re: NY Times - Are Protests Unsafe?

But, but.....science! It's science!

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Some public health scientists publicly waved off the conflicted feelings of their colleagues, saying the country now confronts a stark moral choice. The letter signed by more than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers urged Americans to adopt a “consciously anti-racist” stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological and racial terms.

Those who protested stay-at-home orders were “rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives” the letter stated.

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That is the part that really stands out to me. Protesting a stay at home order was rooted in white nationalism. I guess I missed the part where these protesters demanded only white businesses be allowed to open.

I am genuinely surprised the NYT printed this. I am sure the editor responsible was called into his supervisor's office this morning for some re-education and sensitivity training.

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Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, the answer seemed to be “yes.”

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It absolutely was.

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"The way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science,” the essayist and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in The Guardian last month. “What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging?”

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I have stopped even looking at coronavirus news. It's over as far as I'm concerned, and I don't want to hear shite that any supposed "expert" has to say because they've made their motives crystal clear.

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“I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I’m not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that,” she said. “I have a hard time articulating why that is OK.”

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Be cause it's not OK. It is the very definition of hypocrisy. She knows she is wrong. I'd respect it if she came out and said, "you know, I let my emotions cloud my judgement and it was wrong. Moving forward, I will work to leave out any outside influences when giving out information that may have an impact on public health and safety." But nah, she's just STILL searching for a way to "articulate why it was OK.

shite like that just really gets under my skin. Here is an "expert" in something that is affecting almost every citizen's daily life and she is admitting to political bias, in one of the nation's biggest media outlets. Admitting she is wrong. Letting us know she is still trying to justify it. And well, that's that. Do you think the school she works at is going to take her to task for this quote? Hell no.

It's all so fricking obvious and ridiculous and if you say anything in opposition, as many have done, you're labeled a racist, white supremacist, who is willing to let MeeMaw die a horrible death so you can have a haircut. Ughh. frick, I shouldn't have read this article.

Then you have gems like this further down in the article:

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There is as of yet no firm evidence that protests against police violence led to noticeable spikes in infection rates. 

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Health officials in Houston and Los Angeles have suggested the demonstrations there led to increased infections, but they have not provided data. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has instructed contact tracers not to ask if infected people attended protests.

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Two cities have said there was a spike due to the protests. But, they haven't presented any data yet, so it didn't happen.

And the largest city in the country running a contact tracing program is actively juking the stats by not even looking for the data. It can't be proven if you never even look at it. So ridiculous.

ETA: And here we go. Shifting blame to the evil police doing their jobs to protect innocent people and their property.

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Police use of tear gas and pepper spray, and crowding protesters into police vans and buses, puts people further at risk.

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Ughh. frick, I shouldn't have read this article.

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it's definitely infuriating

Same day Apple has pulled there news app..

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Some public health scientists publicly waved off the conflicted feelings of their colleagues, saying the country now confronts a stark moral choice. The letter signed by more than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers urged Americans to adopt a “consciously anti-racist” stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological and racial terms.

Those who protested stay-at-home orders were “rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives” the letter stated.

By contrast, it said, those protesting systemic racism “must be supported.”

“As public health advocates,” they stated, “we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health.”

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NY Times - Are Protests Unsafe?

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ummm, yeah they are

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When he was a hospice doctor in Chicago and Boston, he said, he saw up close how isolation deepened the despair of the dying — a fate now suffered by many in the pandemic, with hospital visits severely restricted. For epidemiologists to turn around and argue for loosening the ground rules for the George Floyd marches risks sounding hypocritical.

“We allowed thousands of people to die alone,” he said. “We buried people by Zoom. Now all of a sudden we are saying, never mind?”

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