I agree with this statement. At least here in Seattle the protesters and police are packed closely together and are yelling at oneanother. Very few if any police are wearing masks (I was ~20ft from anyone & wearing a mask but wanted to see things 1st hand).
IMO this will create a level of pandemic similar to NYC unless we really start testing and contact-tracing. It does feel like much of the left is OK with this, whereas everyone was freaking out when the reopen protesters were protesting. This is inconsistent, and unfortunate as I do have somewhat left-leaning views.
Taking down a list of people who dined at a restaurant during a certain time period is one thing.
How are you supposed to contact trace a 10,000 person protest? No one is going to know the random people they happened to be standing next to and chanting at a specific moment.
If these protests are super spreading events it blows a huge hole in any attempt at contact tracing & targeted quarantine/isolation. Hopefully it turns out the virus somehow can’t spread well in these conditions otherwise this is a huge setback for a country that just sacrificed so much to reduce the virus prevalence.
If COVID can’t spread as well due to higher heat and wind that would be great. But literally this evening I saw the same thing again walking around with the thousand protestors in close proximity to the police. According to the CDC the last super-spreader event in this area was 53.3% to 86.7% infected [0] but that was in an enclosed space.
Consider that when people are yelling and standing tightly packed together, even if there's wind it won't blow away the droplets, just the aerosols. And new aerosols will be continuously generated...
Agreed. Protesting in my country is going on but funerals are restricted and weddings forbidden. Grandparents haven't seen there grandchildren in a long time...
Either COVID-19 is serious enough that it merits cancelling a bunch of “critical” features of normal life, or it isn’t.