‘Protest Is a Profound Public Health Intervention.’ Why So Many Doctors Are Supporting Protests in the Middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic

When massive protests broke out across the country in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and numerous black Americans before them, Dr. Rhea Boyd saw the demonstrations not just as a necessary risk during a pandemic. The California-based pediatrician considered them lifesaving. “If people were to understand that racism, and all of the social and political and economic inequalities that racism creates, ultimately harms people’s health,” Boyd says, they would see that “protest is a profound public health intervention, because it allows us to finally address and end forms of inequality.” Positions like Boyd’s, which are widely shared in the medical community, may strike some people as hypocritical. Why, in the middle of a pandemic, after months of telling people to stay indoors to stop the spread of COVID-19, are doctors encouraging thousands of people to gather? The answer, for many in health care, is simple: Racism is a public-health issue that long predates coronavirus. Without action, they say, it will postdate it, too. “Risking coronavirus pales in comparison to all the other ways we can die,” says Dr. Dorothy Charles, a family medicine resident at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and an organizer at the racial-justice group White Coats for Black Lives. “Addressing the root causes [of racial inequality] is more imperative at this point than staying at home.” To be sure, so...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news