00:00Absolutely. And I mean, we hear you. It's like we say sometimes here at Essence, it's like when we're covering all these disease states and everything that's happening, it feels like black people are disproportionately affected by everything.
00:10Right. Like you're saying, it's in every area. And that's why impact is so important, you know, especially for everyone and access.
00:17So for those that don't know, Direct Relief is a humanitarian organization active in all 50 states in the U.S. and 90 other countries globally, providing donations of medicine, supplies to those most in need.
00:29And with Vaseline being a longstanding partner with Direct Relief, are you able to share more on how brands like Vaseline have been helping make an impact during this pandemic?
00:40Yes, absolutely. So Vaseline has partnered with Direct Relief in the Vaseline Healing Project.
00:45And the during the COVID times, the main form of the giving back and donating has been to increase the amount of PPE.
00:56And so there have been hundreds of thousands of dollars that they've donated in getting PPE products to protect workers in the health care centers that are so important in communities of color.
01:11And Direct Relief is the largest charitable provider of PPE.
01:15I don't know if anyone knew that, but they have been, yeah, they've been producing this equipment for pre-COVID, you know, before the U.S. response was available.
01:27And partners like Vaseline have really stepped up to providing much needed funding to purchase the additional PPE that's been needed to keep our health centers safe.
01:37Now, I know we've all been watching the news, COVID, it's scary out there, you know, and COVID-19 is continuing to hit us very hard here at home in the U.S.
01:47And we're continuing to see a rise in areas across the country, especially in the South and the West right now.
01:54According to the CDC, Black people account for over 33 percent right now of all reported COVID-related hospitalizations, while Latinx people also account for 74.3 deaths per every 100K within the population.
02:08You know, so let's dig a little deeper. Can you tell us from your perspective, how accurately, how has this pandemic impacted our communities specifically?
02:18Yeah, we are seeing those those those stats are exactly right.
02:22And we are seeing the impact of that in black and brown communities specifically, more so than other communities.
02:30And there's there's no, you know, debate about that.
02:34But we do know that in the in the communities that are impacted, again, the the reason for it is nuanced.
02:44So we see that the workers that have to that have the jobs that are least.
02:53Oh, I don't like this, Charlie.
02:55Let me look back at my notes.
03:00You know what? Actually, how about this?
03:02I have a way to phrase it that I think will because you did cover a lot of that at the top.
03:07So I think I can phrase it in a way that might point you to where you want to go.
03:11How's that?
03:12OK, does that feel better?
03:14Was there something in particular you want to hit?
03:16Because I can question.
03:18I don't see it in my notes.
03:20I wonder if is Elizabeth around?
03:22I don't know. I think it's taken my notes.
03:24I was going to talk about like how there are certain jobs that you can't you just can't socially distance, you know, do proper social distancing.
03:33High contact jobs. I was going to talk about I can ask you if you think it's about the essential workers, like what exactly are the conditions that cause us to be so disproportionately affected?
03:44OK, how's that sound?
03:46Yeah. OK, and I'm going to do the whole question over.
03:51So it seems.
03:53Right. Yes.
03:54OK, I'm going to do the whole thing.
03:56Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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