The Cover-Up Begins In Effort to Hide Coronavirus Spread From Massive Protests

AP featured image — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at the USTA Indoor Training Center where a temporary hospital will be built, Tuesday, March 31, 2020, in New York. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Leave it to New York to pioneer how to cover-up possible coronavirus spread from the recent massive protests. I mean, these are the same people who covered up nursing home deaths by simply not reporting the figures.

Let me set the stage for you. Yesterday, this happened in New York.

Thousands gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum in NYC for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally and march. https://t.co/QjYg7wmQH1 pic.twitter.com/pwrTY1E4Qn

— ABC News (@ABC) June 14, 2020

At the same time, this was also happening in New York.

VIDEO: As @NYCMayor marches with protesters and orders Contact Tracers not to ask people if they were at protests, the City is welding shut a park that is largely used by Hasidim in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/HcAEo4jVA9

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) June 15, 2020

What’s New York’s response to the fact that the former is obviously much more likely to spread the disease than Jewish kids playing in a park? Just like their counterparts in Los Angeles County (as covered by my colleague Jennifer Van Laar), they simply won’t have contact tracers ask people if they’ve attended protests.

"The hundreds of contact tracing workers hired by the city under de Blasio’s new 'test and trace' campaign have been instructed not to ask anyone who’s tested positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a demonstration" https://t.co/jcHHb2o4Wr

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 15, 2020

What’s the easiest way to avoid the bad optics of having protests you supported being blamed for a surge of deaths in your city? Just don’t gather any data from said protests and then there can’t be any blame assigned to them. Simple, right? But they’ll be asking Jews if they attended synagogue or if someone went to their local bar.

This mirrors the media’s approach, which includes wringing their hands about Trump rallies while simultaneously cheering on thousands protesting in liberal bastions. My colleague Nick Arama covered one of the more egregious examples this morning.

Little over an hour apart. pic.twitter.com/K2a7fGRNDd

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) June 15, 2020

None of this is about science. It’s about politics. Protests that toe the BLM line are good and don’t cause spread. Trump rallies or protests over lock downs do. No science needed, just political proclamations and obfuscation. The media won’t even bother to try to find people infected at these latest protests, but you can bet they’ll have entire teams on trying to find one person infected at any of the coming Trump rallies.

Just so everyone knows that while the media “will struggle” to find anyone that contracted Covid that attended BLM protests, they’ll have no such issues finding Trump rally goers that come down with it.

The stories are probably already written.

— EdAsante (@EdAsante77) June 15, 2020

What de Blasio and others are doing is blatantly unconstitutional. You can not continue to allow certain activities based on political preferences while denying the same rights to others. Yet, it’s happening because not enough people will stand up and challenge it.

In the meantime, the cover-up is in full swing to shift all responsibility for any spikes to politically acceptable parties instead of Black Lives Matter protests. Who knew the virus was so partisan?