In the run up to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, I was, as a doctor, concerned about whether mass protests were the right thing to do. We know that mass gatherings with lots of shouting invariably lead to localised outbreaks, especially for a virus as contagious as Sars-CoV-2. Did I really want my patients and colleagues putting themselves at even more risk? Is this really in the interests of people of colour, especially when they are between two and four times more likely to die from the coronavirus? My most immediate worry is my parents; they are precisely the right (or wrong) demographic to suffer badly from this virus. As my social life and travel shrank over the first weeks of lockdown, I urged them to take it seriously and stay at home. They reminded me that this is how they’ve always lived; the pandemic has not changed much for them. They have always been in lockdown.
