Looking at the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic, certain aspects of American life have become abundantly clear. One example is the fact that many families do not have economic stability. When society is functioning normally they have stability in the sense that there is money in the bank, however little that may be, but often this requires constant income to maintain. In other words, many families in America live paycheck to paycheck or just above this standard. Coronavirus threw this group of people, that before was just getting by, into a state of disarray.
As of September, 25% of adults reported that they or someone in their household lost their job due to coronavirus. This means that a quarter of families have been struggling due to the economic aspects of coronavirus, roughly 82 million people overall. Even if someone remained at their pre-coronavirus job, a huge number of people have either had their pay or hours cut due to the pandemic. Restaurants and businesses are open less, and because they are less trafficked than before they do not need as many employees to work; or, the business is small and cannot make it through this crisis with the savings that they have, and so are forced to reduce pay to their staff. All said and done, 32% of American households have suffered pay cuts. A massive 42% of the populace have reported that their household experienced one or both of these issues.
Job loss and pay cuts have affected American households in a variety of ways, ranging from a necessity to pay bills to putting food on the table. These issues relate to classism in the sense that a disproportionate number of households affected are lower-class, especially minority communities and young adults. To give an example, 33% of all adults reported that they had to pull money from savings to cover expenses during the pandemic. Of this 33%, 44% were lower-class and only 29% were white. This is significant because it shows that middle- and upper-class Americans have far more to fall back on when an economic crisis hits, while lower-class Americans take the brunt of the damage.
Another point worth considering is the fact that, according to the CDC, coronavirus has hospitalized at least 63,152 Americans. This number is incomplete due to the time needed to acquire and verify data, but these are the laboratory confirmed results that they have at the moment. The average cost of a night in the hospital, without taking into consideration if the patient receives any extra treatment, is around $2,000. Taking into account the fact that many coronavirus patients require at minimum an IV and the hospital stay can range from a day to several weeks, this results in some hefty bills.
To a lower-class family with a small amount of savings these bills can leave them with nothing, while an upper-class person, such as Donald Trump, would barely notice the cost. When the question at hand is whether you will bankrupt your family or allow a loved one to die, the answer is easy: you will take them to the hospital regardless of the cost. This problem has existed prior to coronavirus with many horror stories of families losing everything due to medical emergencies, but the pandemic has placed the problem in the spotlight. Something must be done to help close the gap and help those who survived coronavirus to not die of starvation due to a broken bank account.
