I'd like to share what I've been learning this week in my #covidcourse at WashU. Here's an interesting demographic about racial disparities in covid deaths from http://covidtracking.com . I encourage you to explore this resource, and what the numbers in your state look like. 1/5

Dr. Utibe Essien has shared that there are several factors that have caused this disparity, including health risk factors, and access to healthcare.

In regards to supporting the BLM movement by attending protests, Utibe Essien said something that was really impactful to me:
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"Folks are almost asking me to make this this crazy decision to either fight for the lives of myself and my siblings and my fellow colleagues of color, or to fight for a pandemic that has disproportionately affecting myself my siblings and my fellow colleagues of color...
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...being black in this country is so challenging you can't really go on a day to day basis without experiencing some slight, whether it's a personal micro aggression or a macro aggression related to the violence that we see in our country."
-Dr. Utibe Essien
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I end this thread with a hopeful yet instructive quote from our lecturer today:

"We have survived worse, and we will come out better because of this. But we have got to get on top of this. The US needs to pull its act together."
-Siobhan Wescott, MD, MPH

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