Regardless of whether you asked the world's most accomplished epidemiologist or the average person on the street, most people would agree that the coronavirus pandemic has not affected everybody equally.
As the International Monetary Fund has noted, "the pandemic and the efforts to control it have disproportionately hurt the poor, both within and across countries."
This is certainly true for the areas surrounding the IMF headquarters in Washington, where the U.S. capital's poorest ward has experienced nearly three times as many infections per capita -- and almost four times as many deaths -- as the city's most affluent ward. The same goes for New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, San Antonio, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and virtually every other North American metropolis you can think of.
More striking, though, is that we have seen the same pattern in the supposedly more equitable Europe, where the continent's wealthier historic city centers have been largely spared from major coronavirus outbreaks, while the peripheral urban neighborhoods enclosing them were ravaged by multiple COVID waves.
Take London. The central boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea -- all disproportionately wealthier than surrounding boroughs -- had the lowest infection rates in the city. Poorer districts on the eastern and western outskirts of the city were by far the worst hit. If you boarded a Central Line train at Lancaster Gate Station in Westminster and got off at Redbridge in East London, you would see the average income fall by two-thirds, but the chances of contracting and dying of COVID would increase almost fourfold.
Continental European cities exhibit the same pattern. Amid the luxury villas of Pedralbes, Barcelona's most exclusive neighborhood, the COVID-19 incidence rate is one-third that in the city's poorest area of La Marina del Prat Vermell. A virtually indistinguishable pattern also applies through Madrid, Rome, Brussels and Berlin. Not even the more egalitarian Scandinavian capitals, from Helsinki to Oslo, are exempt from this trend.
Roughly speaking, being a wealthy urban resident in the West appears to offer an effective safeguard against COVID, while living in a poor neighborhood looks more like a curse.
The reasons for such a pattern are not hard to fathom. Remote working tends to be much easier for high-income earners, while people who live in bigger houses and less densely packed neighborhoods can better practice social distancing.
That is in the West. What about Asia?
In cities across Japan and South Korea, and in Hong Kong, income level does not seem to have played a determining role in shaping the subcity distribution of COVID-19 cases. Moreover, when it has, it was in the diametrically opposite direction to that witnessed in Europe and North America. No city better exemplifies this trend than Tokyo.
Much like in Europe, Tokyo's central wards are by far the wealthiest parts of the city. But in stark contrast with Europe, the affluent central districts of Minato, Shibuya and Shinjuku have also been the heaviest hit by COVID, while poorer wards on the city's outskirts are relatively better off in terms of coronavirus infections.
In Seoul and Hong Kong, but also Busan and Nagoya, the positive link between income and COVID incidence is less evident, but this only signifies that residents of these cities are no more or less likely to contract COVID-19 simply based on their income level.
It is difficult to say what might be behind such a jaw-dropping East-West juxtaposition. Some might point to the fact that East Asians embraced telework with more hesitancy than their Western counterparts. Others might call attention to different levels of social discipline and compliance when it comes to hygienic practices.
The truth is, though, that the single biggest difference between East and West lies in the proportions the pandemic has taken on in the two regions. New York City alone counts roughly the same number of coronavirus cases as the whole of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore combined, with more than twice as many deaths, despite having less than 5% of the total population of those cities.
By relying much more heavily on forecasts and not results when it came to measures to contain the virus, such as advanced contact tracing, timely and protracted border closures and surgical lockdowns, East Asian countries have systematically prevented outbreaks from reaching unmanageable proportions.
Conversely, the failure on part of Western countries to contain the virus surge in its earliest stages has forced them to take drastic measures, such as monthslong nationwide lockdowns, which are inevitably easier for work-from-home high-income earners to comply with.
By performing extremely well in terms of prevention -- that is, by stifling the explosive growth of COVID-19 cases in the cradle -- Asian cities seem to have been able to shield their less privileged from the dire consequences of COVID than their Western counterparts.
Perhaps the most pertinent question to ask, in light of such evidence, is whether the West can rightfully claim to be the most fervent champion of equality worldwide.
This article was first published in Nikkei Asia Review on 25 June 2021.
(Photo credit: Jeremy Stenuit)