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It's that plus statements they made where you could clearly see the statement was in service of politics rather than science. One particular example I remember

It's that plus statements they made where you could clearly see the statement was in service of politics rather than science. One particular example I remember is during the protests after the death of George Floyd, there were several scientists saying something along the lines of "you shouldn't attend large crowds, but it's OK if you are going to the protest" [1] [2] [3] It was just so blatant and such an insult to people's intelligence and was just so obviously fueled by politics and not public health. IMO the real villans of the pandemic were the doctors out there trying to make themselves famous and shooting up the credibility of their field in the process while also giving fuel to the other side to make their points. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea... [2]: https://www.axios.com/2020/06/10/black-lives-matter-protests-coronavirus-science https://www.axios.com/2020/06/10/black-lives-matter-protests... [3]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette...

tzs 2y ago
The kind of crowd matters. 1000 people attending an indoor concert is a massively more effective spreader of COVID than 1000 people marching outdoors at a protest. The chances of getting infected from someone nearby who is spreading the virus depends on how much of the virus got in you which is a function of how long you are near to them, the rate they are expelling viruses, and how long those viruses stay around you. In a crowd all of those factors depend heavily on what the crowd is doing and where they are doing it and what percent of the crowd is infected. I remember seeing papers that looked at the actual results of various large crowds and found that the George Floyd protests in fact did very little to spread COVID.

tzs 2y ago

The kind of crowd matters. 1000 people attending an indoor concert is a massively more effective spreader of COVID than 1000 people marching outdoors at a protest. The chances of getting infected from someone nearby who is spreading the virus depends on how much of the virus got in you which is a function of how long you are near to them, the rate they are expelling viruses, and how long those viruses stay around you. In a crowd all of those factors depend heavily on what the crowd is doing and where they are doing it and what percent of the crowd is infected. I remember seeing papers that looked at the actual results of various large crowds and found that the George Floyd protests in fact did very little to spread COVID.