The protests: Justifying the coronavirus threat
America “spent the last couple of months being hectored by public-health experts” about the danger of gathering in public places, said Jonah Goldberg in TheDispatch.com. But now many of them say it’s “glorious and essential” for thousands of protesters to gather en masse in the streets for a “Great Awokening” about police and systemic racism. Nearly 1,300 public-health professionals and “community stakeholders” signed an open letter from infectious-disease experts at the University of Washington endorsing the protests, arguing that white supremacy represents a greater public-health risk to African-Americans than Covid-19. The massive demonstrations, the letter said, are “vital to the national public health.” You have to wonder: “If we have a huge spike in cases because of these protests, will they say, ‘Well, it was worth it to end racism’?”
These health officials owe us an apology, said
John Hirschauer in NationalReview.com. Officials passed onerous lockdowns on the basis of their dire warnings. Constitutional rights were trampled, and worshippers were barred from convening in churches. Family members were forced to mourn their “casketed relative on an iPad.” Business owners were deprived of a livelihood. But now, if gatherings are held in the name of racial injustice, the coronavirus guidelines can be thrown out? Apparently, the virus “does discriminate” after all.
“As a professor of public health, I am conflicted,” said Scott Lee in The Washington Post. The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately killed African-Americans, vividly demonstrating the cost of allowing “deep-rooted racism” to persist in this country. A new surge in coronavirus cases may be a price worth paying “to confront racism together, as a nation.” Still, protesters “deserve the truth” about the substantial risks they’ve taken on, said Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.com. Yes, many wore masks, and there are “doubts about how easily Covid-19 spreads in outdoor spaces.” But some didn’t wear masks, and everyone was “crowded together and shouted for hours”—behaviors that can spread the virus. Many also wound up jammed together in police lockups. Sympathetic health officials should warn the demonstrators they’re at great risk of infection, just as they did when anti-shutdown protesters gathered at state capitals. If warnings about minimizing the spread of the coronavirus are “ideological and hypocritical,” more Americans “will decline to heed any public-health advice.”