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Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who's Protesting What

  
Via:  Nerm_L  •  4 years ago  •  18 comments

By:   Michael Powell - The New York Times

Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who's Protesting What
Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism.

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So, the scientific community really is being guided by beliefs, faith, and moral convictions of uncertain validity.  More importantly the scientific community utilizes political and moral condemnation of those opposing authoritarian imposition of scientific beliefs, faith, and moral convictions onto the public.

Note that the protests against the lockdowns are characterized as conservative?  The anti-lockdown protests were about government imposition of scientific beliefs, faith, and moral convictions as justification for harming individuals.  And the scientific community has justified that harm with the moral argument that it was necessary to sacrifice a few to save the lives of thousands.  That moral argument serves to protect the scientific community's authoritarian position in society and government to impose beliefs, faith, and moral convictions onto the public.  The scientific community unilaterally deciding to force others to sacrifice themselves to achieve a moral good supported by faith, alone, hasn't been inclusive, cooperative, or democratic.  

The scientific community's complete reversal concerning the racial protests has also been justified by moral arguments supported by faith, alone.  The racial protests certainly aren't being characterized as conservative.  And the scientific community's moral justification for racial protests has been that many thousands must be sacrificed to save the lives of a few.  

A duck is a duck, no matter how it waddles.  The scientific community makes pronouncements, declarations, and moral arguments supported by belief and faith as does any other religion.  The scientific community claims to be guided by nature but utilizes nature in the same manner as any other religious tract.  Foretelling the future by deciphering the signs in nature isn't any different than the practices of other pagan religions.  A pagan scientist isn't all that different from a Druid.

The growing demands to 'believe science' in politics, government, and society is really about publicly declaring a belief and faith for a pagan religion.  


S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



As the pandemic took hold, most epidemiologists have had clear proscriptions in fighting it: No students in classrooms, no in-person religious services, no visits to sick relatives in hospitals, no large public gatherings.

So when conservative anti-lockdown protesters gathered on state capitol steps in places like Columbus, Ohio, and Lansing, Mich., in April and May, epidemiologists scolded them and forecast surging infections. When Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia relaxed restrictions on businesses in late April as testing lagged and infections rose, the talk in public health circles was of that state's embrace of human sacrifice.

And then the brutal killing of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis on May 25 changed everything.

Soon the streets nationwide were full of tens of thousands of people in a mass protest movement that continues to this day, with demonstrations and the toppling of statues. And rather than decrying mass gatherings, more than 1,300 public health officials signed a May 30 letter of support, and many joined the protests.

That reaction, and the contrast with the epidemiologists' earlier fervent support for the lockdown, gave rise to an uncomfortable question: Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, the answer seemed to be "yes."

"The way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science," the essayist and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in The Guardian last month. "What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging?"

Of course, there are differences: A distinct majority of George Floyd protesters wore masks in many cities, even if they often crowded too close together. By contrast, many anti-lockdown protesters refused to wear masks — and their rallying cry ran directly contrary to public health officials' instructions.

And in practical terms, no team of epidemiologists could have stopped the waves of impassioned protesters, any more than they could have blocked the anti-lockdown protests.

Still, the divergence in their own reactions left some of the country's prominent epidemiologists wrestling with deeper questions of morality, responsibility and risk.

Catherine Troisi, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, studies Covid-19. When, wearing a mask and standing at the edge of a great swell of people, she attended a recent protest in Houston supporting Mr. Floyd, a sense of contradiction tugged at her.

"I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I'm not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that," Dr. Troisi said. "I have a hard time articulating why that is OK."

Mark Lurie, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, described a similar struggle.

"Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice," Dr. Lurie said. "But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy and saying that was dangerous behavior.

"I am still grappling with that."

To which Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, added: "Do I worry that mass protests will fuel more cases? Yes, I do. But a dam broke, and there's no stopping that."

Some public health scientists publicly waved off the conflicted feelings of their colleagues, saying the country now confronts a stark moral choice. The letter signed by more than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers urged Americans to adopt a "consciously anti-racist" stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological and racial terms.

Those who protested stay-at-home orders were "rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives," the letter stated.

By contrast, it said, those protesting systemic racism "must be supported."

"As public health advocates," they stated, "we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health."

There is as of yet no firm evidence that protests against police violence led to noticeable spikes in infection rates. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no overall rise in infections but could not rule out that infections might have risen in the age demographic of the protesters. Health officials in Houston and Los Angeles have suggested the demonstrations there led to increased infections, but they have not provided data. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has instructed contact tracers to ask infected people if they had been in big crowds but not if they attended any protests.

The 10 epidemiologists interviewed for this article said near-daily marches and rallies are nearly certain to result in some transmission. Police use of tear gas and pepper spray, and crowding protesters into police vans and buses, puts people further at risk.

"In all likelihood, some infections occurred at the protests; the question is how much," Dr. Lurie said. "No major new evidence has emerged that suggests the protests were superspreader events."

The coronavirus has infected 2.89 million Americans, and at least 129,800 have died.

The virus has hit Black and Latino Americans with a particular ferocity, hospitalizing those populations at more than four times the rate of white Americans. Many face underlying health issues, and are more likely than most Americans to live in densely populated housing and to work on the front lines of this epidemic. As a result, Latinos and Black people are dying at rates well in excess of white Americans.

Mary Travis Bassett, who is African-American, served as the New York City health commissioner and now directs the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. She noted that even before Covid-19, Black Americans were sicker and died more than two years earlier, on average, than white Americans.

And she noted that police violence has long cast a deep shadow over African-Americans. From the auction block to plantations to centuries of lynchings carried out with the complicity of local law enforcement, Black people have suffered the devastating effects of state power.

She acknowledged that the current protests are freighted with moral complications, not least the possibility that a young person marching for justice might come home and inadvertently infect a mother, aunt or grandparent. "If there's an elder in the household, that person should be cocooned to the best extent that we can," Dr. Bassett said.

But she said the opportunity to achieve a breakthrough transcended such worries about the virus. "Racism has been killing people a lot longer than Covid-19," she said. "The willingness to say we all bear the burden of that is deeply moving to me."

Others take a more cautious view of the moral stakes. Nicholas A. Christakis, professor of social and natural science at Yale, noted that public health is guided by twin imperatives: to comfort the afflicted and to speak truth about risks to public health, no matter how unpleasant.

These often-complementary values are now in conflict. To take to the street to protest injustice is to risk casting open doors and letting the virus endanger tens of thousands, he said. There is a danger, he said, in asserting that one moral imperative overshadows another.

"The left and the right want to wish the virus away," Dr. Christakis said. "We can't wish away climate change, or the epidemic, or other inconvenient scientific truths."

He said that framing the anti-lockdown protests as white supremacist and dangerous and the George Floyd protests as anti-racist and essential obscures a messier reality.

When he was a hospice doctor in Chicago and Boston, he said, he saw up close how isolation deepened the despair of the dying — a fate now suffered by many in the pandemic, with hospital visits severely restricted. For epidemiologists to turn around and argue for loosening the ground rules for the George Floyd marches risks sounding hypocritical.

"We allowed thousands of people to die alone," he said. "We buried people by Zoom. Now all of a sudden we are saying, never mind?"

There are other conflicting imperatives. Lockdowns, and the shuttering of businesses and schools and enforcing social isolation, take a toll on the working class and poor, and the emotionally fraught who live on the economic margins.

The lockdown is justified, most epidemiologists say, even as it requires acknowledging a moral truth: To save many hundreds of thousands of lives, we risk wrecking the lives of a smaller number of Americans, as businesses fail and people lose jobs and grow desolate and depressed.

The pandemic has also brought an increase in deaths from heart attacks and diabetes during this period.

"Have people died because of the closed economy? No doubt," said Dr. Lurie, the Brown University epidemiologist. "And that pain is real, and should not be dismissed. But you won't have a healthy economy until you have healthy people."

There's another epidemiological reality: No one quite understands the path of this idiosyncratic virus and how and when it strikes. The public health risks presented by the protests are not easily separated from the broader risks taken as governors, in fits and starts, move to reopen state economies. The protesters represent a small stream filled with 500,000 to perhaps 800,000 people, merging with a river of millions of Americans who have begun to re-enter businesses and restaurants.

"To separate out those causes, when we look, will be very difficult," Dr. Lurie noted.

Still, he admitted to some worries. He said he took his daughter to a protest early in June and felt a chaser of regret in its wake.

"We felt afterward that the risk we incurred probably exceeded the entire risk in the previous two months," he said. "We undid some very hard work, and I don't see how actions like that can help in battling this epidemic, honestly."


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Nerm_L
Professor Expert
1  seeder  Nerm_L    4 years ago

Read the seeded article carefully.  The moral dilemmas are discussed in terms of beliefs, faith, and moral convictions.  Which good is the greater good?  Objective, unbiased science cannot answer moral questions.  

Science has become a pagan religion using the signs of nature as justification to impose moral convictions, supported by faith, onto the public.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
1.1  Vic Eldred  replied to  Nerm_L @1    4 years ago
Science has become a pagan religion using the signs of nature as justification to impose moral convictions, supported by faith, onto the public.

It is being used!

Very good article. Voted up!

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
1.2  XXJefferson51  replied to  Nerm_L @1    4 years ago

Science according to the pro science monopoly says that you are a real super disease spreading grandma killer if you are meeting others in public to support re opening the economy, rally for the presidents re election, or to go to church but if you are going to a BLM/Antifa event, a looting riot, to counter protest Trump, or pul down statues/burn down churches, then all’s fine as the cause is more important than the disease.  

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
1.2.1  seeder  Nerm_L  replied to  XXJefferson51 @1.2    4 years ago
Science according to the pro science monopoly says that you are a real super disease spreading grandma killer if you are meeting others in public to support re opening the economy, rally for the presidents re election, or to go to church but if you are going to a BLM/Antifa event, a looting riot, to counter protest Trump, or pul down statues/burn down churches, then all’s fine as the cause is more important than the disease.  

Yes, that is the point of the article.  The social institution of science is being forced to confront moral dilemmas.  Rectifying the contradictions depends upon belief, faith, and moral convictions.  Evidence is being subordinated to belief.  Science is being used in the same manner as religion to address moral dilemmas.

Objectively all social gatherings are the same and pose the same risks.  But that is not how the science is being used.

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
2  Tessylo    4 years ago

"Read the seeded article carefully.  The moral dilemmas are discussed in terms of beliefs, faith, and moral convictions.  Which good is the greater good?  Objective, unbiased science cannot answer moral questions.  

Science has become a pagan religion using the signs of nature as justification to impose moral convictions, supported by faith, onto the public."

Makes no sense to me but, whatever.  

I don't believe the protests are dangerous.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
2.1  seeder  Nerm_L  replied to  Tessylo @2    4 years ago
Makes no sense to me but, whatever.  

The article is really about cognitive dissonance caused by moral dilemmas.  There isn't any way to rectify the contradictions objectively.  

I don't believe the protests are dangerous.

That is a statement based on belief, faith, and moral convictions; not based upon empirical evidence or objective analysis.  Science may be used selectively to support beliefs and moral convictions in the same manner as religion supports beliefs and moral convictions.

Science is being utilized in the same manner as any other religion.  Since science derives authority from nature then science would be a pagan religion.  A pagan scientist isn't that different from a Druid.

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
2.1.1  Tessylo  replied to  Nerm_L @2.1    4 years ago

Still makes no sense whatsoever, but whatever . 

 
 
 
Gordy327
Professor Expert
2.1.2  Gordy327  replied to  Nerm_L @2.1    4 years ago
Since science derives authority from nature then science would be a pagan religion. 

Uh, no! Science goes by the evidence. It makes no declarations of authority from nature.

A pagan scientist isn't that different from a Druid.

Were you able to write that with a straight face? jrSmiley_78_smiley_image.gif

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
2.1.3  seeder  Nerm_L  replied to  Gordy327 @2.1.2    4 years ago
Uh, no! Science goes by the evidence. It makes no declarations of authority from nature.

Science interprets evidence obtained from nature.  The scientific method isn't just a process for collecting evidence.  The scientific method provides a consistent methodology for explaining evidence.

Citing evidence obtained from nature as justification for an interpretation is a declaration of authority.  Claiming that the 'evidence says' isn't any different than claiming that 'god says' or claiming that 'nature says'.  For science, nature supplies the evidence that provides the authority to justify an interpretation.  For a pagan religion, nature supplies the evidence that provides the authority to justify an interpretation.

Science functions in the same manner as a pagan religion.

 
 
 
Gordy327
Professor Expert
2.1.4  Gordy327  replied to  Nerm_L @2.1.3    4 years ago
Citing evidence obtained from nature as justification for an interpretation is a declaration of authority.  Claiming that the 'evidence says' isn't any different than claiming that 'god says' or claiming that 'nature says'. 

Saying "this is what the evidence shows" is not a declaration of authority. And unlike "god says" or something like that, new evidence can emerge to change what is known or established, rather than being stuck in place. 

For science, nature supplies the evidence that provides the authority to justify an interpretation.  For a pagan religion, nature supplies the evidence that provides the authority to justify an interpretation.

You're repeating yourself while not understanding science.

Science functions in the same manner as a pagan religion.

Not even a little. But if it makes you feel better to believe that, go right ahead. But I doubt many scientists will agree with you.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
2.1.5  seeder  Nerm_L  replied to  Gordy327 @2.1.4    4 years ago
You're repeating yourself while not understanding science.

You're ignoring how science is being used.

One aspect of proselytizing is to declare other religions false and to denounce the beliefs and practices of other religions.  Converting people to a true religion includes persuasion that other religions are false.

As an example, using science to persuade people that the Bible and Christian beliefs are false serves to proselytize for science as a true religion.  Science is being used to make theological arguments that other religious beliefs and practices are false.  Science is being used to persuade people that science is a true theology.  If science is not a religion then how can science be used to make theological arguments concerning the merits of other religions?

 
 
 
Gordy327
Professor Expert
2.1.6  Gordy327  replied to  Nerm_L @2.1.5    4 years ago

Wrong on all points. If science is being misused, blame those misusing it, not the science. And science doesn't declare religious beliefs false nor does it deal with religion or the supernatural. But science can be used to challenge religious CLAIMS when they are posited as fact or truth. That's what my articles on Noah's Ark & Adam and Eve do: analyze religious claims made and establishing their degree of veracity using science. People should be persuaded by the evidence, not what they want or by emotion. Unlike religion, science follows the evidence to where it leads, not to where one wants it to go.

 
 
 
Nerm_L
Professor Expert
2.1.7  seeder  Nerm_L  replied to  Gordy327 @2.1.6    4 years ago
Wrong on all points. If science is being misused, blame those misusing it, not the science. And science doesn't declare religious beliefs false nor does it deal with religion or the supernatural. But science can be used to challenge religious CLAIMS when they are posited as fact or truth. That's what my articles on Noah's Ark & Adam and Eve do: analyze religious claims made and establishing their degree of veracity using science. People should be persuaded by the evidence, not what they want or by emotion. Unlike religion, science follows the evidence to where it leads, not to where one wants it to go.

The claims made in religious tracts are theological in nature dealing with questions of morality, social organization, and consequences of choices.

What is overlooked in the flood story presented in the Bible is that mankind brought the cataclysm onto itself by seeking sinful self satisfaction while ignoring the virtues.  We are experiencing the flood story today with the threat of climate change.  The theological facts and evidence are relevant today; the flood story is proving to be theologically accurate.

 If theology is being misused, blame those misusing it, not the theology.  Don't attempt to interpret theological tracts as science.  The evidence of sin and virtue are just as valid and theological interpretation of morality isn't within the purview of science.  We shouldn't allow theology to be turned into science.  And we shouldn't allow science to be turned into theology.

 
 
 
Gordy327
Professor Expert
2.1.8  Gordy327  replied to  Nerm_L @2.1.7    4 years ago
What is overlooked in the flood story presented in the Bible is that mankind brought the cataclysm onto itself by seeking sinful self satisfaction while ignoring the virtues.

The cause or reason why is irrelevant. It's the story itself that is scrutinized and shown to have logical holes.

We are experiencing the flood story today with the threat of climate change. 

The difference is, we have empirical evidence of climate change. Not made up stories.

The theological facts and evidence are relevant today; the flood story is proving to be theologically accurate.

Not the biblical version it's not. And science actually refutes it.

If theology is being misused, blame those misusing it, not the theology.

I usually do.

Don't attempt to interpret theological tracts as science.  

As long as theology doesn't attempt to pass off its stories as fact, I won't have to use science to deconstruct it.

The evidence of sin and virtue are just as valid and theological interpretation of morality isn't within the purview of science. 

Sin and virtue are religious concepts. Science makes no claim or mention of these things. So I'm not sure what your point is.

We shouldn't allow theology to be turned into science.  And we shouldn't allow science to be turned into theology.

If science were turned into theology, it wouldn't be science.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.2  XXJefferson51  replied to  Tessylo @2    4 years ago

So you weren’t among those saying how dangerous the restart the economy protests were? 

 
 
 
Paula Bartholomew
Professor Participates
3  Paula Bartholomew    4 years ago

Right now all large gatherings pose a risk.

 
 
 
Sparty On
Professor Principal
3.1  Sparty On  replied to  Paula Bartholomew @3    4 years ago

Exactly.

Especially the ones with lots of lower risk (younger) people who appear to be largely asymptomatic carriers who can readily infect large swaths of higher risk non-attendees

 
 
 
Tessylo
Professor Principal
4  Tessylo    4 years ago

Are these protests still going on in large gatherings?  If they are,  I'm sure someone will let me know with the proper citations.  

 
 

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