“A lot of the dialogue that I heard when the numbers were first coming out — that black and brown people were being disproportionately affected by this in terms of deaths from COVID-19 — there was a lot of blame of black people, particularly about black people not sheltering in place, not respecting social distancing, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Kerri Lockhart, a pediatrician at Rush University Medical Center, who has rebounded from her bout with coronavirus. “There are some people who are victim blaming. That narrative is dangerous for a lot of reasons, but for patients, if they internalize that and they feel responsible that they got COVID-19 through some fault of their own, then that’s when you start that cloud of people feeling shameful about it. And that can snowball into a place of stigma.”