Poor people need proper health care, not fake concern
Are the commenting classes worried about what the coronavirus might do to people living in poverty — or what its spread to poor people might do to them? A common reaction to the virus is driven by an open or implied fear that it will spread to the areas where poor people live, after which it will wreak havoc.
On the surface, this seems to express concern for millions who are struggling to get by. But poor people are usually seen by politics here not as an object of concern but as a problem: townships protests are taken far more seriously if they spill out onto roads and inconvenience motorists. The virus seems to be another case in which the real worry is not that bad things will happen to the povertystricken, but that what happens to them will be bad for the middle class and the wealthy.
Around the world many in the middle classes and above see the places in which poor people live as health hazards. If a virus or epidemic threatens, they assume that once it spreads to taxi ranks, matchbox houses and shacks, it will consume all in its path, including those in leafy suburbs.
This fear partly recognises reality. Here and in other parts of the world many people do live in conditions in which disease may spread. And, since they have no access to middleclass health care, illness is more likely to escalate.
It is this which persuaded governments who didn’t care much about the poor to do something about poverty: it had become clear that slums were a problem for the affluent because they spread diseases that did not respect wealth or status. Improving living conditions for people living in slums became a way of protecting everyone.
But the fear is also often born of prejudice: many who harbour it assume that people in poor areas don’t know as much about hygiene as the middle class. One journalist worried publicly that the virus could be spread through money exchanged in taxis (so money is virus-free when handled by people who own cars?).
Like all prejudices, this is not supported by evidence: for several reasons, poor people are often sticklers for hygiene. Nor does anyone need schooling to understand that they need to wash their hands and not touch their face.
We don’t yet know whether this virus does hit poor people harder. So far it has not — in countries that have reported cases and in which slums are a reality, the virus has been contained. So, it is possible that this time the hazards are not as dangerous as the middle class thinks. But it would be foolish to deny that this could change quickly.
So, there is good reason to insist that people living in poverty be protected — several commentators have pointed out that people can’t protect themselves by washing their hands if they have no access to clean water. “Social distancing” is surely harder if you live in overcrowded spaces. Most important, there is an obvious need to ensure that people living in poverty have the information and access to health care they need to deal with the virus.
But we need to guard against the sort of “public health” methods that are popular among those who see poor people as a threat — driving them out of areas where the middle classes live or bullying them at taxi ranks.
Most importantly, poor people must be treated not as threats who must be punished and controlled lest they threaten the health of the middle class, but as what they are — citizens who are entitled to quality public health care.