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5:30 pm I celebrated w/ my husband @EmedinaEduardo who received the #CovidVaccine after caring tirelessly for #COVID19 patients for months. 8 hours later we laid together in the darkness mourning the death of my loving & brilliant uncle, stolen from us by Covid. 1/13 A 
My uncle died in the @MHealthFairview ICU and I am grateful for the doctors and nurses who have cared for him over the past month and demonstrated so much kindness in allowing for some family members to say goodbye. We owe these frontline workers so much. 2/13
My Uncle, a Black man died b/c our country has continued to request that people change their behavior in response to this pandemic while putting little effort into creating the systems & structures to facilitate said change. 3/13
If I tell my 7 year old to clean her room 3 times & each time she ignores me, by the 3rd time I put a system in place to ensure we achieve the intended result. By creating the conditions in which my daughter has no choice but to clean her room, I get the intended result. 4/13
While perhaps an overly simplistic example, I am certain that our decision as a country to value capital and the economy over people and families has resulted in many avoidable deaths. What would've happened if we put systems/structures in place to allow people to stay home? 5/13
Educating people into new/different behaviors doesn’t’ work. You can educate someone about eating fruits and vegetables but if you don’t create the structures & systems that allow for reasonable access to said fruits and vegetables nothing will change. 6/13
In the same way, telling people to stay home, make different decisions, close their business without offering the financial resources and support to do so is not effective public health policy. Particularly for people deeply impacted by structural racism. 7/13
Structural racism is deadly, making #COVID19 deadly. And the abject failures of our local municipalities, state governments and federal policy makers and leaders to keep Black people, Brown people, ALL people safe….is simultaneously enraging and heartbreaking. 8/13
@ByNinaMartin & @akjohnson1922 published this piece today on the loss of Black life due to the intersections of Covid & enduring racism. “They were pillars of their communities and families, and they are not replaceable.” My uncle is not replaceable. 9/ 13 https://www.propublica.org/article/how-covid-19-hollowed-out-a-generation-of-young-black-men
And as we’ve ( @EmedinaEduardo and @RheaBoydMD) have said before and we will say again and again: “Black people are loved”. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2021072 My uncle is loved. Every life lost is someone who was loved. 10/13
While the new year may bring the hope of vaccines snuffing out #COVID19, we do not have a vaccination against structural racism. Black people don’t have the option to inoculate ourselves from the pandemic of racism. 11/13
However each and every one of us has the power to prevent more deaths like that of my uncle from happening. If you are on a journey to become anti-racist read @DrIbram. If you are considering policy read @SandyDarity #ReparationsNow. If you live in Georgia go #vote. 12/13
There is so much work to be done. Today I will rest & grieve but tomorrow I will be back in the fight for those who die too young and too soon. For those like my Uncle David who is loved dearly and deeply. I will not let his preventable death be in vain. 13/13
