Giving Compass' Take:

• Brian Resnick explains that systemic racism is perpetuating the compounding public health crises of police brutality and COVID-19. 

• What actions can you personally take to address systemic racism in your community? Which leaders of color can you support to further their agenda? 

• Are you doing enough to address systemic racism, or have you fallen into the role of the white moderate?

America’s crises are boiling over, one into another. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, masses of people are taking to the streets to protest police brutality after the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and other victims of racial violence.

These two stories are linked. They are both public health stories. The link is systemic racism.

“The same broad-sweeping structural racism that enables police brutality against black Americans is also responsible for higher mortality among black Americans with Covid-19,” Maimuna Majumder, a Harvard epidemiologist working on the Covid-19 response, tells Vox.

“One in every 1,000 black men and boys can expect to be killed by police in this country,” she says. “To me, this clearly illustrates why police brutality is a public health problem; anything that causes mortality at such a scale is a public health problem.”

As the Covid-19 crisis continues, it’s also become clear that black communities, and other communities of color, have suffered a disproportionate burden.

Many racial and ethnic minorities, Yearby and Mohapatra write, have been classified as “essential workers,” and are unable to work from home, leave their job, or access paid sick leave. They live in denser housing and more often polluted communities than whites — a result of years of racist housing policy that puts them at greater risk during a pandemic. And when they do get sick, their access to health care is often limited (as is their ability to pay for it).

Can the mass protests alleviate the Covid-19 burden on these communities? Not immediately. And there is a real risk of making it worse. “The ongoing protests will increase risk of transmission,” Majumder says. But even so, she and many other health experts argue the protests are necessary.

Read the full article about police brutality and COVID-19 by Brian Resnick at Vox.