Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

I've been reflecting on the tumult last week over how to support the BLM protests while still supporting social distancing.

A lot of critics argued that I and others were "conflating medical and professional expertise with other political beliefs, damaging [our] credibility."

With the benefit of some distance and reflection, I want to address that again.

I'll start with a quick story. Just over a year ago I traveled to Eastern Congo to assess WHO's work on the Ebola outbreak there. I went to Butembo, then the epicenter of the outbreak.

Much of E. Congo has been at war for years. In Butembo I met with leaders of local NGOs and civil society. Amazingly, 200 people showed up for a small meeting. Packed the room. And they didn't want to talk about Ebola.

They wanted to talk about SAFETY.

Speaker, after speaker, after speaker talked about safety and security.

"Why didn't the government and UN care about insecurity here before Ebola arrived?"

"Why did you send peacekeepers to protect Ebola teams, but not to protect us from conflict?"

(Applause across the room)

In their minds - understandably - Ebola was not the biggest threat to their safety. Conflict and insecurity were - and had been endangering them much longer than Ebola.

We spent a lot of time talking about that. My rusty French got a workout.

But they needed me to hear them on that before they were ready to dialog on Ebola. We ended up talking for two hours before I finally had to head off.

There's a lesson in that. People who feel fundamentally unsafe and unheard will probably care about that more than a virus.

Black Americans have been fundamentally unsafe in this country since before its founding. And public health officials have no grounds to tell them that legacy should come second to the virus.

Both are valid public health crises. Both threaten lives. Both need to be solved.

And finally the country is hearing them. It would be great if the movement sparked by George Floyd's killing had happened when we weren't mid-pandemic.

But if you know a way to conveniently reschedule a country-wide spontaneous mobilization for racial justice, I'm all ears.

So I see the protests as a net public health good, given the sea change they have sparked in views on racial violence.

And I see it as valid, given their importance, to treat them as an "essential" public activity, just as we would something like voting.

https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1270015144337141760

I also believe that the public health risk of the protests can be reduced through mitigation measures. And that's been happening.

In virtually every picture of every protest, people were masked. The protests took place outdoors, which greatly reduces the threat of infection.

Protest tactics (and police tactics) also matter. Protest marches with constant movement and good spacing reduce the risk of receiving an infectious exposure.

Sit-ins and stationary protests worry me more - closer crowding, prolonged exposure, higher risk of infections.

And, sorry, that is very very very different from re-opening casinos in Vegas, bars, churches, or any other indoor activity.

There is simply no equivalence between a masked, spaced, moving, outdoor activity and a crowded indoor unmasked activity with prolonged close contact.

That's not a political statement. That's simply an analysis of how many super-spreading risk factors are layered into each activity, and the extent to which they are being mitigated.

If you insist on equating those things to the protests, it's not me who's being political.

Could we do a better job of explaining what's risk and what isn't? Definitely. I've been trying to, and am amplifying others who do as well. I think part of the backlash flows from a wider failure to educate the public on the evolving understanding of transmission risks.

But I think much of the backlash also stems from a sense of political betrayal: the impression that we're waiving our public health advice because we sympathize with this cause.

Boiled down: "when my side wanted X you said 👎, but when your side protests, you say 👍"

A *lot* of people threw that at me. And if you're going to insist on that seeing this through a my side/your side lens, I might not persuade you.

But very few engaged with my actual argument - either on the criticality of the protests, or the transmission risk they pose.

I'm open to pushback on both. I'd be very interested in hearing the merits of why these protests are non-essential, or why they are an equal/greater risk to crowded indoor activities. I'll happily engage (and I have been doing so).

But I still think the essential point boils down to this, which I tweeted nearly a week ago and stand by.

https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1269127159127343104?s=20

So I'm going to keep supporting BLM. And I'm going to keep warning about the risks of reopening recklessly. And I don't see a contradiction there; I see a need for balancing risks.

Whether or not you think I'm a hypocrite, the virus is still out there.

The first wave has not receded, and indeed is rising once again. There have been very sharp transmission spikes in many states over the past week (unrelated to the protests - these exposures pre-date them).

Re-opening still needs to be judicious and data-driven. We still need a competent federal response. We still need sufficient testing, tracing, & PPE.

In the long run of this pandemic, the fact that we still lack all those things is a far bigger risk than a few weeks of protests.