Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good, Boston College, US.
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, CL.
Ann Glob Health. 2021 Apr 1;87(1):34. doi: 10.5334/aogh.3225.
Incidence and mortality from COVID-19 are starkly elevated in poor, minority and marginalized communities. These differences reflect longstanding disparities in income, housing, air quality, preexisting health status, legal protections, and access to health care. The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have made these ancient disparities plainly visible.
As scholars in Catholic research universities committed to advancing both scientific knowledge and social justice, we examined these disparities through the lenses of both epidemiology and ethics.
We see these widening disparities as not only as threats to human health, societal stability, and planetary health, but also as moral wrongs - outward manifestations of unrecognized privilege and greed. They are the concrete consequences of policies that promote structural violence and institutionalize racism.
We encourage governments to take the following three scientific and ethical justified actions to reduce disparities, prevent future pandemics, and advance the common good: (1) Invest in public health systems; (2) Reduce economic inequities by making health care affordable to all; providing education, including early education, to all children; strengthening environmental and occupational safeguards; and creating more just tax structures; (3) Preserve our Common Home, the small blue planet on which we all live.
在贫困、少数族裔和边缘社区，COVID-19 的发病率和死亡率明显升高。这些差异反映了长期存在的收入、住房、空气质量、预先存在的健康状况、法律保护和获得医疗保健方面的差距。COVID-19 大流行及其经济后果使这些古老的差距显而易见。
作为致力于推进科学知识和社会正义的天主教研究型大学的学者，我们通过流行病学和伦理学的视角来研究这些差异。
我们将这些不断扩大的差距不仅视为对人类健康、社会稳定和地球健康的威胁，而且视为道德上的错误——是未被承认的特权和贪婪的外在表现。它们是促进结构性暴力和制度化种族主义的政策的具体后果。
我们鼓励政府采取以下三项科学和道德上合理的行动，以减少差距、预防未来的大流行并促进共同利益：（1）投资公共卫生系统；（2）通过使所有人都能负担得起医疗保健、为所有儿童提供教育（包括早期教育）、加强环境和职业保障以及建立更公平的税收结构来减少经济不平等；（3）保护我们的共同家园，即我们所有人都居住的这个蓝色小星球。
