okaydo said:
sycasey said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
sycasey said:
hanky1 said:
It turns out that all the protests did not make one immune to COVID as has been reported by many liberal media outlets.
oops
No one said protests made you immune, just that they didn't seem to be big disease spreader events. Is there any new evidence to the contrary?
I don't understand this. So, is it OK to shout and scream right next to each other during this pandemic? If not, then what is the explanation, if one is so sure that thousands standing shoulder to shoulder, some wearing masks other not. Do the protesters carry some miracle trick that can scale to the rest of the world?
Are you saying you don't understand how it's possible that the protests didn't become superspreader events? Or why it is that people are defending the protests? I'm literally asking you what you are trying to say. I think you recognize that the virus is indifferent to political motivations.
I don't have a perfect answer but I can say that it's entirely possible that two things are true at the same time: protesting in public is/was a bad idea and that the spread of COVID as a result of these protests is lost in the noise of other community spread. I wouldn't recommend anyone gather in groups, indoors or outdoors, without masks, but it certainly seems that the risk of transmission outdoors is much lower - particularly in the summer where the virus can't survive as long in the heat. Given what we know from spring break in Florida, the lake of the ozarks party and other events, it does seem like the risk of outdoor transmission in these types of environments is lower probability than we had suspected in the Spring.
I also think we've established that people in this country don't like personal sacrifice, particularly when the results of that sacrifice are somewhat intangible. I would love for our government to sponsor research so that we could actually figure out which personal sacrifices are essential to prevent the spread and which aren't. For example, if it turns out that outdoor spread is rare and that fomites aren't a meaningful transmission vector we could greatly reduce the amount of work we are doing to prevent the spread. Every protective measure we take puts a mental toll on people so we should do our best to make sure that what we are doing is actually effective. Hopefully at some point we will actually know what we need to do to protect ourselves and won't have to keep doing things that don't protect us.
I am literally asking why people are convinced that thousands of people standing shoulder to shoulder and screaming did not act as a spreader event. I am totally in favor of right of assembly, and I think people being fed up with police brutality and police misbehavior are excellent reasons to protest peacefully. There are a lot of things that I would support in normal times (such as allowing people to work, allowing kids to go to school, not destroying jobs) that we chose not to do during the pandemic because it was so important to keep the infection rate down. So, why are we saying that thousands of people protesting shoulder to shoulder for days across all of America did not turn out to be a spreader event? What was different? If people were to say that, yes, it was a spreader event and I don't care that I may end up killing thousands of people, this protest is just that important to me, then fine. But don't play us for idiots like the health professionals did with masks telling us clearly idiotic things like "masks won't help you if you are not sick, so save it for health professionals who need it to be safe.". Unless all healthcare professionals were sick, that made no sense. All they needed to say was, just stay home until we have enough masks because we have to prioritizing getting the masks to people who don't have the option of staying home. Telling us that protesting was OK and not a superspreader event but getting a haircut is makes all of us less intelligent and less willing to listen to even sound advice.
I don't know if people are "convinced" but, as Sycasey has mentioned previously, no one has substantiated a connection between the protests and massive COVID spread. That could be because it's just noise compared to the massive COVID spread we are seeing or it could be because they didn't turn out to be superspreader events. Superspreader events have to be quite large to move the needle these days now that we are seeing 70k+ positive cases per day. Perhaps it's the fact that the impact of the protests was overshadowed by millions of people eating at restaurants and drinking at bars.
Like I said above, it would be great if someone could tell us exactly how this things spreads. You and I can't figure that out on our own and unfortunately the federal government doesn't seem that interesting in finding out why.
You seem to be focused on applying a political lens to what should be observable facts. I understand why you would be frustrated by public health experts justifying public protests when there was a substantial risk they would lead to meaningful spread. I don't know that any of that is relevant to the question of whether *the protests actually caused spread.* At this point, as I think I've made abundantly clear, I'm far more interested in the latter.
Precisely. I am not convinced that protests didn't contribute to COVID spread, but neither am I convinced they did. The evidence just isn't there. Conservatives here, however, seem very convinced that they did, even though when asked for evidence to support the claim they tend to clam up.
I am willing to be swayed either way. But it needs to be evidence, not emotional appeals. And by the way, I said my comments about protests also applied to the anti-lockdown protests that Trump encouraged. I'm not sure those contributed to any COVID spread either. Though in my anecdotal experience, mask-wearing seemed much more common at the Floyd/BLM protests, which I'd expect would help a lot.
A lot of protesters wore masks and protesters are being blamed because otherwise you'd have to blame the Republican governors, and why would they want to do that?
You guys have a hard time maintaining a train of thought without resorting to strawman argument thinking you won an argument that no one actually made.
Here you go:
After six months of learning about this virus and after over four months of shutting down commerce, we cannot say that maybe 90% of the thousands of people wearing scarfs, half worn masks standing side by side shouting is a spreader event. In fact, as Sycasey noted, even morons protesting mask wearing without wearing masks was not a spreader event.
But despite that lack of knowledge or evidence, we know enough to shut down small businesses and other commerce like barber shops (even if people were mostly wearing masks), outdoor concerts (even if people can mostly wear masks), sporting events, bars and restaurants.
And we wonder why people are confused and some even distrust these experts.
I will wear a mask, but the fact that you don't understand the stupidity of saying all of these protests (both on the right and the left) did not spread the virus and that there is no evidence that these type of close encounters over days and weeks involving thousands and thousands of people all over America where most people but not all wore masks was a spreader event but we still need to shut down schools and other businesses with this type of evidence just because of "science".
These type of arguments that you and others are making are why idiots are not wearing masks. It is inherently stupid to say people can protest because we don't have sufficient evidence it will spread in those type of close and extended encounters where many but not all are wearing masks but commerce, education and entertainment should be shut down based on the same evidence.
