We truly live in ridiculous times.
A new letter is circulating, signed by some 1,200 healthcare workers and “experts” in support of the mass George Floyd protests. That would be bad enough on it’s own, as the virus has no recognition of one’s political motives when it comes to the spread.
1,200 of the country's most renowned public health "experts" have signed a letter calling outdoor mass gatherings "vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people." We are in the midst of a mass psychotic break https://t.co/Ka57iiu4PO
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 5, 2020
But the people who wrote this letter decided to take it up a notch. Not only do they encourage and support these specific protests, but they still support stay at home orders for everyone else, and if you break them, you are rooted in white nationalism.
Yes, this is an actual thing they wrote.
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.
If you want to protest the destruction of your livelihood as you watch your savings burn to the ground, that makes you a white nationalist who’s actually harming black people. But if you want to mass protest over a police killing in which the officers have already been arrested, with the killer charged with 2nd degree murder, that’s different and so vital that you can ignore a deadly virus. None of this makes any sense because it’s not supposed to.
We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus. https://t.co/s9DagyjQ1J
— Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH (@JenniferNuzzo) June 2, 2020
This is nuts. Whatever systemic racism is in this case (it’s rarely defined), it’s certainly not a bigger current threat than a virus that’s killed 108,000 people.
As I wrote earlier in the week, the lock downs were a scam. It was always about power and allowing politicians to cover their own back sides. There was no science behind stopping people from going to the park or the beach. There was no science behind refusing to allow people to even socially distance at “non-essential” businesses. It was always about politics and that’s what this letter is. It’s a bunch of partisans who are desperately trying to make their ridiculous outlook make sense. They are failing, and the damage they’ve now done to their credibility will get people killed in the future.
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