I don’t suggest anything. People are going to do what they are going to do. I am expressing my frustration at how we are about to lose all the hard work of 3 months of social distancing and a decimated economy and many people are probably about to die because of it.
No, this is the part where you get branded as being someone whose priors seem to render you incapable of understanding why a community is willing to shoulder those risks.
Yup. Which increases their exposure and makes it worse. White nationalist cops could hardly have chosen a better mechanism of genocide, come to think of it. If the evil sons of bitches weren’t so reliably stupid I’d almost think it was deliberate.
God knows I don’t have a solution. How could anyone be expected to perform a calm, rational risk assessment for their community when the people who are supposedly there to protect them are flat-out murdering them in cold blood (with impunity no less)? Doesn’t stop it from scaring the hell out of me, though.
If it’s any consolation, protests look big, but they aren’t anywhere near the numbers of people in contact in a ‘regular’ functioning society. So it might not be as bad as we fear.
This is the problem with infectious diseases - those individuals and communities might choose to shoulder those risks, but the burden will also fall on lots of people who did not make that choice.
Again though: if you are black, you have been carrying around fear and anxiety about the police since you were old enough to have your parents have “the talk” about it to you.
You have been living in fear of the novel coronavirus for three months.
And if you watched George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murdered on camera in the last month, one of those things may seem like a greater existential threat to you than the other right now.
As a white man in my late 40’s who is getting close to the higher risk zone, the LEAST I can do is accept any additional burden that happens to fall on me due to the protests.
The behavior is risky, but what’s the risk of doing nothing?
I understand as best as I am able to. I empathize with the protesters and I am grateful that there is some real momentum going in the direction of change for the better. That doesn’t make my frustration and fears invalid. It doesn’t mean we can’t look at the facts of the current situation and the great danger we are incurring.
BTW, it’s worth noting that a far greater threat for the spread of COVID-19 than the outdoor protests on warm summer nights this week is having folks unnecessarily arrested and locked up together in large groups in holding cells.
I can agree with you on this.
If police wanted to be smart about public health, they wouldn’t be getting in protester’s faces, trying to herd them from large spaces where people are well separated into smaller spaces to increase risk of infection, etc.
Just like everything else, they don’t seem to give a fuck.
At the Houston protests yesterday, the literal cavalry showed up…on the side of the protestors.
I hope that, as these events gain more and more traction, and especially in the wake of the events in D.C. yesterday, that we see a lot more of these huge peaceful protests. The message that images yesterday from NYC, D.C., Houston, and so many other cities send is one of united purpose, and they help to counter the images of looting and violence that the media seems much more fond of showing.
Yup, undisputed.
I can’t blame anyone in these communities for thinking that, no, but it’s not true.
Yup, this is a large part of my concern. Prisons are already big old petri dishes, cramming them full of unjustly arrested peaceful protestors is a fucking nightmare.
Yup, it’s goddamn maddening, atop all the other horrifying misbehavior.
I think there’s a strong moral case for that. But that’s quite different from choosing it, which was the point I was replying to.
And there are plenty of people who might not share that noble stance (for a whole variety of reasons, not all of which are moral failings).
(There are other privileges we have in the ability to sit back and say 'Sure, I’ll accept the risks of the increased pandemic" - I live in a different country, work from home, and am under 40. For me to say that I’ll accept the increased risks by the protests is pretty meaningless.)
Agreed. The broad police response has been inept on almost every level (with some exceptions here and there, as always).
I…don’t know.
Let’s say you’re a black man under the age of 30, and you’ve been pretty smart about reading up on COVID-19. You know what the risks are. And you’re thinking “The odds for me are pretty good, even if I catch it. I just need to stay away from my parents and grandparents and older aunts and uncles.”
But if you’re black, I can almost promise you, you’re more likely to know someone who’s been sick – seriously sick – with COVID-19, than if you’re white. It’s far more likely that this disease has taken family members from you already.
And at that age, maybe you’ve been pulled over 5, 6 times…heck, maybe twice that. And each time you’ve thought: “This could be it. This could be my time.”
And realize: this is a group of humans who have experienced BOTH the coronavirus AND institutional, systemic racism more than any other racial demographic in the United States.
And knowing both of those things, they’ve made a difficult choice.
“And from anyone my age who won’t go and give it their parents and grandparents and older aunts and uncles.”
By far the most confounding aspect of this pandemic from a societal perspective is that for many (most?) people the personal risks of the virus are very low, while the aggregate risks to society are still very high. Tragedy of the public health commons.
KevinC
3554
And it’s not necessary a rational choice for somebody to make, it’s an emotional one.
And as I’ve tried to emphasize repeatedly, I have no business judging or second guessing that choice. I really hope it’s as thoughtful as the scenario you propose. I certainly hope they’re conscientiously considering contact with their higher-risk friends and relatives.
I do wish that more of the protestors in my city were wearing masks and maintaining (or at least trying to maintain) social distance. I wish the police were behaving as though they were cognizant of the risks to themselves and to the protestors. I wish they’d stop herding people into high risk situations and cramming them into overfull, under-ventilated facilities. Then again, if we’re playing that game, I wish they’d just stop killing black people for no fucking reason and then this whole situation wouldn’t be going on to begin with.
Let me be super clear about this in case what I’ve posted here is in any way muddled: The blame for this situation is 100% with the white supremacist thugs that have created an environment where black people are forced to make this choice in the first place. This is a global pandemic being substantially exacerbated by white supremacy, full stop. I worry a great deal about the health and (secondarily) political ramifications of the ensuing COVID upsurge, but I haven’t lost sight of the cause.
WaPo calls the Park Police on their “no tear gas was used on the protesters” BS with receipts from the CDC. (As you would expect, it’s the Park Police weaseling on definitions … "technically, it was pepper spray…)
ETA:
Thrag
3557
How many people do you think took part in the protests in NYC? The average rides per day of the NY subway system under normal conditions is 5.6 million. Now granted that’s not unique people but even given a generous number of rides per person divisor that’s vastly more people coming into close enclosed contact with each other than these protests have generated at their height. Still horrifying to see so many people congregating in a pandemic, but let’s not make false equivalences between protests and “reopening”.
Also it needs to be said again that the choice was not economic harm due to shutting down activity or losing lives to the virus. It was a choice between economic harm or death plus economic harm. Also the do nothing scenario could have easily led to far worse economic harm.
