| The tendrils of racist trauma |
It’s hard to differentiate the civil unrest roiling around this country from the COVID-19 pandemic. On the surface, perhaps, they have nothing in common — one is a reaction to police brutality, the other a deadly, global virus — but there are some connections that can’t be ignored.
Remember that COVID-19 is killing Black people at a disproportionate rate, three times more than their white neighbors by some estimations.
“What COVID did is say, ‘oh, shoot. Wait a minute,’ said Maysa Akbar, a clinical psychologist, author and assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. “Now we're starting to see, in the middle of COVID, you have what happens to a young black man who is jogging in a neighborhood.”
The coronavirus, Akbar said, is “obliterating the smoke and mirrors,” forcing us to look at the systems that set up both endemic police brutality and medical inequities.
“Because what ends up happening with COVID is that now you have a global trauma happening, everyone is vulnerable,” she said. “Everyone is exposed, right? And when you start peeling back the layers and we enter into a place of vulnerability, our mortality is looking at us in the face.”
(By the way, I interviewed Akbar for the latest episode of the Exit 43 podcast, which is about the environmental and epigenetic sources of racist trauma.)
“You're seeing the unraveling of people who have already just been hanging on by a string,” Akbar said. “That is the meaningfulness of what's happening with COVID. … It's saying, ‘Oh, I see clearly now what's happening.’ And then it's a choice point about whether you want to ignore it or not.” |
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Here’s what else you need to know:
- The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement on the effects of racism on public health: “Racism harms children’s health, starting from before they are born. A growing body of research supports this, and we cannot ignore the impact.”
- “COVID-19 shouldn’t be ravaging the Black community. George Floyd didn’t have to die,” wrote Lauren Powell, former head of the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Health Equity. “His murderers should be in jail. Black people shouldn’t have to justify their humanity every second of every day. Yet all of that is why we are where we are as a country today — full of unrest, anger, resentment and hurt.”
- Caitlin Rivers, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, offers the following advice for protesters: Masks, distancing, hand sanitizer, eye protection. “As an epidemiologist of course I am worried about COVID + crowds, but as a public health professional and community member I am also worried about disparities in justice and health.”
- Here is the CDC’s collection of data and guidance on health in minority communities.
- Would you be willing to get a vaccine against the coronavirus? According to a new ABC poll, 27 percent of people would not get a COVID-19 vaccine, even if it were free. As many as four in 10 Republicans would not, according to the poll.
- Here is the largest study to date on the efficacy of physical distancing, face masks, eye protection and more. Three feet is the minimum physical distance to be effective, and “protection was increased as distance was lengthened.”
- Secretary Mike Pompeo is meeting with survivors of the Tiananmen Square massacre today. Make of that what you will.
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