Raymond Ahner/The Photo Access/Cover Images via AP
For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19 — stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings.
Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It's time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism.
"We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus," Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist,
tweeted on Tuesday. "In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus."
"The injustice that's evident to everyone right now needs to be addressed," Abraar Karan, a Brigham and Women's Hospital physician who's
exhorted coronavirus experts to amplify the protests' anti-racist message, told me. "While I have voiced concerns that protests risk creating more outbreaks, the status quo wasn't going to stop #covid19 either," he
wrote on Twitter this week.
It's a message echoed by
media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly
warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests.
Their claim: If we don't address racial inequality, it'll be that much harder to fight Covid-19. There's also evidence that the virus doesn't spread easily outdoors, especially if people wear masks.
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