given us a vocabulary, and a theoretical framework, to grapple with these issues. In her forthcoming article, Racial Valuation of Disease, she examines both the hierarchical valuation of racial groups in the context of disease, and the distributional consequences of that valuation.