By default MySQL treats updates as higher priority operations. You can use SELECT HIGH_PRIORITY or UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY to adjust that or you can simply set low_priority_updates option. Anyway default behavior means any UPDATE statement which is blocked by long running select will also block further selects from this table – they will have to wait until UPDATE is executing which is waiting on SELECT to complete. This is often not accounted for and people think – “OK. I write my script so it does short updates so it will not block anything” – it still may cause total block if there are long selects running.

low_priority_updates=1
concurrent_insert=2