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While toilet paper has been stripped from supermarket shelves and buying flour for baking has become the nation’s only viable competitive sport, many of the more serious coronavirus crisis issues facing marginalised communities have been left lurking in the shadows of the mainstream.
That’s why we’ve created a new A to Z glossary of Covid-19 terms, which looks beyond some of the most popular social media trends and aims to raise awareness of the social issues that are really affecting British society.
The Covid-26: An A to Z glossary of the most glossed over terms of Covid-19 encourages people to:
Look beyond #BananaBread and consider the disproportionate impact the crisis is having on BAME communities
Take a breather from #PEWithJoe and inhale the news that nearly half of England’s doctors are being forced to find their own PPE
Stop shaking their #quarantinis and stir over the domestic abuse faced by some members of the LGBTQ community stuck in queerantine with perpetrators
While some of us have baked, memed and Zoomed our way through self-isolation, many marginalised members of society have faced far more serious issues, often disproportionately impacting their physical and mental health. We created this list to help burst people out of the ‘banana bread bubbles’ that are created by social media algorithms and that often make people miss the things that really matter.
As with everything we do, this A to Z has been designed to make diversity everyone's business, shining a spotlight on the minority trends that might otherwise have been missed by the mainstream. Other themes explored include disabilities over #DIY, grief over #gardening and homelessness over #homeschool.
You can view all of the terms on the image carousel and find out more about the issues we believe deserve some air time, below.
Anti-China sentiment: Cyberbullying against Asian people has increased by 900% since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak according to L1ight.
BAME disproportionality: The British Black, Asian and minority ethnic death rate are more than twice that of the white population, according to IFS.
#YouClapForMeNow: An anti-racism short film that highlights the crucial role immigrant workers are playing in the Covid-19 outbreak has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Disability: The pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on the disabled people’s lives, affecting their wellbeing, from loneliness and problems at work, to worsening mental health according to the ONS.
Ethnicity: Public Health England has launched an inquiry following evidence that minority groups are over-represented in hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19 related illnesses.
Frontline workers: Families of eligible workers who die from coronavirus in the course of their frontline essential work will receive a £60,000 government payment.
Grief: Cruse Bereavement Care estimates that for every person who has died, six people are left suffering intense grief. This means the UK is now facing bereavement on a massive scale.
Homelessness: Results from a survey by the UCL Collaborative Centre for Inclusion Health revealed that the coronavirus death rate of homeless people living in London’s hostels is 25 times higher than the general adult population.
Immigrants: Undocumented migrants are dying from Covid-19 because they are too afraid to seek help, charities and MPs have warned amid renewed calls for the Home Office to suspend NHS immigration checks, according to campaigners.
Joblessness: 28% of graduates have had job offers rescinded or the start date delayed, according to UK graduate jobs website, Prospects.
Key workers’ kids: Children of key workers and those classified as vulnerable or with special needs have continued to attend schools in the UK throughout the lockdown.
Livelihoods: The International Labour Organization has warned that nearly half the global workforce - 1.6 billion people - are at immediate risk of losing their livelihood because of coronavirus.
Mental health: BAME Britons - who are being disproportionately impacted by coronavirus - already face profound inequalities when it comes to accessing mental health services, according to AUNTIE.
Nuanced support: According to the AUNTIE task force, the UK needs to cut stigma around BAME communities getting access to much-needed mental health support through the coronavirus crisis (Auntie stands for Advice, Understanding and Nuanced Therapy in Emergencies).
Older people: Age UK has reported a huge increase in calls to its advice line amidst the pandemic, peaking at an 88% increase in demand.
PPE shortage: Nearly half of England’s doctors are forced to find their own PPE, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal
Queerantine: LGBTQ victims of domestic abuse are staying with perpetrators because they can't find a refuge space, according to the LGBT Foundation.
Ramadan: Some 2.5 million Muslims in the UK mark Ramadan under lockdown for the first time in history, according to the Ramadan: The Lowdown During Lockdown report.
Self-isolation: Almost half of British adults have felt a high level of anxiety during the coronavirus lockdown so far, according to a wellbeing survey by the ONS.
Transgender: International transgender rights groups have warned that global coronavirus lockdown restrictions have led to trans people being denied healthcare. Many have had surgeries delayed, and some are struggling to access hormone therapy and counselling services.
Under-predicted: The Department for Education acknowledges on its website that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have their grades under-predicted as GCSE and A level pupils are awarded grades after their exams were cancelled due to the lockdown.
Virtual Iftar: Muslims and mosques turned to social media to mark Ramadan together in 2020. The Ramadan Tent Project invited people to sign up to receive recipes, decorations and games, and to participate in a virtual Iftar via Zoom.
Women: Women leaders are doing a disproportionately good job at handling the pandemic, according to headlines and statistics from around the world.
Xenophobia: Health authorities in Guangzhou, China, have been accused of racially targeting Africans, including with forced evictions, repeated testing for Covid-19 without providing the result, and refusing service or business.
Youth: Snapchat found that 65% of its 13 to 17-year-old UK users worried about the virus’s impact on their education.
ZZZ: According to a Harvard University professor, the horrors of Covid-19 are infecting dreams and exposing feelings of fear, loss, isolation and grief that transcend culture, language and national boundaries.
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