It's not just in the US that protests are happening, and US testing isn't in that bad of a place anymore(still could be better though). I don't think it's gonna spread a ton though because from beaches and the previous protests, I think it's fairly clear the virus doesn't spread too bad outdoors.
Also, I think it's clear that social distancing is done not just in the US, but across the world.
The idea that the virus doesn't spread as much outdoors is based on the assumption that you have more space to walk around and avoid people than you would indoors.
That assumption obviously does not hold when you have tens of thousands of people out protesting.
Yeah, it's for a necessary cause, but let's not kid ourselves that it magically won't spread as much just because we're all outdoors. It's the same kind of wishful thinking as 'the heat in the summer will kill it!'
We had 100k deaths in 3 months, half of which was spent in social distancing. I shudder to think how many more will die now from a combination of states reopening too quickly + anti-lockdown protests + the current protests.
Only one of these is righteous, but going solely off of numbers and the exponential nature of virus spread, the current protests will absolutely lead to many more deaths than we otherwise would have had.
Yeah I'm really worried about what's going to happen from these protest. I'm in Canada and we had thousands of people congregate downtown today basically standing shoulder to shoulder. We only have about 400 active cases in my city and we have been trending in the right direction for a while but if one super spreader was at that protest things could spiral out of control again.
The thing that kind of infuriates is that a lot of same people that have been lecturing people online about staying indoors and wearing masks are the same people that turned up to this rally or cheered it on.
I'm in favor of the protests and sharing our voice but we need to be smarter about this and recognize we are still in the midst of pandemic and protestors need to practice social distancing otherwise they are putting just as many people in harms way as those idiots in the pools at the ozark.
I know people will take this the wrong way, but in my honest opinion, I think the protests are nearing the point of diminished returns in terms of what societal shifts we're hoping they achieve.
Either we've already achieved them in terms of creating nation-wide consciousness to the problem of systemic racism and cops killing Black men, hopefully eventually translating into political action and reform--in which case there's not 'much of a point' in continuing to protest when you weigh it against the potential loss of human life (particularly among people of color) inevitable from having so many people so densely packed together--or the country is so far gone already that no amount of further protesting will change anything.
Again, these protests needed to happen, but I question the necessity and wisdom of sustaining them indefinitely when you weigh it against the potential loss of human life. You can tell yourself 'Well we were reopening anyway,' but does anyone really question the premise that greater density of people = greater virus spread? Or the exponential nature of virus spread?
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