What public health experts want critics to know about why they support the protests

As someone with asthma, Meredith Blake was very worried about getting sick in the pandemic. With Covid-19 spreading across America, she stayed inside her home in Boston for 12 weeks, isolating from others as much as possible.

Her self-quarantine ended on June 1. After George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis, she was compelled to march in the streets with a large crowd of other Bostonians, in close proximity. She wore a face mask and used lots of hand sanitizer wipes.

“I was definitely a little nervous,”...