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Thursday, June 4, 2020

Did Social Distancing Stop Being a Priority?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Sure seems that way.

Some of you humans seem to enjoy killing each other. Then the rest of you humans burn your own communities down since you're upset. Several years ago, I wrote an “unbelievably offensive” article combining the concepts of Super Smash Bros. For Wii U being released during the Ferguson, Missouri riots. I reread it just before starting to write this article, and I noticed I spent the entire time being cheeky about the situation, rather than actually giving much of an opinion on the issue.

I'll put my opinion up front on the newest set of riots, around the killing of George Floyd by what appears to be the very long, lingering frames of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's Knee of Injustice. (I can't get the word “chauvinism” out of my mind while reading his name.) Well, riots and indiscriminately burning stuff with torches are often bad, sure. Protests against overbearing corrupt authority (and this is what I think of the police) are fine. I mean, they have to be. I support the protests in Hong Kong against the overreach and evils of the Communist Chinese Party. To the extent in Hong Kong the protests were violent, and I'm fine with those, well... I think that's justifiable.

I prefer movements that have actual goals. Derek Chauvin got arrested and charged with a degree of murder and manslaughter. Yet people are still protesting. Why? I guess to prevent more people from getting killed, unnecessarily, by cops. How will protesting prevent that? It won't. I mean, murder—even by cops—is already illegal.

But nevermind that. There's another issue I'm MUCH more bothered with, and I have a personal stake in it.

What happened to SOCIAL DISTANCING? Throughout the months of April and May, a lot of people got a lot of criticism over trying to live life in an era of the Chinese Communist Party Virus. These included dedicated anti-lockdown protests, much like the protests occurring over the killing of George Floyd, except without violence. If you go to that hyperlink, it's in the top pre-content lead section of the Wikipedia page on the protests that they're “widely condemned as unsafe and ill-advised.”

What's in common with those protests and these protests? Some people wore masks. Many didn't. They weren't keeping six feet or more away from one another and did whatever they wanted in terms of formation and loudly yelling with droplets being spread everywhere. Though in this case, there's probably much more stress going around, which can weaken one's immune system.

George Floyd protesters White House social distancing guidelines COVID-19 coronavirus concerns
These gathered protesters clearly aren't following social distancing guidelines.
And wearing a mask isn't going to make one immune to getting COVID-19.

So why isn't Wikipedia putting Chinese Community Party Virus (or coronavirus, or COVID-19) concerns in the lead of their George Floyd protests page? It's mentioned in a lower sub-section, sure, but not in a lead.

The pandemic is still a major threat, just as major as when people were berating other people for not taking it seriously just a few weeks ago. Many states are still in a slow phased approach to reopening and conforming towards a “new normal.” More people die from coronavirus every day in the United States than die from police brutality in a year. 633 people died from coronavirus on May 25, 2020, the same day George Floyd was killed by Chauvin. Meanwhile, police killed “only” 104 unarmed black people in 2015, according to MappingPoliceViolence.org. (Most black people that get killed apparently have a gun or other weapon, according to their obnoxious JavaScript-laden sister site, PoliceViolenceReport.org) If you try to look at some of their stories, you'll find that it's not a matter of fact that they were unarmed, that it is often unknown that it was the police's fault they died, and that these unarmed people often were violently attacking people with their body, much like Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd. In many cases, the stories don't exist because the owners of that JavaScript mess didn't archive them.

That all said, “only” is in quotes, because while 104 is a lower number than the coronavirus number, it's worth being upset about. However, it'd be rather stupid for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of more new coronavirus cases—and many deaths resulting from that—to be caused by a protest that's supposed to be about minimising death.

Quite frankly, I'm bitter about the United States government (and military) getting in the way of the KoopaTV Loyalty Cruise Program over Chinese Communist Party Virus concerns with getting people in close proximity. (By the way, I totally called this police violence thing in my April newsletter about how the cruise is cancelled.) We couldn't have something really fun and memorable because of this virus, but a guy who happens to be black gets killed by a jerk who happens to be white two weeks later, and all of a sudden all of the social exile and authoritarianism around social groups goes away to make way for it.

By the way, if there ISN'T a massive influx of new cases, then preventing the KoopaTV Loyalty Cruiser from setting sail was for no good reason, right? Yeah, I'm gonna remember that. 


Ludwig knows that in many of the states where there are protests, they are still in a phased approach to reopening that prohibits these kinds of social gatherings... but it seems like no one cares. After all, using the police force to disperse protests about BLACK LIVES MATTERING and COPS ARE RACIST will make them seem like racist cops, and no one wants that. But breaking up protests about FREEDOM? Yeah, it's fine if the state is known to strip that away. It's a sad state of affairs. Do you agree?

6 comments :

  1. “Staying at home, social distancing, and public masking are effective at minimizing the spread of COVID-19,” the letter signers add. “However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission.”
    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534

    I guess this is what it is coming to.
    https://babylonbee.com/news/churchgoers-avoid-arrest-by-disguising-themselves-as-rioters

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. “It’s particularly nettlesome to conservative skeptics of the all-or-nothing approach to lockdown, who point out that many of those same public health experts—a group that tends to skew liberal—widely criticized activists who held largely outdoor protests against lockdowns in April and May, accusing demonstrators of posing a public health danger. Conservatives, who felt their own concerns about long-term economic damage or even mental health costs of lockdown were brushed aside just days or weeks ago, are increasingly asking whether these public health experts are letting their politics sway their health care recommendations.”
      Oh hey, that's me!

      Delete

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