If you believe that the whole system is racist, it’s only natural that you’ll interpret every bit of evidence as proof that racism exists everywhere. It certainly seems that way when it comes to Covid.
When it emerged earlier this year that a substantial number of the doctors and nurses who died from coronavirus in the early stages of the pandemic were black, Asian or minority ethnic, it didn’t take long for people to say it was further proof of systemic racism in Britain.
In response to the outcry, Public Health England carried out an urgent analysis and in June suggested that racism had contributed to that fact that, in terms of raw numbers, members of BAME communities were indeed disproportionately more at risk of catching or dying from Covid. Plenty of activists could barely contain their glee at PHE’s findings, and it led to headlines like ‘historical racism may be behind England’s higher BAME Covid-19 rate’.
Only it now appears that PHE were mistaken.
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