We were all in it together, until we weren’t

Almost two years ago, in May 2020, NPR released a study showing racial disparities in who was contracting COVID-19 and who was at higher risk of complications and death. 

I remember hearing an audio version of the story (that I can’t find now) and hearing someone, presumably Dr. Utibe Essien, health equity researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, who is quoted in the print version, say that he’d heard concerns that sharing that racial data would result in fewer white people taking the virus seriously. 

"If people feel like, 'Well, this is a them problem and not a me problem ... then that may potentially affect the way that people think about the opening up of the country," he said.

Remember the early days of the pandemic? When we cheered for health care workers and posted uplifting signs about how “We’re all in this together”? 

Then in April, all that started to fade away. The phrase “pandemic fatigue” made its debut. And then the protests. And the lawsuits. 

All the while, I was wondering if Dr. Essien was right. 

Turns out he was, at least partially. A study just published by Allison L.Skinner-Dorkenoo from University of Georgia found that when white Americans learned COVID-19 disproportionately impacted communities of color, their fear of COVID decreased as well as their support for safety measures. That tendency was stronger among more socially conservative respondents who had less fear of COVID, less support for safety measures, and less empathy for the vulnerable.

When empathy wears thin

The pandemic brought out a lot of ugly -isms, such as the ageism and ableism that downplayed the seriousness of the disease by writing off the deaths as “just the elderly or people with pre-existing conditions.” As though people with asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, or just over the age of 55 were already at death’s door. 

So why couldn’t racism be another factor? Skinner-Dokenoo pointed to previous research that found “[t]hreats can seem more psychologically distant when they impact others who are less familiar, or more distinct from one's own group (e.g., in culture, race, language, religion).”

“Both children and adults show the tendency to reinforce the status quo, believing that the way things are is how they should be,” particularly those who are members of high-status groups.

“As such, U.S. residents—especially those who are White—may be less concerned about social issues (e.g., police violence, environmental contaminants, health conditions) that predominantly impact people of color because this is how they expect things to be.”

Now am I suggesting there was cackling and mustache-twirling? No. For most, the shift in their attitude towards the pandemic was probably subconscious. But at some point they decided that they wouldn’t wear masks or social distance, because they didn’t think they were at risk and couldn’t be bothered to inconvenience themselves to protect others. 

There is an important and complicated caveat: People who had a better understanding of why racial COVID disparities existed were more fearful of COVID and showed greater support for safety measures. However, when researchers tried to present that context in a follow-up study, it backfired. It’s not enough to tell people systemic inequalities are a factor; they have to understand it on a deeper level.

The study and the lesson

In the introduction the study cites as an example then-Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack’s argument against Gov. Tony Evers’ “Safer at Home” order.  Roggensack claimed COVID was mostly confined to meatpacking plants and not “just regular folks.”

The first part of the study asked 500 white participants about their perceptions of COVID’s racial disparities and assessed their understanding of how those disparities were formed. They were also asked questions to measure their fear of COVID, support for COVID safety protocols, and general racial attitudes. 

As I said, white people were less afraid of COVID and less likely to support safety precautions, unless they already understood the factors that caused those racial disparities. 

“[S]ystemic knowledge of contributors to COVID-19 racial disparities predicted increased fear and support for COVID-19 safety precautions—such that greater systemic knowledge seemed to reflect increased awareness and concern about systemic inequalities and racism,” the study found. 

So, then the follow-up question is whether there is a way to share data on racial disparities so white Americans will be sympathetic and take action. In a second study, Skinner-Dorkenoo’s team examined whether presenting the COVID racial disparities in the broader framework of racial health disparities had any impact. 

Over 1,500 participants were assigned one of three articles on the impact of COVID-19 which discussed racial disparities. One article made no mention of racial disparities at all (as a control group), a second only mentioned the disparities but provided no context, and the third provided the following context: 

Surprisingly, this framing resulted in the participants expressing less fear of the virus and less support for safety measures. The best guess researchers had was that it was “perhaps because this information signaled that these disparities were not just transitory epidemiological trends which could potentially shift and disproportionately impact White people in the future.”

The biggest factor in whether  someone took the virus and safety precautions seriously was whether they had prior knowledge of systemic racism’s impact on health care. The people who were already aware of those inequities were more likely to continue to care about and want to take action to protect those communities.

While COVID has disproportionately affected communities of color, white people make up a disproportionate share of COVID deaths, despite accounting for a lower share of cases. In other words, while white people were less likely to contract the virus, those who did were more likely to die.

Instead of seeing ourselves as insulated from our non-white neighbors, white people need to get it into our communal heads that we all sink or swim togather. Our failure to care for the most vulnerable resulted in worse outcomes for our own. 

It’s a lesson that applies beyond COVID, to everything from poverty to climate change. The question is, how long will it take us to learn it?

Where we’ve been hiking

I somehow managed to hike Quincy Bluff and Wetlands State Natural Area without taking a single photo so here’s an earlier photo from Levis/Trow Mound Recreational Area. As a Midwestern flat-lander from Kansas, I’m always surprised and breathless (figuratively and literally) by Wisconsin’s… mountains? Hills? Whatever you want to call them. It probably looks the same these days, since Wisconsin still can’t make it’s mind up whether it’s second winter or spring yet.