‘I look for hope and find none, but I am not allowed to admit to total free fall. “Stronger together” say the screen savers on every screen in the hospital, the banners on the sides of the shuttle bus. What I’ll see in the coming weeks is just how much this isn’t true, how so many of our sickest patients are Black or Brown like you, “essential” and yet unprotected. I will see a 46-year-old Black man, infected with SARS-CoV-2, die instead from having a police officer kneel on his neck. I will see those who protest police brutality, though masked and mostly peaceful, tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. I will see unregulated corporate bailouts, record unemployment, record housing insecurity. I will see political polarization recast common-sense public health policy as liberal propaganda. I will see your death multiplied by 10,000, by 100,000, all those bodies, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am, for my fear, for our nation, for what happens next.’
Read here (New England Journal of Medicine, July 17, 2020)
