COVID-19: exposing and amplifying inequalities.
COVID-19: exposing and amplifying inequalities.
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DOI：
10.1136/jech-2020-214720
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发表时间：
2020-09
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Allen J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Marmot M;Allen J
指数增长是人们难以把握的。但这正是加缪1947年首次出版的《瘟疫》的销售情况。根据杰奎琳·罗斯的说法，这是“一个奇怪的高潮，与每天图表显示的病人和死亡人数相符”。她报告说，从COVID-19大流行开始，销售额增长了1000%。[1]也许不值得纠缠于这些统计数字。对罗斯和我们来说，更有趣的是，加缪的一个关键主题是，“瘟疫既是枯萎病，又是启示。”它把腐败世界的隐藏真相带到了表面。同样，COVID-19大流行暴露并放大了社会中的不平等。当早期的病例包括精英阶层时，大流行病作为伟大的平等者的神话得到了传播：王子，首相，英超足球经理和演员汤姆汉克斯。过去是，现在也是，最有可能的情况是，随着疫情的蔓延和社会的反应，我们会看到两种常见的不平等：COVID-19带来的不平等，以及导致更普遍的健康不平等的社会条件的不平等。1630年，瘟疫来到北方意大利，造成35%的人口死亡，其中贝加莫的死亡率为38%，帕多瓦的死亡率高达59%。杀害如此多人的一个影响是，意大利经济不平等的急剧上升暂时放缓。在瘟疫之后，工作很顺利很多工人死了真实的工资也增加了。考虑到许多潜在的购买者也已经离开，房地产的价格相对较低，这使得较低阶层的人口更容易获得房地产。但这并没有持续多久。到了1650年，威尼斯、北方意大利和整个意大利的不平等现象再次无情地加剧。2
Exponential growth is difficult for people to grasp. But that is what has happened to sales of Albert Camus’s The Plague, first published in 1947. According to Jacqueline Rose, it is ‘an upsurge strangely in line with the graphs that daily chart the toll of the sick and the dead’. She reports that, from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, sales had grown 1000%. 1 It may not be worth dwelling on those statistics. More interesting for Rose, and for us, is that a key theme of Camus is that ‘the pestilence is at once blight and revelation. It brings the hidden truth of a corrupt world to the surface’. In the same way, the pandemic of COVID-19 exposes and amplifies inequalities in society. The myth of the pandemic as the great leveller was given air when early cases included elites: a prince, a prime minister, a Premier League football manager and the actor Tom Hanks. It was, and is, most likely that as the pandemic took hold and society responded we would see familiar inequalities, of two sorts: inequalities in COVID-19 and inequalities in the social conditions that lead to inequalities in health more generally.It was not always thus with epidemics. The plague came to Northern Italy in 1630, killing 35% of the population, including 38% in Bergamo, and an astonishing 59% in Padua. One effect of killing so many people was a temporary slowdown in what had been a steep rise in economic inequality in Italy. In the aftermath of the plague, work was plentiful—so many workers had died—and real wages increased. Property was available at relatively low cost, given how many potential purchasers had also gone, making it easier for lower strata of the population to acquire property. It did not last. By 1650, inequality was again on its relentless rise in Venice, Northern Italy and Italy as a whole. 2