Has there ever been a more important time to consider how politics, policies, and laws influence health? We are, as a country, in the midst of unprecedented turmoil, all of which has implications for our health. The COVID-19 pandemic is the most obvious clear and present danger, killing more than 500,000 Americans as of this writing, infecting more than 28 million others. Our efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in an economic slowdown unparalleled in many aspects for nearly a hundred years. More people have been unemployed than at any time since World War II. More than 26 million Americans, nearly 16% of the entire US workforce, have been either unemployed, otherwise prevented from working, or working for reduced pay during the pandemic. And both these sets of consequences have been experienced inequitably. People of color, particularly Black Americans, have experienced greater rates of, and death from COVID-19, than white Americans. Meanwhile, unemployment has been both deeper, and slower to recover, among the same minority groups who are already bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is then little wonder that 2020 also saw protests about racial inequity that were probably the largest civil protests ever in American history.
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