“Do you ever wonder why hard-working people suffer the most?”We all know that we want to live the American dream of having our careers or a stable job nonetheless to support ourselves or more importantly our family. Sadly we know the truth of the matter is that most of the time we won’t ever achieve that dream or it’s impossible. This is due to the unjust treatment that we face as the working class in society. We are always undermined, underprivileged, and left to fend for ourselves through the toughest of times. This is the same case with the effect of COVID-19 on the individual who is considered the working class. In this essay I will be going over the chaos that COVID-19 had on the lower-income individuals of society and how unemployment and property continue to increase throughout the time of the pandemic.
What you hear on new reports and from our government about the living situation and poverty is just sugar-coated for the media and is hiding the truth. The article “We’ll never know the pandemic’s true toll on the working class” by Libby Watson goes into depth about how the working class was affected the worst from the pandemic and acknowledges the fact that not everyone suffered the same. Furthermore, it’s trying to make the people interpret what the economic fallout has done and how it was the leading cause of unemployment, increase in homeless individuals, and a decline of people not being able to qualify for medical insurance. which is a death sentence during the time of this outbreak. This also explains that during these outrageous times people fought to survive and make a living from the restriction that the government placed. The Pew Research center article supports this claim made by Libby Watson.
The Pew Research center is a website that was created to be a thinking tank that provided numerous information about social issues, public opinion,and research. The article “Economic fallout from COVID-19 continues to hit lower-income Americans the hardest” which was written by Kim Parker and a few others goes over how the COVID outbreak made different races, ethnicities, and lower-income individuals suffer from not being able to pay bills from landlords increasing rent. While these individuals are unemployed on top of that. Also how minorities had the highest percentage of people unable to pay bills, buy food and just make a living. Not even race but education played a big role in the increase in poverty in society because those with higher education somehow did not suffer a great loss compared to those that have just a high school diploma or just aged. To summarize, this article is just informing the reader of the bias of the federal government on people that can support themselves under these circumstances and how whites and well-educated individuals are better treated than the working class.
It gets even worse because not only Americans are facing poverty but most of the world is dealing with the rapid increase in poverty and homelessness. The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research has an expert called “Estimates of the Impact of COVID-19 on Global Poverty” which goes over scenarios of short and long-term economic effects of covid 19 on a global scale. For example, the researchers of the paper theorized that there will be a global contraction of about 5 to 20 cents per household’s income or consumption. Doesn’t seem like much, but when considering headcounts for everyone in your household, the amount would be from $1.90 to about $5.50 taken away per day. This is a big problem for the people that can even afford to make a living and for the United nation because according to the paper this will cause a real challenge for them to live up to the promise of ending poverty by 2030. Also this will ruin all the progress that was made for reducing poverty and make us face the high level of poverty from back then. The most terrifying part about all this is that the estimates state that “the number of people living in poverty could increase by 420-580 million.
If that’s not enough for you to picture this big issue of poverty that is plaguing us the working class. Then let me give you an example of a country that is suffering the most and that would be India. According to the wire, a website that is dedicated to supporting facts about the economy around the world they have an article called “India’s Unemployment Rate May Have Shot Up to 23% after COVID 19 lockdown: CMIE”.This is already a red flag because India, unfortunately, is a third-world country that suffers poverty way more than others, and for them to lose jobs that are significant to their survival is terrible. Furthermore this locked down restrictions have caused the losses of over 50 million people to file for unemployment in India in just a week. Compared to the United state who had nearly 10 million workers file which is 4x less than India.
In addition to those terrible facts, there may be a new working class in our society. According to a website called “theatlantic.com”, there is an article called “how the coronavirus could create a new working class” that predicts that there will be a riot and the workers will turn their rage on CEOs of corporations or the middle class. This is a result of the “poor getting socially close so that the rich could socially distance”.An example of the new working class according to the article is of those individuals that are working at home and are getting lots while not being at risk of getting COVID-19. While the essential workers like doctors, supermarket workers, etc are an arm’s length away from individuals and could get the virus at any moment. Furthermore those essential workers are most of the time not given paid medical leave at all. Also false promises were made from their company’s who held out on paying them for quarantine leaves. For this failure of the companies not for fulfilling their promises and the lack of protection for their workers. This could ultimately lead to the new working class “essential workers” taking their anger out on their boss or those that are getting paid way more for nothing.
To continue with the topic of the unjustifiable treatment that our class is doing. Zahid Maniyar from “cjp.org.in” wrote an article called “COVID-19 and the egregious condition of the working class” This informs us of facts that we’re already aware of like how the COVID-19 outbreak is not just a medical emergency but an economic crisis for laborers and the poor. But what we aren’t aware of is that those who have the luxury of working at home don’t know that people who work day to day jobs are constantly fighting to stay alive from either this disease or from starvation from not being able to support themselves any longer. This is because the laws and policies placed to so called protect the people are not up to the task and are causing many to suffer from the restriction. Also the article state, “The virus that transmits from one infected person to another by air droplets has not only hit us hard on the respiratory system but also our realization that the world is not ready for such pandemics.”This is very true from companies not being able to provide for their workers, people panicking like crazy, and the medical workers not being able to keep up with this disease. but what is a revolving factor of all this and is affected the most is the working class.
There is even more pressure unfortunately on the working class with the government forcing regulations for everyone to get vaccinated. according to an article called “International Labor Organization, ‘ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the World of Work’, third edition, ILO, Geneva, 29 April 2020” explaining that although the vaccine campaign has been a great help with fighting the virus. Only a few countries and regions of the. The world is fully vaccinated. This is because only wealthier countries can get everyone vaccinated. While poorer countries or even states don’t have the resources or the funds to make this happen. Furthermore, progress of the vaccination has been slow in a couple of countries due to workers and people being against the vaccine because of the limitations that are placed on them when they reject the idea of getting the vaccination. Almost like the government forcing it upon them. Even the percentage of low-income people getting fully vaccinated is under 5% and the same goes for Africa who suffers the same casualties or even worse. Most workers are unable to make a recovery to go back to work compared to the rich or the middle class and more and more hours are being taken away as a result of the worker’s absence. Which we know they aren’t covered for.
So put into perspective the horror people face when hearing about this disease and how they didn’t know that their whole life was going to change. The World Health Organization has a slide called, “COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. COVID-19 is now a pandemic affecting many countries globally.”This provides us with the information that was well needed when the pandemic started. But sadly we weren’t prepared, so to start it talks about the possible origins from, humans, environmental causes and food market possible. Also the super spreading events could have been prevented if we had a stronger health system, better government transparency, and more press spreading the knowledge that was necessary to keep the people safe. Also there were numerous public health measurement that could’ve been taken before the breakouts like quarantine, isolation, physical distancing, contact tracing beforehand. But the government failed to do this and wasn’t as concerned as they were supposed to be for an event that could put the lives of many in jeopardy. Or they just simply played favor for the people in a higher power and the rich and forgot about the less fortunate individuals and groups in society around the world as well.
It seems like there is a pattern being repeated with the people or in other words “us”.With Constant issues being placed on us, making us suffocate from underneath the rich and the government. Almost like we’re being placed to the side or just the government turning their back on us when we need them the most, and when we think things are getting better for the working class, in reality, it’s just becoming worse. Rich lowery from “New York Post” has an article called “COVID 19 hit the working class hardest-just when it was finally doing better” which goes over the fact that I brought up that the working class continues to be bombarded with more nonsense from the aftermath of the outbreak even after two years. According to the article,” Policymakers need to realize that when they promulgate lockdown restrictions, they are usually asking the people with the least economic margin for error to sacrifice the most”.Meaning that the lockdown took a great toll on us and the government must take action to help the working class to recovery from what they have made us sacrifice. In addition, it seems that even with the government assistance and people being vaccinated, the employment rate and mom and pops shops won’t fully recover till 2023 or even longer.
On top of that, there is one other crisis that went hand to hand with the outbreak to make these years even worse than what it is and that is racial justice. In an article called “Covid 19, economic mobility, racial justice, and the middle class” Ashleigh Maciolek tackles the fact that race played a major role in how the outbreak played out and all the casualties.Like the race gap of Covid 19 death that is way more than appeared. According to CDC data released the death rate of Latinos and black was greater than whites,5x greater to be exact. Also not just race but age and gender affect the rate. This is because older men were killed way more than females by Covid-19, almost 3.0 more men were killed of paring to the females because of the factor of hormonal difference, immunity, and pre-existing conditions. But no one knows why this phenomenon occurs. The most shocking thing from this article’s data that could affect humanity negatively in the future is that there are half a million fewer children. Why this is bad for the working class you may ask, just because of the fact that the economic perils could drastically make the birth rate skyrocket and impact family planning. This is by the families introducing more babies into the world but not having jobs to support and provide for them. American society as we know it could collapse potentially from another baby bomber era taking place. This is not the end of the damage on American society though because according to the article the middle class is ceasing to exist and becoming nothing more than just more working class. The article also states that “As a result, families now need two earners to make ends meet, placing an extreme squeeze on their time”.Making the middle class suffer the same as the working class.
Overall the chaos that COVID-19 had on the lower-income individuals of society is worse than what you thought and hopefully this enlightened you “the people” to take action to stop unemployment and property because without your support poverty will continue to increase throughout this hard time and will linger in the future of our children. We wouldn’t want to place this burden on them as our government has done to us. Help bring an end to Covid-19 rain of disaster
