Protests and the virus

[Leaper]

@Velocity

Well, yes. Police had no qualms about breaking up peaceful gatherings at churches, restaurants, bars, parks, playgrounds, etc. because of the deadliness of the coronavirus. (Which they were fully justified in doing, btw.) So it is perfectly reasonable for them to break up a peaceful protest if it represents a transmission hazard. The virus doesn’t care whether a protest is peaceful or not.

Like I said in the Pit, the key difference here is that the police and the state in general are the object of the protests to begin with. There will be much more scrutiny and skepticism of their motives if they try to break up the protests.

[elfkin477]

@Corry_El

See this from earlier post, WHO now says asymptomatic COVID spread ‘very rare’
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asym…-who-says.html

Which they retracted mere hours later. WHO walks back claim about ‘very rare’ asymptomatic coronavirus transmission

[Corry_El]

@elfkin477

Which they retracted mere hours later. WHO walks back claim about ‘very rare’ asymptomatic coronavirus transmission

Yeah walked back somewhat and others were more critical than that. Thanks, though I did say ‘if true’. There’s so much unknown about this still.

Back on crowded outdoor events, another factor implicated is lots of vocalizing, for example raucous German festival in February which was believed to be the source of a lot of infections in a whole region. Protests tend to have that.

Outdoors socially distanced/silent is likely quite safe even without masks (again nothing seems sure). Less so crowded together and loud, and uncertain how much masks help. Although, previous known ‘super spreader’ events were generally no masks, generally little awareness of the disease at all. So it’s probably just impossible to say what impact the protests will have. Upticks various places now which are spooking the stock market are probably too soon to be mainly protest related.

[glowacks]

@Esprise_Me

I’m not sure I agree that the people who chose to attend church were demonstrating the strength of their convictions in the way that BLM protesters are. The protesters I know all seem to acknowledge the risk. They’re wearing masks and trying to spread out as best they can while marching to mitigate it, but they feel that it’s necessary to take that risk. Every church attendee I heard from was of the firm belief that Jesus would protect them from the virus. If you heard from any who said, “I understand the risk, but God has called upon me to do this anyway,” I’d be interested to hear more about that.

I agree that it was wrong to say that it shows the strengths of their convictions “in the same way”. It would have been better to use a different connecting phrase, as the methods in which the strengths of convictions are shown are certainly different. I mainly meant that they both show the strength of conviction.

[Darren_Garrison]

Very, very, very predictably, protesters are getting infected. (Calling the protest “I Can’t Breathe” was just tempting fate.)

[Leaper]

I don’t think anyone denied that was going to happen sometime, somewhere. As far as I can tell, the real questions have always been, “is it worth it,” “are protestors being stupid/hypocritical,” “should the state be more aggressively stopping protests in the name of stopping COVID,” and “do some powerful white people only care about the virus more than racism because the virus can actually affect them personally?”

[Velocity]

A county in Oregon now says that non-white people do not need to wear face masks.

Oregon County Exempts Non-White People From Mandatory Face Mask Order

[GnuMe]

So its been about a month, what’s the straight dope on whether the post-Floyd protests caused an uptick or not? I think its a given that both Memorial Day and July Fourth weekends did or no?