Why the Black Lives Matter protest is dangerous

By Australian immunologist John Dwyer.  His comments are about Australia but they are equally applicable to the USA

The vast majority of people infected with COVID-19 met the virus while in close physical proximity to an infectious individual for an extended period of time. Prolonged exposure not only results in a much greater chance of being infected; it makes it likely one will be infected by a lot of virus – "high viral load" – which will be a major factor in determining the clinical consequences.

This reality is not being given sufficient emphasis in our mitigation strategies.

As we attempt to tame this epidemic it is crucial that we not only practise social distancing but also focus on minimising occasions when we are close to fellow citizens for a prolonged period of time, a strategy we might call "social brevity".

Remember our local experience of one infected individual attending a wedding reception with 35 others, all of whom went home infected.

No matter how laudable the cause of yesterday’s planned Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney, it was ridiculous to even contemplate having a gathering which 1500 people had indicated on Facebook they would attend – even if wearing masks – to give voice (and potentially virus) to their shared concerns for a prolonged period.

While the organisers had pledged to divide into legal groups of no more than 20, how feasible might that have been? As it turned out, only 40 turned out for the rally, which was abandoned when its leader and others were arrested. But it shouldn't have come to that.

What irony that a protest about the need to save lives could be responsible for the loss of lives. It’s disturbing that after all these months of struggle to contain COVID infections, the organisers were defying a court order not to proceed.

As we have seen in Melbourne, a single carrier can set off a tidal wave of infections. Prolonged exposure to COVID carriers results in clusters of infection as we have seen in meat-packing plants, nursing homes, cramped housing estates and, increasingly notable, hospital settings.

More than 700 Australian health professionals caring for COVID patients have been infected. In the Italian crisis more than 100 previously healthy and often young doctors died as they were constantly exposed to huge numbers of infected individuals over many weeks.

Now, you might get infected making you way around a crowed supermarket. You might pick up COVID from a solid surface or meet it in air exhaled by a fellow shopper, but the risk is low. To avoid the greater risks, we have to extend our thinking to social brevity.

Religious services, choirs, funerals, parties, hotels where drinking while standing in groups is allowed, public transport and the normal daily routines in nursing homes all create dangerous opportunities for infection.

The data also highlight how important are opportunities to work at home. We need to pay special attention to the working conditions associated with "essential services". We have had clusters of infection on construction sites and in factories. Industry experts should be working with government health authorities to devise the best possible protective gear and arrangements for workers in such industries.

The recent outbreak of infections in Victoria clearly illustrates how quickly we can see a reassuringly low rate of new infections explode to produce so many new infections that our best efforts at contact tracing are unable to arrest the exponential increase in cases.

In NSW we are understandably nervous that our currently manageable numbers of new infections could suddenly accelerate.

While vaccine news features much optimism, the data is very preliminary and we are learning from numerous studies that natural infection may not be associated with any long-term immunity.

Too often we hear that COVID infections are only a problem for "oldies". Yet globally they are causing more and more serious clinical consequences for young people (very noticeable in Victoria at the moment), often resulting in chronic illness.

It was of some comfort that the Black Lives Matter protesters had pledged to wear masks, but that would have given them no guarantee. Numerous studies have been performed trying to quantify the value of mask wearing by the general population as a strategy for defeating COVID; the results are mixed. The controversies are well presented on the NSW Department of Health’s COVID website.

The wearing of masks by all citizens, as is currently required of Victorians, needs to be put into an evidence-based perspective. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of masks in reducing the likelihood that an infected individual will infect another.

Of course, individuals with respiratory symptoms should wear a mask as they seek testing and then self-isolate until the results are in. No-one with symptoms should be at large in the community and thinking that a mask will guarantee they are harmless.

The World Health Organisation and America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the importance of mask wearing by all in situations such as Victoria’s. Certainly the same is true for the likes of Florida and Texas where 25 per cent of those tested are infected, but mask wearing will not provide the panacea that will terminate the COVID epidemic.

Stay-at-home orders will slow the infection rate but our need to "live" with this virus and restore our economy requires us to adapt our normal social interaction to the long-term epidemiological reality we face. That adaptation must address the need for "social brevity" for the foreseeable future.

SOURCE 

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HHS Acts to Preserve Religious Freedom at Hospitals During Pandemic

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services took two important steps Tuesday to protect religious freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agency’s Office for Civil Rights announced that patients at hospitals within the University of Maryland Medical System may receive visits by clergy amid the pandemic.

And, the office said, a medical student at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City may follow his religious belief by not shaving his beard despite having to wear a mask. 

“We can protect people’s physical safety and their spiritual and emotional well-being at the same time,” Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Those two things are not in tension and when we protect both, we actually protect the mental health as well as the physical health.”

“Religious liberty doesn’t cease to be a fundamental human right during a pandemic,” Ryan T. Anderson, a research fellow specializing in religious liberty at The Heritage Foundation, said in an email to The Daily Signal. “As these HHS resolutions demonstrate, we can combat COVID-19 and respect religious liberty.”

In the case prompting the first decision, Sidney and Susanna Marcus were airlifted to Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland, after a motorcycle accident May 25.

Her husband’s injuries were more severe than hers, Susanna Marcus explained on Tuesday’s conference call, placing him in the hospital’s intensive care unit for an extended period.

Susanna Marcus requested that a priest visit her husband because she was “very fearful for his condition,” she said.

She and her husband are Catholic, she said, and “believe that in the sacraments our souls are united to God’s.”

“I needed to know that he had access to that,” she said. “And when I was told that no priests were allowed, I was able to contact HHS and was connected to the best people … and finally Sidney was able to have access to a priest and to the sacrament.” 

The Office for Civil Rights and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services worked with the University of Maryland Medical System to ensure that patients have access to clergy and chaplains during the pandemic, Severino said.

The University of Maryland Medical System updated visitation guidelines for all 13 of its hospitals to allow patients, including those in COVID-19 care units, to receive visits from pastors, priests, or other clergy—provided they wear the appropriate personal protective equipment.

In an email Tuesday night to The Daily Signal, Michael Schwartzberg, media relations director for the University of Maryland Medical System, said:

After we became aware of an issue regarding clergy visitation for a patient who was potentially nearing the end of [his] life, we engaged in extensive discussion with key stakeholders including legal counsel on how to best accommodate situations that require exceptions to our visitation policy while not compromising the safety of others.

We have since amended our policy, with all individuals visiting a COVID-19 positive patient provided a form acknowledging the risk, and will allow clergy visits with adherence to safety protocols.

HHS would like to see other states and hospital systems follow University of Maryland Medical System’s lead, Severino said.

“It’s a tragedy when people are deprived of the ability to have access to their faith practices,” he told reporters.

The Office for Civil Rights also acted to protect the faith practices of the New York City medical student in June, leading to the second announcement Tuesday.

The unnamed student was set to do rotations at Staten Island University Hospital during the summer. Hospital supervisors asked him to shave his beard before getting fitted for an N95 protective mask, but the student explained that he could not do so because of his religious beliefs. He was told he could not return to rotations until he shaved.

The Office for Civil Rights worked with the student and the hospital to find an alternative that “provides greater protection than an N95 mask and would allow for a facial beard,” HHS said in a press release.

Patients and health care providers “have [an] interest in religious freedoms, and both should be accommodated and protected to the extent possible,” Severino said.

 SOURCE 

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Black Privilege in the Media

Several Leftmedia outlets have announced they'll capitalize the "B" in black.

This just in: The Leftmedia is biased. Clearly that’s not news, but what is news is the recent decision by the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets to begin capitalizing the “B” in black when describing people. The “w” in white will remain lowercased, however, to make sure white folks remain properly chastised. “White privilege” indeed.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) says “white” should be capitalized as well, and Fox News, CNN, and others say they’ll do so. The white leftists at the AP, Times, and Journal, however, are too busy putting white people in their place to listen to fair-minded black people.

The AP made the change to “B” on Juneteenth but only yesterday announced that “W” would not follow. In reporting on its own decision, the AP noted, “The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.” So the AP is going to discriminate against white people in news coverage to teach them a lesson.

Indeed, John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, was almost explicit in saying so: “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

Evidently, Daniszewski and his fellow race-baiting cadres believe blacks are incapable of perpetrating inequality, injustice, or supremacy. To assign such sinful human behavior only to whites is, of course, racist. So is making skin pigmentation the defining characteristic these media outlets will highlight — as if all blacks have to think and behave in some uniform fashion, while whites are evidently free to think for themselves. Why can’t Americans be united in our national culture instead of being divided by skin color?

This is all part of the Marxist cultural revolution of identity politics that has swept the country in recent weeks. It includes rebranding food, renaming sports teams, and the redefinition of language itself.

On a final note, let me give you a taste of what this idiocy would look like in my own home. I have three white children and two black children, adopted from Africa. They are African Americans, if you really want to get technical, but that term is even falling out of favor as “Black” sweeps it away. Imagine if I followed these media outlets and not only showed my black kids favoritism but insisted that my white kids — especially that deplorable male one — were privileged, discriminating, and downright evil for being … white.

I’d be a horrible father, a deranged person, and a racist. Yet that sort of racism is exactly what passes for “enlightened” media coverage today. One might almost conclude that the Leftmedia truly is the enemy of the people.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

U.S. Supreme Court denies Nevada church's appeal of discriminatory coronavirus restrictions (NBC News)

Hidin' Biden declines Chris Wallace interview (Fox News)

Democratic National Committee platform mentions "whites" 15 times, all of which are critical (Washington Examiner)

Big wins for Bernie Sanders wing in Democrat platform (Washington Examiner)

Economic adviser Larry Kudlow says next coronavirus stimulus bill will include more checks, extend moratorium on evictions (Fox News)

Parking tickets covered by Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines, federal court rules (Forbes)

Leftist George Soros pours record $50 million into 2020 election (The Washington Free Beacon)

Seattle police chief sends simple message to businesses during riots: You're on your own (The Daily Caller)

If you thought "defund the police" was insane, you'll love "abolish prisons" in Seattle (PJ Media)

Rifle ammunition, Molotov cocktails found by Portland police on 60th consecutive night of "protests" (Fox News)

Civil rights activists fire back at Portland protesters: It's no longer about black lives (The Daily Wire)

Chicago violence: Two dead, 47 injured in another bloody weekend (Fox News)

Ecstatic teen opens his first-ever paycheck, learns what taxes are, is absolutely crushed (Disrn)

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