Are social gatherings infectious? Apparently not if the governor likes your politics washex.am/375QmUQ
“It’s one thing to protest what day nail salons are opening,” New Jersey @GovMurphy said this week. “And it’s another to come out and peacefully protest about somebody who was murdered right before our eyes.”
This was Murphy’s justification for keeping the arbitrary category of “nonessential” businesses closed and limiting public gatherings while cheering large, densely packed public protests that may spread infection and make his costly, life-altering business closures pointless.
Murphy's statement reveals an ignorance of, or contempt for, science. Surely George Floyd’s killing cries out to heaven, but the rightness of one’s cause does not provide immunity from infection.
If one were to judge only by the amazing recent transformation of opinion, it would be difficult not to conclude the opposite.
The same people who snitched to the police about neighbors for having company last week are now making excuses for gatherings much more likely to spread the virus, and to spread it much more widely.
Protests are, in some respects, worse than other gatherings of people that remain illegal in New Jersey and other jurisdictions.
That includes commercial gatherings, which are “nonessential” according to some bureaucrat’s view, but essential to each business owner’s and employee’s hope of avoiding poverty and long-term joblessness.
If mass protests and rioting in major cities do not lead to a resurgence in COVID cases, it would be more evidence that states can safely end lockdowns.
Murphy acknowledged that “I’ll probably get lit up by everybody who owns a nail salon in the state.”
But that’s an understatement. He was trivializing not just nail salons, but the ability of all business owners and employees in certain industries such as restaurants and brick-and-mortar stores to make a living.
Consistent enforcement of law is a necessary condition for people to respect and obey it. But this is about more than just consistency, it’s about the specific nature of infectious disease.
How many times have we heard angry scolds make this point to those who forget their masks or take "unnecessary" walks about their cities? The widespread exposure generated by protests is rendering futile all of the excessive pandemic restrictions supposedly protecting grandma.
