Letters to the Editor: Omicron fatalism can actually be fatal for minority groups

To the editor: Two columnists, Erika D. Smith and Robin Abcarian, recently addressed the growing fatalistic attitude the public is having about the inevitability of everyone eventually getting sick with COVID-19.

Whether everyone gets the virus is ultimately not the salient point. The issue is the virus has exacerbated already existing inequities in society, especially as it relates to health.

Three groups are disproportionately being impacted by this current epidemic: people of color (primarily Black and Latino people), the elderly and the poor. The prevalence of obesity, diabetes and hypertension is much higher in these populations. Access to quality healthcare favors those with private health plans verses crowded public hospitals or clinics.

The fatalistic attitude relative to COVID-19 is growing, but if these communities don’t get vaccinated, they won’t just get sick — it will be fatal.

Warren Furutani, Gardena

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To the editor: Abcarian provides interesting information, but she needs to check her partisanship at the door.

First, she says that last July, “President Biden proclaimed, ‘We’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” and “at the time, it appeared we had.”

Later, she mentions “the former guy’s bluster at the dawn of the pandemic, which has now infected more than 300 million people worldwide: ‘You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.’”

President Biden’s remark was made more than a year into the pandemic; “the former guy” made his comment at the “dawn.”

While I’m certainly not a supporter of the former guy, his comment was made prior to the things learned since then. Biden continues to make promises he can’t keep, even with the science we have learned since the “dawn of the pandemic.”

Carol Graham, Porter Ranch