Today, Explained - "The Great Equalizer"

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Madonna was wrong. Covid-19 isn't an equalizer. It's coming for America's most vulnerable populations. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Tuesday, April 7th, 2020, and for some inexplicable reason, Wisconsin is voting. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm, and this is your coronavirus update from Today Explained. Wisconsin's Democratic Governor Tony Evers issued an executive order on Monday to suspend all in-person voting. He was later overruled by the state's Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservatives. And then later in the day, the Supreme Court of the United States, which is also controlled by conservatives, weighed in to give the primary a 5-4 go-ahead. And here we are. People in Wisconsin today had to choose between voting and dying. And you know what? They still chose to vote. More on Wisconsin in tomorrow's show.

The president sidelined the guy who was going to keep an eye on him and literally trillions of dollars of taxpayer stimulus. The acting inspector general for the Department of Defense, Glenn Fine, was supposed to oversee how coronavirus relief got spent. Now he's been replaced and Democrats are very displeased. New York reported its highest single day death toll today,

731 deaths in 24 hours. That came after two days where it looked like the death toll had plateaued. Still, the governor said the rate of hospitalizations is falling and that the spread of the virus is likely slowing. Boris Johnson is still in intensive care. He's on oxygen, but not a ventilator. And his foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is pitching in where he can. Japan declared a state of emergency in its two biggest cities today after big jumps in COVID-19 cases. It's also rolling out a trillion-ish in stimulus spending. And China is ending its lockdown of Wuhan.

That announcement came after China reported no new COVID-19 deaths for the first time since January. That being said, some people seriously question China's numbers. Even good news can find a way to be bad right now. Today Explained has opened up its lines of communication. Call 202-688-5944, email todayexplained at vox.com, or tweet at us. We're at today underscore explained, and I'm at Ramos Firm.

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a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. About two weeks ago, Madonna got into a rose-petaled-filled bathtub

and delivered what seemed like an impromptu monologue about this coronavirus. She called it the Great Equalizer. That's the thing about COVID-19. It doesn't care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live. To the surprise of, I guess, just Madonna, people thought it was a little tone deaf. It's the great equalizer. And what's terrible about it is what's great about it.

What's terrible about it is it's made us all equal in many ways. One of the most famous people on the planet telling us from her bathtub filled with rose petals that we were all equal in the eyes of this pandemic. She deleted the post. But it's not just Madonna or other celebrities with bathtubs and rose petals. A week ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said pretty much the exact same thing. Everyone is subject to this virus. It is the great equalizer. I don't care how smart, how rich, how powerful you think you are.

I don't care how young, how old. This virus is the great equalizer. The thing is, it's not. Sure, COVID-19 doesn't discriminate, but we do. What Madonna and the governor of New York seem to have missed is that this pandemic will adversely affect those with fewer resources, especially in

places with rampant inequalities. Places like this one. Data from the federal government is limited at this point, and that's pretty contentious, but according to WBEZ, 70% of COVID-19 deaths in Chicago have been black people, even though black people only make up 29% of the city. Black people make up 14% of the state of Michigan, but according to the state's data so far, something like 40% of the COVID-19 deaths. Louisiana's numbers show that 70% of the lives lost have been black people, though they make up just 30% of the population. If you're searching for reasons, take your pick. There's a giant healthcare-shaped hole in our social safety net, a lot of lower-income communities don't have the option to

shelter in place because they're still taking public transit to work every day, and then there are environmental factors. Some estimates say that Black people are 75% more likely to live near toxic industrial pollution, leaving them at much higher risk of the chronic conditions that will make you susceptible to COVID-19. You know, I think something important to recognize during this crisis is that anyone who has been impacted by pollution, not just the elderly, is in danger of infection. Lubna Ahmed is the director of environmental health at We Act for Environmental Justice. While the elderly are amongst those most in danger from the infection, those living in communities that have been impacted by pollution for decades are also in danger.

They likely will face an elevated risk of underlying conditions that increase vulnerability to the virus. And this environment can apply to your outdoor air quality, indoor air quality, your housing situation, you know, anything that is really surrounding you. And I imagine air quality is crucial given that COVID-19 comes straight for your lungs. What's the best way to think about air quality and crucial given that COVID-19 comes straight for your lungs. What's the best way to think about air quality and air pollution? So in talking about air pollution, there are two really major focuses. Outdoor air pollution, your ambient air, emissions from cars, from buses and trucks. And in addition to that, you have emissions from buildings. And then, you know,

kind of flipping to what your indoor air quality looks like, which oftentimes people don't really think too much about. But I always draw on the example of public housing. So there are many issues with infrastructure. There are leaky pipes. There are cracks in building walls, in the roofs. This allows for the development and persistence of things like mold, the presence of pests. People then may spray pesticides, and all of those do a detriment to your respiratory health. And Linda, you're in New York City. Are there neighborhoods that are particularly bad there? So the Harlem community is predominantly a community made up of black and brown folks, many low-income folks. And so you're attacking on several additional sources of air pollution to a population that is underinsured

or uninsured, folks that are having much more difficulty dealing with extreme heat because they might not have access to air conditioners. There's a high rate of homelessness in these neighborhoods. That's kind of with regard to the outdoor air quality. And then with regard to the indoor air quality, East Harlem specifically has a concentration of public housing and dealing with things like poor ventilation, poor infrastructure. And if you overlay a map of where asthma rates are higher with a demographic map in terms of race, you will see a strong link. So for example, in communities that are predominantly black and brown communities, there tends to be a higher asthma rate.

And this is because those communities tend to be more highly polluted. Right. If you're a child who has lived in an environment where your outdoor, your ambient air quality is poor, and now you're sheltering in place where your ambient air quality is poor, and now you're sheltering in place where your indoor air quality is also poor, you may already have chronic asthma or some other respiratory disease. If somebody's respiratory health has been compromised for their whole life, and then they're faced with either trying to avoid the infection or trying to survive the infection,

they will likely have a much more difficult time doing so. Could the reduced emissions from our economy basically shutting down help balance out this risk at all? That is an interesting point in thinking about outdoor air quality and how it is seeing some improvements. But keeping in mind that this is only temporary. There are people that have already been exposed to pollution for potentially their entire lives. And now we're, again, asking them to shelter in place. So their indoor air quality is really a risk factor here. I mean, obviously it's really great that we've seen some air quality improvements. But in terms of not only coronavirus, but long-term solutions, big picture, it's not that huge. The organization we turn to for long-term, big-picture solutions on the environment?

It's actually another casualty of this coronavirus. That's in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. as they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC.

Terms and conditions apply. David Wallace-Wells, you've been writing about the environmental impact of COVID-19 for New York Magazine. How is the United States government responding to the added risk environmental pollution could cause for people in the country? I'd say they're dealing with it in a completely perverse way, which is to say they're not interested in reducing the corona risk by reducing pollution. They're not interested in reducing pollution for other reasons, of which there are many, many reasons to want to do that. In fact, they're sort of moving in the opposite direction. In general, they're taking the opportunity of the crisis to roll back aggressively some environmental regulations that have, some of them have been in

place for quite a long time, and through the stimulus are doing what they can to at least stabilize the current state of the fossil fuel industry, which probably without the support of the federal government would continue collapsing in the near term. So in just about every way, you know, people who are hoping for environmental reform to come out of this particular pandemic crisis are at this point at least disappointed and frustrated at what they're seeing from the federal government. Well, let's get into the specifics. President Trump in the middle of this crisis is rolling back environmental regulations. The EPA has basically announced that they will not be doing their job for the foreseeable

future. They have publicly said the entire project of monitoring and regulating pollution of all kinds, that is the purpose of that agency, the whole purview of that agency, they will no longer do. They are going to theoretically continue to keep an eye on the way that American industry is performing on these measures, how much pollution they're doing, but only through the voluntary self-monitoring of those companies. So, you know, the EPA was set up because we didn't trust any industries to really accurately self-monitor and self-regulate. And the Trump administration,

the Trump EPA is saying, at least for the time being, given the state of the economy, because of the pandemic crisis, we are not going to be even looking at any company, any corporation, any industrial sector to see how they're doing, how well they're honoring the laws that are on the books or the regulations that have been around for a long time. We're just going to sort of trust that they're going to do whatever they can do. Since they've rolled this out

as a sort of coronavirus crisis response, they're essentially saying, we want you to be doing worse environmentally if you think it will help you be more productive financially. Was anyone clamoring for this? Did anyone see this economic crisis coming and go, we better roll back the environmental regulations? I think it's, you know, particular companies that were already suffering and were poised to suffer more in the next year or so, especially given the state of the economy, were likely to turn to the federal government for bailout and support of any kind they could get, including rollback of regulations. That's probably happening in a lot of sectors of the American economy right now.

But the coal industry was already in something like a terminal collapse in the US. And the oil and gas business was poised to suffer enormously over the next year, in part because of the fall in demand that we're seeing because of the forced lockdown and quasi-quarantine measures that we're all living through. But also because that episode is coinciding with this insane price war going on in the Middle East, which has meant that oil is being produced at such capacity that you can't really sell it at a profit at the moment. So all three of those sectors were likely to be doing really poorly over the next year. And it's no surprise that they asked the government for some kind of bailout. Having said that, I think that people are really concerned about the state of the economy, not just in the US, but all around the world. You see kind of insane projections from JP Morgan saying we're going to get a 25-30% decline in GDP. The

Fed says that we're likely to see 30% unemployment or more, at least in the short term. So we're heading into what looks like by all analytics to be an incredibly grim economic period. And I think the public does sort of want the government to do what it can to help support every sector of our economy during that time so that we have a less dramatic trough to climb out of. And that means, you know, not just in the U.S., but all around the world, you're seeing, as part of the stimulus spending that's being proposed, a lot of spending that is quite damaging

environmentally. So it sounds like big polluters will be relieved here, but most people probably didn't have, you know, shut down the EPA on their bingo cards when this became a crisis. Well, there's one other big part of it, which is the rollback, the particular rollback of fuel emission standards for new cars. And this is especially galling because the rollback of these fuel emission standards for new cars is something that literally nobody is asking for, except for a very few Republicans who just want to do whatever they can to spite liberals and Democrats, and in particular, to roll back the policy legacy of the Obama administration, which instituted these new emission standards against some industry protest.

But over time, car companies adjusted, and they weren't on track to exactly meet the standards, but they were moving very much in the right direction, invested an enormous amount of innovation and capitalist expenditure on the project of meeting them, and didn't want to see all that money wasted. And so not only did they not ask for these regulations to be rolled back, in a number of cases, they were actually actively lobbying against them being rolled back. So Trump is poisoning our air for the benefit of almost literally no one.

Yeah, especially when it comes to emission standards that the auto industry wasn't even clamoring for. I wonder how immediate the effects of this will be. I mean, are manufacturers like GM and Ford going to stop their initiatives for more fuel efficient vehicles just because the Trump administration just said, forget about those Obama rules? And likewise, are industries going to start polluting now just because they can? I would guess in the car manufacturing sector in particular, I would guess that they're basically going to wait and see. It's actually quite possible that some of these rollbacks are reversed in court. But the timeline for that isn't clear. And probably most auto manufacturers are going to just sort of stay the course for now. But of course, what it suggests about environmental

policy in a possible second Trump term is quite concerning. And certainly, you know, if Trump is reelected in November, even auto manufacturers who have stood pat and not taken any aggressive action in rethinking their plans for their own efficiency standards will probably the very next day transform their approach and go back to manufacturing cars that were, you know, less environmentally responsible. Is it possible that, you know, pending lawsuits that challenge these rollbacks or challenge these new self-regulatory practices, that the environment comes out on top because so much of the pollution that we're used to seeing has been shut down? The way you're seeing these aerial images of Wuhan or even the continental United States, North America, and seeing far less pollution in the air? Is there a chance that

this pandemic will actually be good for the planet? I think for the time being, we're seeing some emissions reductions, but just how long those emissions reductions last, we don't really know. And it depends a lot on the kind of stimulus spending that is done in the immediate aftermath of the sort of deepest parts of the crisis. So in China, in the first quarter of this year, there was a kind of significant reduction in carbon emissions and in air pollution generally, because so much of that country's industrial sector was totally shut down. You can see that reduction in emissions on the global trajectory. And you can actually see it in the public health data in which some economists have suggested that as many as 10 or 20 times

as many Chinese had their lives saved from the reduced air pollution from the industrial lockdown as lost lives due to the coronavirus. Now, that math is a little complicated because it's not clear exactly how much we can rely on the Chinese data about the lethality and fatality rates of COVID-19. But nevertheless, it shows that there has been a really significant impact on the air quality, even over a very short period of time. And you're starting to see similar story unfold in places like Los Angeles and other parts of the US, in parts of Europe, are now at least temporarily have quite clean, clear air. But China is also a discouraging case study because as they've begun to reopen their

economy already, they've basically made up all the lost ground that they gained through emissions reductions in the first quarter of this year. And they've announced that they're going to be sort of dramatically rolling back their environmental regulations in the same way that Trump has done in an effort to further stimulate their industrial sectors, which is how they've tried to bring the country out of slower economic periods and economic slowdowns in the past. I would not at all be surprised to see on net globally a kind of fossil fuel intensive stimulus emerging over the next year. So even though you can draw pretty much a direct line from how we live on this planet to how this pandemic is spreading, we're not going to learn much, environmentally speaking, from this catastrophe?

One of the major lessons of climate change is that we don't live outside of nature. We don't control nature. We are not in positions of domination over nature. We live within it, subject to it, and are in fact provoking it more and more every day, every year, in a way that produces a quite brutal response. I think one of the major lessons of the coronavirus is the same. As protected as we may feel, as wealthy as we may feel, as buffered and as separated from the natural world as we may think ourselves to be, we're still obviously subject to the vagaries and brutalities of nature. We're making those a lot

more common through habitat destruction and ecosystem disruption. I think those are all lessons that the public is learning. And I would add to them a really important political lesson, which is just that a lot of things that we took for granted as the permanent and unshakable, unmovable features of contemporary life have proven to be actually quite changeable on a quite fast timeline because of the coronavirus. You know, two months ago, if you had said to an American, what are the chances that the entire country would enter into a kind of quarantine state where most people weren't leaving their homes most days? And if they ever left their

homes, it was only to go to the supermarket or the pharmacy to pick up essential supplies. The entire economy was more or less shut down. Air travel and other kinds of travel were entirely shut down. We were having people give birth separately from their partners and having people dying in hospitals alone because their families were not allowed to see them. Families living in the basement of their parents' homes without being able to make contact with their parents or their children, except through windows, these are all measures that would have seemed completely impossible to imagine just a few months ago. I mean, we're seeing what at least feels to me to be a real widening of the scope of what's considered politically possible. Now, the question is, what do we do with that possibility?

What response do we engineer? And what kind of policy do we produce out of it? David Wallace-Wells is the author of The Uninhabitable Earth. It's a book all about the consequences of global warming. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. This is Today Explained.