How inequality spreads Covid

Here’s a glaring example from Thailand:

Thailand went for months without a single confirmed case of local transmission, but the epidemic has now radiated from luxury nightclubs that cater to powerful and wealthy men to the warrens of slums that hug Bangkok’s highways and railroad tracks. In these cramped quarters, social distancing is impossible. Infections have also spread to prisons, construction camps and factories.

“The rich people party and the poor people suffer the consequences,” said Sittichat Angkhasittisiri, a neighborhood chairman in Bangkok’s largest slum, Khlong Toey, where the coronavirus has infected hundreds of people….

The people of Khlong Toey are vital to making Bangkok run. They deliver the packages and the takeout meals, their motorbikes weaving past Mercedes tightly sealed from the heat and the haze. They build the glass-sheathed condominiums and the malls that seem to materialize like mushrooms after the monsoons. Their vast market feeds Bangkok its vegetables, fruits and wriggling seafood.

Unemployment, already high because of Thailand’s pandemic-closed borders, has soared in Khlong Toey. To survive, some families have sold the vaccine registration cards they received as residents of a high-risk neighborhood.

Thailand has yet to fully start nationwide mass vaccinations, and less than 2 percent of the population is fully inoculated. A few wealthy Bangkok residents have boasted on social media about buying vaccination cards from the city’s most desperate residents.

“The rich who are already privileged are stepping on the poor,” Ms. Mariam said. “They believe their money can buy anything.”

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