It’s what the governments allowed. They allowed the protests. They didn’t allow high school graduations outdoors.
Once the government (city or state) tacitly approved one but shut down the other, they lost credibility. There is no distinction based on science.
Once they lost credibility, they were ignored by many people.
A strawman argument like this is a perfect example of aforementioned intellectual dishonesty. It would be great if we could at least attempt to avoid strawman arguments here.
The problem I had with the SIP protests is that they were largely filled with armed people who were unmasked.
Let’s take a look at Texas covid hospitalizations, shall we, to see if the protests seem to have increased covid, or if covid hospitalizations were going up before the protests even started. Where does that exponential rate start to kick up in the graph in this article?
Looks like around May 27. Hmm. So that would mean that whatever precipitated the exponential growth had to have happened a week or so earlier, in order to give time for the people in the leading edge to get infected, develop symptoms, and then be sick enough to be hospitalized. The protests started May 26th, and didn’t really expand nationwide for a couple of days. Unless time works backwards, the protests were not the cause of the exponential growth in covid hospitalization in Texas.
I agree, in principal. In my state (LA) a few places were hit early and hit hard. We came out of it and now other areas of the state are being hit, but not this city. A similar thing seems to have happened in Washington State.
Is it human nature for many people to just not take something seriously, or seriously enough, unless it’s right next to them in their community? “Oh, that’s a downstate problem, it’s a city, they have tourists, we don’t need to worry about it here so I’ll go grocery shopping and don’t need a mask, they’re not regular folks”, etc.
Or this there some trick with this virus that it will infect at least 5% of the population? Not talking about herd immunity but some kind of minimum.
Looking at Europe, there are countries that were a complete disaster yet even the UK got it’s overall rate far down. We got down to a high plateau, not nearly low enough, and now we are going up again. How much of that is just that the virus covering ground it never covered before?
Just wondering…
And I hear these studies that say, “if we just had shut down 2 weeks earlier, and done it nationally, 50,000 deaths would have been prevented”. That may be true, but there would be absolute screaming about the economy and how stupid we were to shut down early since “nearly nobody died”. It seems that you have to live a disaster if you’re not able to imagine it.
”Looks like around May 27. Hmm. So that would mean that whatever precipitated the exponential growth had to have happened a week or so earlier, in order to give time for the people in the leading edge to get infected, develop symptoms, and then be sick enough to be hospitalized. The protests started May 26th, and didn’t really expand nationwide for a couple of days. Unless time works backwards, the protests were not the cause of the exponential growth in covid hospitalization in Texas.“
Yet the numbers continue to increase and the protests happened. Are you saying that all of the cases happening now are only exponential growth prior to the protests. You are proving my point!
I’ve been assuming all along governments made a cost risk benefit analysis on the protests, and for high school graduations. They came to different conclusions.
Personally I support the protests. Even if I didn’t, I’d still think the risk of trying to stop them was much too great.
Not much risk with stopping HS graduations.
I understand it’s not fair, and am sorry this has been so very difficult those missing important milestone events.
What point would that be?
What? There are thousands of federal laws imposed on states.
It’s also in the Constitution Supremacy Clause - Article VI, Paragraph 2
If a state feels that a Federal law is unconstitutional they can take it to court.
The only problem I had with them was I thought their stance was dumb and how they did it (bringing unnecessary weapons with them) was dumb but I still think they had a right to exercise their 1st amendment rights. 
I would have liked to support BLM and attend protests but I also know I am higher risk so did not attend. Those protesters had a right to exercise their 1st amendment rights as well. I am more sympathetic to their cause although, yes, it comes with risks.
My point was that there are some who will choose their cause as Covid Safe while dismissing other get togethers as not safe. The virus doesn’t discriminate.
Your post points out that there were upticks starting before the protests but it does nothing to prove that the protests have had no effect on Covid cases.
Read the recent case against Cuomo and de Blasio out of the NDNY. The federal judge enjoined them from making distinctions between large gatherings since they favored the protests while not allowing religious gatherings. A First Amendment violation.
I love how “strawman” has become today’s hot word of the day in the thread for a different perspective in a post. It’s a cool cancel culture word too. Very hip. Shuts down dialogue effectively and misses the directional nature of a comment.
Followed by “sigh” prefacing a quote as a close second.
I know lots of doctors “getting their hands dirty,” not working from home and literally risking their lives every single day. I appreciate all essential workers, but even most essential workers aren’t exposed to the degree that many of these great doctors are. They are working with people whose viral loads are very large, often without the quality of PPE that they should have had all along.
Of course I’m partial to nurses, but the doctors are busting their tails too. Even many who aren’t working in the hospital are still seeing patients, (whose COVID status is unknown) working long hours without the best PPE-they could well be treating infected patients too. They are certainly putting themselves out there every day.
I think the anti SIP/SAH/Liberate US protests are one of the main reasons so many states re-opened way to soon. IMO, that was the catalyst and why more people are going to bars, restaurants, massage parlors, tattoo parlors, bowling, parties and a thousand other dumb things to do in a pandemic, then a reaction to the protests.
I have seen some masked runners, bicyclists, and walkers outside, but masked ones are relatively few compared to unmasked ones, at least in places where it is relatively easy to practice social distancing.
@emilybee so your solution is to pass a federal law requiring everyone to wear masks in certain circumstances? I should have been more clear. There’s no quick way for the feds to impose a law. Given the current gridlock in congress in about 3 years if we are lucky we’d have a law passed by Congress and signed by the President to that effect.
We know that an exponential infection/contagion/hospitalization cycle happened in Texas and started around May 20, for reason or reasons X. We know that the protests didn’t cause that cycle, because the protests didn’t happen for another week. We know that this cycle, once it started, would have produced exactly what we see, because that is how exponential processes work. In other words, we know that something other than the protests could have caused exactly what we see.
Now, the protests could have had an effect, an effect mysteriously balanced by some other unknown effect so that we couldn’t see any difference from what we would have seen with no protests. That’s a possibility. But I pull out Occam’s razor here.
If your point was, “Looking the hospitalization numbers from Texas, we see no evidence that the protests made any difference,” then yes, I proved your point. Otherwise no.
Very disheartening to read (PBS News Hour) that there are more outbreaks in prisons & at a Tyson poultry plant (in largely rural areas of Kansas & Missouri).
We can do so much better!
Cities do not want the liability if there is a super spreader event at a city fireworks event (and they may want to save the cost of putting on the show, given budget worries). Also, from what I have seen in past year fireworks events, local park areas where the fireworks can be viewed get very crowded, with people camping out starting many hours before to get places to sit. Although being outside lowers the risk, the density was much higher than many other outdoor gatherings and events, and people were in proximity of the same other people for hours. Concerts have similar characteristics.