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DAY 139: COVID-19 Ideology Makes You Immune Somehow
Picture above is credited as a Black Lives Matter protest in Boston.
According to CNN, over 1,000 health professionals sign a letter saying, Don’t shut down protests using coronavirus concerns as an excuse. Impressive, no? Think of it: More than one thousand health experts are telling us that the threat of infection from SARS-CoV-2, the reason countries all over the world shuttered their economies, should not be a reason to shut down large gatherings to protest racial injustice.
The health experts tell us (among other things):
Infectious disease and public health narratives adjacent to demonstrations against racism must be consciously anti-racist, and infectious disease experts must be clear and consistent in prioritizing an anti-racist message.
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COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
***
[A]s public health advocates, we do not condemn [demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy] as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators’ ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.
So, protesting health orders that deny freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and employment has a high risk of disease transmission, but protesting racial injustice does not. Interesting. So the reason you are gathering provides a prophylactic for the disease? And your double-blind study supports this, does it?
Well, of course, this is utter nonsense. So how can “over 1,000 health professionals” be so…incoherent? Well, for one thing, there aren’t over 1,000 health professionals signing this letter. Read the fine print; always read the fine print: “This letter is signed by 1,288 public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals, and community stakeholders.”
Infectious disease professionals are OK. They may not be right but at least they have knowledge of the relevant medical issues. Public health professionals, which means they are associated in some way with public health but may not have relevant expertise, lend some credence to the matter but not as much as infectious disease professionals. Community stakeholders? Well, that could be Molly, the crazy bag lady, pushing a shopping cart, and looking for an open spot under a freeway overpass.
Note that the CNN report doesn’t print the part of the letter that identifies the signatories. That’s because even a cursory look at it reveals how thin the expertise of this collection of people actually is. Only 34 of the 1,288 signatories identified themselves as having some credentials in infectious diseases. Some of those may be students and two are “infectious diseases pharmacists.” Two-hundred-forty-one are MDs or DOs and 206 are MPHs with some overlap between the two. Ninety-three are Ph.D.s with some overlap with other professional credentials. One-hundred-nineteen expressly identify as students although there are likely more. In other words, there are a lot of “community stakeholders” on the list.
Now doesn’t that make you comfortable that there is a clear medical consensus? That while large gatherings of people who are protesting lockdowns are a health hazard the same or larger groups protesting racial injustice are not? Thought so.
[Note 1: I will be arbitrarily ending the daily COVID-19 posts on Day 150. It is clear now more than ever that this is not a public health crisis, it is a public policy crisis dressed in whatever garb best suits those that promote government control over our lives. That will be the constant battle of the remainder of my life. But it has nothing to do with the disease we labeled COVID-19.]
[Note 2: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Seriously? Seriously??? I can’t think of more to say, and I’m in pain from banging my head against the wall. The propaganda and the insanity keeps getting worse. Sigh.
Here’s the thing, all the Smart people stayed home.
The Darwin Award finals are running.
I don’t need fear of the virus to keep me home from the riots, I was never interested.
They can protest, and letting it be so will bring the consequences.
I’m laying low.
I’m sorry, I should have said let the protests go on.
Stop the riots. Punish the rioters.
And, yes, letting the protests go on only proves the incompetence. Don’t keep stupid incompetents in the shadows. They need to be seen.
For. What. They. Are.
I think that we citizens should just declare the lockdown over and, to the extent possible, resume normal lives. Want to celebrate a wedding and invite 150 people, but the state limits it to 25? Hold it in your yard, invite 150, and put a black lives matter poster in front. Funeral? Have a graveside service and do the same. Small business. Just open up. Churches: resume services. Do what you think appropriate about distancing, and quietly let your parishioners know what you’re doing. Restaurants, same. I saw that a NYC pizzeria is going to open in defiance. If enough people get on board it will overwhelm the state’s ability to react.
That one picture may be worth millions of late-night-comedy words. :-)
Well, we should know soon enough whether the virus is still out there. Leave it to Boston to conduct the grandest of grand experiments. :-)
It’s too bad MIT didn’t test people entering the closely packed crowd with their instant read sticks at the entrances, get their phone numbers for contact tracing, and call them back in two weeks to see how many of these people were not sick when they entered but were sick two weeks later. If they are not sick in noticeably more numbers, than perhaps this is the evidence we need to halt all of the restrictions, including those on restaurants and churches.
I’m rooting for the protesters. :-) Please get us out of this mess. :-) The longer you delay in coming up with some demands, the better the chances become of prolonged protesting and the weaker the case gets for keeping the restrictions. :-)
Yes. A thousand times yes!
Like a peaceful
riotprotest?This series has been world-class, @rodin! Thank you!
“Facilitating safest protesting practices”? Do we need Fauci and the medical team to come out and tell the protesters and mayors and governors exactly what that means? I’m all ears……….
I see now that this is not a Karen post calling out people for violating restrictions. It’s clearly demonstrating the hypocrisy of those who maintain the need for restriction on mass gatherings outdoors. It is nearly impossible to communicate a respiratory illness out of doors (per retired epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski). The weaknesses of the virus to exposure to humidity and sunlight outdoors has been communicated by the president’s task force in the daily briefings. Continuing restrictions in the face of changing facts to the contrary is willful ignorance and an unjust abuse of power. I have no problems with other people not wearing a mask in my presence outdoors.
This kid has a good way of explaining it. A bonus is a scene with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in attendance.
Well, that was awesome.
Absolutely fabulous!
But I thought they were going to start tracking people through their phones – wherever they were at a given time would be able to be known, their phone’s tracking software giving them away. That was the insidious thing that we were all railing about.
But if they can do that, can’t they match the location up with the footage of the vandalism? We could come up with an impressive list of suspects. And that, cross-checked against their coincident social media postings, celebrating their “stickin’ it to the Man”, should result in a cascade of arrests and prosecutions.
I read the list of signers and some of them didn’t bother to use their names. It’s a false headline.
Try putting your head down on your desk and pounding your fist instead. It’s a little less painful – well for you head, anyway. ;)
Seriously, I understand where you’re coming from. If anything could convince me we’re really living in a Matrix-type setting, this year would be it. Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, it does.
I am very much hoping that these protests do not result in any spikes whatsoever, and that it is the final straw that breaks these lockdowns.
A pox on them all.
When we wake up in a couple of weeks and rioters and hospital staff protestors are stacked up like cordwood in the streets waiting for their corpses to be carted off, it will be very, very, very difficult to suppress a sardonic chuckle.
Oh, dang, I was right the first time, the late Dr. Fauci was quoted as saying.