EDITORIAL: COVID confirmed Miami's deep disparities. Post-pandemic, we should refuse to 'go back to normal'

Mar. 13—When the pandemic struck last spring, Miami went into hurricane mode, with grocery-store shelves picked clean and a sense of impending doom. The supply-hoarding eased quickly but, a year later, it turns out the hurricane parallels were truer than we knew.

The COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 32,000 people in Florida so far, sickened almost 2 million and cloistered us in our homes has also laid bare our disparities. In Miami, it has exposed fault lines and brought to light years of neglect, much like a hurricane's devastation that requires years of physical rebuilding and policy reforms.

The pandemic may not have ruined buildings but it has wrecked us in other, more lasting ways. In Miami, this year of pain and privation has widened the inequities that plague us: racial, economic, digital, educational, gender.

The list is long and familiar, but the pandemic has made it harder for our elected leaders to look away. As we hope for recovery, this terrible time may be the perfect moment to work on real change.

If there is one thing this year has shown us, it is that access to healthcare must be at the top of that list. The pandemic disproportionately harmed the health of minority and low-income communities. COVID-related illnesses and vaccines illustrated how much the system is skewed toward those with financial resources, good insurance, transportation and computer skills.

And the state public-health system, which should be the first line of defense in a pandemic, wasn't up to the job after years of dismantling by Gov. Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, and Gov. Ron DeSantis. It needs more money so it can actually serve the public in a time of crisis.

Jobs with low pay

Expanding our economy when we rebuild is critical, too. Jobs in South Florida's tourist-dependent economy were an immediate casualty last spring. Those teetering on the edge needed rental assistance, which Miami-Dade County provided with $20 million in federal relief money and another $60 million to come. A federal moratorium on evictions has also saved people's homes. But, to a build more-resilient economy as we emerge into a post-pandemic era, we need more jobs that aren't tied so tightly to low-paying service positions.

A report issued last summer by the nonprofit Miami Homes for All said a full 30 percent of Miami-Dade County's households earn less than $35,000 a year and pay more than they can afford in rent or mortgage. Executive Director Annie Lord told the Miami Herald Editorial Board, "We expected that a hurricane would put people on the street because there would be a lot of places they could not inhabit. We now fear the eviction cliff."

Employment in these past 12 months boiled down to who could stay home, who had to take the risk of in-person work — and who got laid off. But in education, the bottom line was brutal in a different way: Students with access to computers at home — and parents to help them — had an advantage over those without.

Still, in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, we lost track of nearly 20,000 children in the school system. Miami-Dade now says 90 percent of the missing have been accounted for. But those who lost educational ground in 2020 may never be able to make it up, an incalculable loss for them and the community. If remote learning is to continue — and for some, it's a good fit — we need to learn how to do it better, for children and for teachers.

Women drop out

And women lost out during this year of purgatory. Burdened with much of the family care in this grave new world, they exited the national workforce in far greater numbers than men, an issue that is finally getting much-needed attention. And as women dropped out to care for children and the elderly, South Florida's already-glaring income disparity continued to grow, with home buyers from other states propelling single-family-home prices even farther out of reach for so many locals.

Our racial tensions were driven into the open, too, with George Floyd's death in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor's in Kentucky sparking waves of protests and counter-protests that reached South Florida. Mask-wearing became politicized at the mass protests, another way the pandemic divided us.

It all paints a portrait of institutionalized unfairness, especially for people with less wealth, who tend to be people of color. But it's also an opportunity to change and to bring us together. The old version of normal wasn't all that great for many disadvantaged people anyway. When we rebuild, it should be on more even footing.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has started down that path with her newly created Office of Equity and Inclusion, a promising effort that could spark more diversity of thought as we seek solutions to these long-lasting problems.

Levine Cava, who has said flat-out that there is "systemic racism in county government," told the Editorial Board that the coronavirus pandemic has started a necessary conversation in which, "There is a good percentage of our community that can no longer avoid talking about the disparities."

Legislature fails us

The Legislature could help — but probably won't. Despite creating committees in both the House and Senate that purport to address pandemic issues, lawmakers are mostly focused on promoting DeSantis' regressive agenda.

There may be help from Washington, though. Even as Florida's governor has continued to dole out shots in personal appearances around the state, federal vaccine sites supported by the Biden administration have opened more and more locations in minority communities in an effort to reach medically underserved areas.

Structural racism in the health system, normalizing issues of chronic illness in marginalized communities — these are social ills, but they aren't insurmountable obstacles, if politicians and voters choose to address them.

"What I worry about," said Zinzi Bailey, a social epidemiologist at the University of Miami, "is we're continuing to have the same conversations but not creating structure to eliminate these outcomes."

That's the danger. As vaccines roll out and transmission rates fall, the temptation will be strong to slide back into denying the disparities. It might also be the most politically expedient thing to do. Big Tech moving to Miami creates a lot more buzz than the hard work of rebuilding the public-health system and finding ways to keep families in affordable housing. But a return to the old ways would be nothing less than dishonoring the 32,000 — and counting — Floridians who lost their lives in this dreadful year.

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