I'm a nurse in a deprived area of the UK. Here's the sinister truth about Covid and inequality
People praise me and my key worker neighbours for keeping things running before ranting about rule-breakers in ghettos
I'm a nurse in inner-city Birmingham. After my shifts, which have been long, hot and often harrowing, I return to the densely populated, working-class neighbourhood where I can afford to live. My street, which is about 500 metres long, contains more than 250 two- and three-bed Victorian terraces, many of which each contain an extended family, and there's a block of flats at one end. The quantity of parked cars makes the road single track and the pavement just over a metre wide. The road is a rat-run, and a railway bridge at one end makes visibility of upcoming traffic close to zero.
I use the term working class, with all its questionable connotations, pointedly, as we are the class who have disproportionately still been going out to work. So, at 5.30am, when we pour out of our houses to the hospitals, care homes, bus depots and grocery stores which pay our wages, it is no exaggeration to say there is not two metres of space to be had. Nor are there two metres in any hospital corridor or work changing room I have ever encountered.
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