LORINC: How over-crowding has made housing lethal during pandemic
There were so many truly awful details about the death, from COVID-19, of 13-year-old Emily Victoria Viegas Brampton’s wall-to-wall hotspots, the lack of vaccination clinics, the over-burdened hospitals but one in particular jumped out at me: the family’s cramped apartment, and its enabling role in this tragedy.
Like so many working class and newcomer families, Emily, her brother, and her parents lived in a space that puts the lie to all the insistent public health rhetoric about social distancing. Once the virus got through the front door, there was no place to hide no basement guest room, no cottage, no spare bedroom. They were sitting ducks.