The Associated Press reports on how cuts due to COVID-19 budget shortfalls are further hollowing out public health staffing and services. “States, cities and counties in dire straits have begun laying off and furloughing their limited staff, and even more devastation looms, as states reopen and cases surge. Historically, even when money pours in following crises such as Zika and H1N1, it disappears after the emergency subsides. Officials fear the same thing is happening now. “We don’t say to the fire department, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. There were no fires last year, so we’re going to take 30% of your budget away.’ That would be crazy, right?” said Dr. Gianfranco Pezzino, the health officer in Shawnee County, Kansas. “But we do that with public health, day in and day out.”
The New York Times shared new CDC data – released after the NYT sued the CDC for access – showing that Black and Latino people have been “disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups… Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, according to the new data, which provides detailed characteristics of 640,000 infections detected in nearly 1,000 U.S. counties. And Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, the data shows.” … The risk of getting sick from tight living quarters, she added, is compounded by the pressure to keep working or quickly return to work, even in risky settings. The risks are borne out by demographic data. Across the country, 43 percent of Black and Latino workers are employed in service or production jobs that for the most part cannot be done remotely, census data from 2018 shows. Only about one in four white workers held such jobs. Also, Latino people are twice as likely to reside in a crowded dwelling — less than 500 square feet per person — as white people, according to the American Housing Survey.”
The Washington Post reported on a nationwide spike in overdoses during the coronavirus pandemic. “Addiction is a disease of isolation. “It’s when you feel alone, stigmatized and hopeless that you are most vulnerable and at risk,” said Robert Ashford, who runs a recovery center in Philadelphia and has been in recovery for seven years. “So much of addiction has nothing to do with the substance itself. It has to do with pain or distress or needs that aren’t being met.” As the pandemic has pushed massive doses of fear, uncertainty, anxiety and depression into people’s lives, it has cut off the human connections that help ease those burdens.”
The New York Times reports on the surge of COVID-19 cases in California and implications for the state’s policy priorities. “For the state, it means a progressive agenda predicated on the continuation of good times will be hampered as governments move from expansion to cuts. Voters had mostly been open to paying for expanding services and priorities like affordable housing, but they seem to be turning wary of new taxes. … Even the most optimistic outcome, however, seems almost certain to hamper many of Governor Newsom’s most ambitious plans. Before the pandemic, the November elections were being positioned as a moment to raise taxes further and expand government services… Several cities, including San Francisco, have tax measures lined up for the ballot (they can still be removed), while state voters face an epic battle over the future of Proposition 13, the 1978 law that capped property taxes statewide. Proposition 15, which has qualified for the November ballot, would repeal the local tax cap for commercial properties like office buildings, generating an estimated $12 billion a year for schools. A few months ago, these measures were talked about as ways to help pay for expanding things like education and affordable housing by taxing businesses and wealthier taxpayers. Now they are likely to be reframed, at least in part, as a backstop to battered state finances. There is data to suggest that the state’s relentless housing and homeless problems, combined with fears about the long-term impact of coronavirus, have made voters wary of new taxes. In the March primary, several state and local bond measures were rejected, and exit polls showed voters had “tax fatigue,” according to the Public Policy Institute of California. While Californians are concerned about declining state revenues, 60 percent oppose tax increases to fund the governor’s most recent budget, according to a recent survey by the Public Policy Institute.”