“As a physician, when I hear ‘I can’t breathe’ I’m usually rushing to someone’s bedside,” said Dr. Teresa Smith, an emergency doctor at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, who thought
of her patients with respiratory failure when she saw the video of the killing of Mr. Floyd. “To see George Floyd crying that, that was personal for me as a physician of color.”
To Dr. Smith, these protests are all the more important at a time when a public health crisis is disproportionately affecting black patients. Black Americans comprise 13 percent of the population, but 24 percent of deaths from Covid-19.
In New York City, black and Latino people died at twice the rate of white people, according to data released by the city. A study from the city’s comptroller found that minorities make up 75 percent of the city’s front line workers, and therefore many have not been able to shelter in place.
“The black community has been facing a pandemic that has taken the lives of their family and friends,” Dr. Smith said. “Then the community had to wake up to face the deaths of their people by the hands of those who were supposed to protect them. It’s a double whammy.”
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That’s part of what motivated Dr. Rob Gore, an emergency physician, to lead more than 100 residents, medical students and nursing staff in a “die-in” on Thursday at SUNY Downstate. Dr. Gore said the action was intended in part to make medical workers imagine they were personally in Mr. Floyd’s position. As a black physician, Dr. Gore said he wanted his co-workers to understand the fear of police violence as viscerally as they have felt the threat of Covid-19.