Reader Response
“What We Do and Don’t Know about the Links between Air Pollution and Coronavirus” is an article written by Lewis (2020), an atmospheric scientist, explaining the strong connection between smog and coronavirus and describing other factors which could exacerbate the mortality from the virus. He supports the strong connection by stating the similarities of health condition issues between smog and coronavirus that increase the number of deaths. Lewis also mentions that exchange of opinion by people on “how air pollution affects the rates of mortality from the disease” was a debatable topic considering the strong connection between both. He also states other contributors that “increase the prevalence of underlying health conditions” of individuals. When these factors are combined, those with the virus may have their health deteriorate further. Additionally, it is questionable that improving air quality will proportionally ameliorate the spread of the disease. While I agree with Levi's explanation, I feel that he could have elaborated on the other factors exacerbating the virus situation: poverty, individuals’ underlying medical conditions and population rate.
The first important factor would be poverty. Despite the article agreeing by asserting “They often use mass transit systems, they can have higher rates of poverty and deprivation”, it failed to elaborate. An animation by Payne has explained how poverty linked with coronavirus. The animation analyzes how the virus does not affect the public equivalently beside money seeming to be a principal factor. It points out statistics by an economist at the University of Oxford who found that an individual with high salary has lesser physical contact with others compared to lower salary individuals. That is only agreeable in countries that allow work from home policy which also means that they are less likely to be exposed to outside as they would not need to travel. Moreover, the more penurious an individual is, the more likely they will be living in compacted space with others, which gives the virus a higher chance to spread and not many can afford health care*. If the article was not biased in supporting pollution links, it could have detailed more on the facts between poverty and virus.
Secondly, underlying medical conditions is a another key factor which I felt that Lewis should have supported in his statement with facts. Sun from The Washington Post (2020) quoted demographic data in her report providing a vision of how members of any age group with illness are liable to virus exposure, which would deteriorate their health causing death. Even suppose Lewis mentioned that individuals’ underlying medical conditions with covid contributed to the spike in the mortality rate, it failed to support with data on how. Sun deduces how people with lack of access to medical care and left untreated due to racism are missing out from the data. Hence, there is uncertainty in the number of deaths that were caused by not treating the illness on time.
Lastly, McCraty from The Coronavirus Pandemic article (2020) remarked that humans fail to understand how virus deaths are caused by us. Since writing about air pollution, Lewis should have mentioned about population rate that has proved to be one of the prime causes of air pollution. As the population rate increases, the carbon emissions also increase, causing air pollution. Even so, lockdown helped with decreasing smog, people forget to follow safety distancing rules, especially in overpopulated cities where the contamination rate is high. Thus, the population rate in a country and how strictly people follow the rules decides the spread of the virus and percentages of death (McCraty, 2020). Considering this was not mentioned in the article, it portrays of it begin one-sided.
In conclusion, even if the Lewis article elaborated well the links between air pollution and coronavirus and mentioned other factors, the description of other factors is not presented. These reflect that the article favours more on supporting the air pollution's link, making Lewis seem biased.
(651 words)
Reference
Lewis, A. (2020, 13 May). What We Do and Don’t Know about the Links between Air Pollution and Coronavirus
Payne, J. (2020, 4 June). Coronavirus and poverty: Is there a link
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-52920591
McCarty, S. (2020, 20 April). Why Covid-19 is a human overpopulation problem – perhaps humans are the virus?
Air pollution: Covid-19 deaths study (2020, 20 April), The Guardian.
Sun L. (2020 16 July). Patients with underlying conditions were 12 times as likely to die of covid-19 as otherwise healthy people, CDC finds.
Revised On : 12/12/2020
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