Racial Biases, Discrimination, and the Infringement of Civil Liberties in Times of Health Crisis
Chair-Elect ACS Board of Directors
Dean and the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, Berkeley Law
The death toll associated with the novel coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, has now surpassed a staggering 700,000 losses in the United States. To place this suffering in context, more Americans died during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic than all the American deaths suffered during the Vietnam War; the fatalities due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; as well as the deaths resulting from H1N1, Ebola, and the Zika viruses combined. During that three-month period, COVID-19 killed more people across the United States than what Americans witnessed in the past fifty years of war and disease combined. And COVID-19 still hovers in the United States with hotspots in jails, prisons, and in meatpacking factories. As it lingers, some Americans refuse to vaccinate against the virus.