Opinion: Wearing a face mask helps protect me against Covid-19, but not against racism
The Covid-19 pandemic is putting me in a difficult position as a physician and as a Black man. The order to wear a face mask in public has made it worse.
I’m a psychiatry resident at a safety-net hospital just outside of Boston. In the last week of March, I and health care workers from other specialties were redeployed to work in the hospital’s general medicine units to provide care for the surge of patients infected with Covid-19 as well as those with other medical problems.
