Epidemiologists supporting mass protests against “systematic racism” in one breath and calling for stringent health protocols to be thrust upon American citizens in the next illustrates how politicized science has become. The New York Times detailed the sorta kinda discomfort of these medical authorities in the closest thing to an admission of a double standard on Coronavirus social curbs that you will see in a major establishment media organ. Still, the article fell far short of exposing the full extent of the hypocrisy flagrantly displayed by these "experts."
Gee, Our Bad
"Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice," Dr. Mark Lurie, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University's School of Public Health, told The Times. "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."
It's small comfort to regular Americans who have not been crowned as "experts" by the communications infrastructure of our ruling establishment to see these supposed devotees of pure medical science mildly acknowledge the hollowness hiding behind their saintly white lab coats. After all, these are the people who have caused suffering citizens to lock themselves down in their homes for months, forgo church and other dearly valued activities, and endure substantial financial pain – all because these lofty officials decreed it must be so to stave off a deadly pandemic.
Having put up with this tyrannical claptrap, Americans then had to stand back and watch these same wizards of virology cheer on mass protests in the streets that just happened to align with their personal political views.
Lurie's hypocrisy is far more egregious than he lets on in that Times quote. In March, he was a featured expert voice in a big-box media article that specifically scolded Republicans for downplaying the virus out of "partisan" ignorance. Lurie accused such people of selfishly threatening the health of others. "The virus doesn't care about your party affiliation or your political beliefs," Lurie told ABC News. "If you don't follow the CDC recommendations, you're increasing (the chance) that you're going to get infected and that you're going to infect other people."
Yet here is what Lurie says in an explanatory article on the Brown University School of Public Health website, extolling "the importance of demonstrating that racism is a public health crisis" despite "the risks of attending large gatherings in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic":
"It is not an easy balance. On the one hand, I believe that we probably exposed ourselves to more risk of infection during the few hours of the protest than we did during the entire cumulation of the past two months. We wore masks, kept out of the thick of the crowd, and did all we could to remain safe but honestly, I still felt a very certain unease. On the other hand, eliminating systemic racism — if we could do that — would be a major structural change that would save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives annually in the US. And if we don't stand up to be heard, who will?"
Uncomfortably or not, Lurie is admitting that his personal beliefs matter more than those of other Americans. Disturbingly, he has been placed in a position of authority that allows him to enforce this unfair pretense.
Deadly for You, Wonderful for Me?
Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center, told The Times, "I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I'm not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that. I have a hard time articulating why that is OK."
Troisi did far more than that. She warned of an avalanche of human misery if Americans didn't stringently adhere to social distancing protocols to combat Coronavirus. "The current estimate is that between 40% and 70% of the population could be infected and that we're going to see more deaths if we don't socially distance ourselves,” Troisi told Healio Primary Care on March 25. "Ignoring social distancing is particularly dangerous for those over 65 years old and especially dangerous for those over 85 years old."
Then George Floyd died. And here is what she tweeted out about a mass protest in Houston on June 2:
https://twitter.com/clt1020/status/1268167663391576065
One can only assume this is the rally Troisi told The Times she attended despite her previous warnings that such gatherings would lead to more deaths.
Dr. Mary Travis Bassett is a former New York City health commissioner who now heads the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. As the name of the center implies, Bassett is more activist than impartial doctor. That her strident politicizations of medical issues would seem to directly contradict themselves at times does not appear to bother her.
In late March, Bassett told Patch that racial "inequalities … mean that we are both more susceptible and more likely to have people who are not going to follow the public health advice of social distancing, hand-washing and seeking prompt medical care because they risk their livelihood." In other words, systemic racism would cruelly force minorities to be exposed to something that could kill them.
Yet Bassett told The New York Times she warmly welcomed enormous protests by throngs of black Americans that would directly put them in the path of that very lethal harm. "Racism has been killing people a lot longer than COVID-19," Bassett said of the mass rallies. "The willingness to say we all bear the burden of that is deeply moving to me."
You can feel as you like about the logic behind such a mindset, but please do not call it science.
What's most galling about the get-out-of-social-conditioning-jail card being handed out to Black Lives Matter radicals by these epidemiological imposters is that these same people continue to call for harsh infringements on the lives of millions of Americans not favored with a fashionable political cause to trumpet. Ashish K. Jha is the Dean of Brown University's School of Public Health. While he does express concern over the mass protests, he appears rather blithe about the fact that they have occurred.
"Do I worry that mass protests will fuel more cases? Yes, I do," he told The Times. "But a dam broke and there's no stopping that."
Oh, well. What can you do? One has to wonder if Jha would pronounce similar feelings of casual acceptance if a large and loud group of non-politically correct citizens aggressively flouted mandatory mask regulations en masse. For you see, the doctor is a strong advocate of such measures. "We need a national strategy, and every state should have a mandatory mask order," Jha told NBC's TODAY show on July 6.
Given the overt willingness of our so-called health "experts" to shrug off the harsh social curbs they deem essential to saving human lives the moment the rules prove inconvenient to their own worldview, why in Heaven's name should the citizens of this nation give one jot of credence to these howling hypocrites when they demand even more control over our lives?
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