By Jim Geraghty
Friday, June 19, 2020
It’s not making national news, but local health officials
in various cities and towns across the country are reporting that people
participating in or working near the recent protests have tested positive for
the coronavirus.
Seven Nebraska National Guardsmen who were embedded with
law enforcement in Omaha and Lincoln during the protests have tested positive.
A Lexington, Ky., police officer who worked at local protests tested positive.
Individual protesters in Topeka, Kan., Boulder, Colo., and Charlotte, N.C.,
tested positive.
But considering the large sizes of the crowds at these
protests and how close people were to each other, these are small numbers. This
could mean that various factors kept the spread of the virus relatively low —
occurring outdoors, enough protesters wearing masks, plenty of sunlight, warm
temperatures. Perhaps the protesters moved around enough during the rallies and
marches so that few protesters have sustained contact with each other.
It is also possible that some protesters who have not
been tested yet are positive but asymptomatic or are suffering from mild
symptoms and are hoping it’s just a summer cold. (We know that New York City
doesn’t want to know if people who tested positive attended a George Floyd
protest.) Most of the protesters were young and appeared to be in good health.
But Minnesota enacted a widespread testing program for
protesters in that state, and the results are surprisingly good news:
Of the 3,200 people tested so far
at the four popup sites across the metro, 1.8 percent have tested positive for
Covid-19, says [Kristen Ehresmann, the Minnesota Department of Health director
of infectious disease]. HealthPartners, one of the largest health care
providers in Minnesota, also reported to the state that it had tested about
8,500 people who indicated that attendance at a mass gathering was the reason
they wanted a test. Among them, 0.99 percent tested positive. These numbers
have been one of the few pleasant surprises since the outbreak began, says
Ehresmann. “Right now, with the data available to us, it appears there was very
little transmission at protest events,” she says. “We’re just absolutely
relieved.”
In Boston, “Health officials said 14 out of 1,288 people
tested positive for coronavirus at a Roxbury pop-up site that was set up
following large demonstrations in Boston calling for change after the death of
George Floyd.”
We’re seeing a rise in cases — and more ominously, a rise
in hospitalizations — and it doesn’t appear to be driven by participation in
the protests. But what is driving it?
We’re still seeing outbreaks among prison inmates and
employees. Eleven children and seven staff members have tested positive in
Florida’s largest group home for foster children. In Tampa General Hospital, 55
out of 8,000 hospital employees tested positive, and same for 500 of the 90,000
employees of Delta Airlines. Two meatpacking plants in Utah shut down after
recent outbreaks. A cluster of cases traced back to a Florida bar.
What do almost all of these locations have in common?
They’re situations where people could have prolonged exposure to an infected
person, probably not wearing a mask, indoors.
In fact, we’re seeing a surprising number of cases among
young people that can be tracked back to parties — a high school graduation
party in South Carolina, a college graduation party in Wisconsin, an
unsanctioned prom and beach party in Texas, a party in southwest Wyoming.
Boulder County, Colo.: “‘Some of the gatherings had
multiple people like 20 people. One was identified as having up to 50 people in
those gatherings,’ said Carol Helwig, the communicable disease epidemiology
program manager for Boulder County Public Health. ‘It was reported that there
was no use of masks and no social distancing. For young people, it’s the most
social time of our lives and we understand the need to gather socially but we
are hoping that when people gather that they are following the guidelines.’”
Bucks County, Pa.: “Twelve people in Bucks County who
attended Memorial Day parties at the Jersey Shore have tested positive for the
coronavirus. The Bucks County Health Department discovered this cluster of
COVID-19 cases through contact tracing. One positive case led to the 11
others.”
Oxford, Miss.: “State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs
blames an outbreak of COVID-19 cases in Oxford on fraternity parties. During
Gov. Tate Reeves’ coronavirus press conference Thursday, Dobbs said there were
381 news cases and five deaths. He further stated there had been a cluster of
cases in Oxford linked to fraternity parties.”
All over Texas, really: “There are certain counties where
a majority of the people who are tested positive in that county are under the
age of 30, and this typically results from people going to bars,” Governor Greg
Abbott said during the conference. “That is the case in Lubbock County, Bexar
County, Cameron County.”
Most of these cases are among young people who will
probably only experience mild symptoms and should make a full recovery. But
here and there you’ll see young people whose infections are serious enough
require hospitalization, like a 30-year-old man in Scottsdale. In Florida, 103
children under the age of 18 had to be hospitalized after infection. It’s a
small percentage, but no parent wants to see their child in the hospital.
A common mentality among conservatives these days is that
almost all Democratic officials, and certain public-health experts, set their
credibility on fire for coming down like a ton of bricks on anti-lockdown
protesters but then blessing and in some cases participating in George Floyd
protests. (For what it’s worth, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the protests were a
“perfect setup” for spreading the virus.) No doubt, we’ve got a supply of
hypocrisy that could fill up the underground tanks of the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. My governor, Ralph Northam, posed for selfies on the beach without a
mask on May 24 and then two days later signed an executive order requiring
masks to be worn indoors, with criminal penalties for the establishment.
But the fact that Democrats are hypocrites does not alter
any of the facts around the virus. As far as we can tell so far, participation
in the protests turned out to be a low-risk activity. But if someone in those 1
percent of protesters who was infected or got infected walks into a nursing
home, the consequences could be substantial anyway. Or if one of those 1
percent lives with someone who is immunocompromised.
A lot of people will want to believe that because the
coronavirus wasn’t that bad at the protests, the virus is gone, or that
everyone’s built up immunity. But every gathering involves some element of
risk. Maybe you’ll be lucky.
As noted yesterday, the increase in cases is happening in
states such as Florida and Texas and Arizona, but also in California and Nevada
and Oregon.
Some governor out there is going to try to put lockdowns
in place again, and it is going to go badly. A lot of Americans found the
lockdowns economically ruinous, psychologically agonizing, and intolerable, and
the government response to the George Floyd protests convinced these Americans
that the lockdowns were a bunch of nonsense. Dumb rules such as bans on surfing
and drive-in church services; dumb decisions such as the arrest of a dad
playing catch with his daughter; and nutty arbitrary restrictions such as
permitting drywall but not paint in Michigan convinced plenty of Americans that
the lockdowns represented petty fascism and micromanaging governors on a power
trip. It is trendy to argue that the coronavirus presented a test of Americans’
patience and self-discipline — and that the public failed. That may well be
true, but the coronavirus also represented a test of the seriousness and
self-discipline of our elected officials, and a lot of those figures flunked
the test, too. The moment called for Abraham Lincoln, and instead we got the
gubernatorial equivalent of South Park’s Eric Cartman bellowing “respect my
authority!”
We don’t need another lockdown, but we do need a
restoration of early-pandemic caution and discipline. (One of the enormous
problems in how we’ve been discussing the pandemic is that many lockdown foes
see any message of caution as an ipso facto endorsement of the lockdowns, and
how they were enforced.)
The recent experiences with infections at parties
suggests that it’s probably too early to restore our old habits of large
gatherings without social-distancing measures. The experience with the protests
and the contrast with workplaces suggests we should wear masks whenever we’re
coming within six feet of someone outside our household. We would be wise to
minimize our time that we’re indoors with others outside our household and
maximize our time outdoors.
Nobody wants to hear this, but life isn’t just about
being told what you want to hear.
President Trump wants to move on to his rallies. The
Democrats want to move on to ever-intensifying denunciations of structural
racism in American society. The Washington media want to move on to the juicy
parts of John Bolton’s book.
It’s just a shame the coronavirus isn’t ready to move on.
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