PerspectiveWe Often Accuse the Right of Distorting Science. But the Left Changed the Coronavirus Narrative Overnight
Of the more than 110,000 Americans who have so far died of the coronavirus, at least 20,000 were African Americans. Thomas Chatterton Williams, an African American writer living in Paris and who considers himself to be on the left politically, writes that the anger at the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota policeman is understandable, and the urge of good people to protest the racism – deadly racism — still prevalent in many police departments is commendable, but that the left must admit, and reflect on, its own hypocrisy. Less than two weeks after criticizing people of different political persuasion for ignoring social distancing in rallies against the lockdown – or for going to the beach in Florida – progressives, including many public health officials, were calling on hundreds of thousands of people to ignore social distancing and minimal rules of pandemic-related cautionary measures in order to take part in mass protests – justified in and of themselves — over the senseless killing of Floyd.
Of the more than 110,000 Americans who have so far died of the coronavirus, at least 20,000 were African Americans. Thomas Chatterton Williams, an African American writer living in Paris and who considers himself to be on left politically, writes in The Guardian that less than two weeks ago, the enlightened position in both Europe and America was to exercise nothing less than extreme caution. Williams notes that “Many of us went much further, taking to social media to castigate others for insufficient social distancing or neglecting to wear masks or daring to believe they could maintain some semblance of a normal life during coronavirus.”At the end of April, when the state of Georgia moved to end its lockdown, The Atlantic ran an article with the headline “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”
Williams writes that the anger at the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota policeman is understandable, and the urge of good people to protest the racism – deadly racism — still prevalent in many police departments is commendable, but that the left must admit, and reflect on, the hypocrisy involved in calling on hundreds of thousands of people to ignore social distancing and minimal rules of pandemic-related cautionary measures in order to take part in mass protests – justified in and of themselves — over the senseless killing of Floyd.
“The risks of congregating during a global pandemic shouldn’t keep people from protesting racism,” NPR suddenly tells us, citing a letter signed by dozens of American public health and disease experts. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” the letter said. One epidemiologist has gone even further, arguing that the public health risks of not protesting for an end to systemic racism “greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
The climate-change-denying right is often ridiculed, correctly, for politicizing science. Yet the way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science.
What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging? Merely pointing out the inconsistency in such a polarized landscape feels like an act of heresy. But “‘Your gatherings are a threat, mine aren’t,’ is fundamentally illogical, no matter who says it or for what reason,” as the author of The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols, put it. “We’ve been told for months to stay as isolated as humanely possible,” Suzy Khimm, an NBC reporter covering COVID-19, noted, but “some of the same public officials and epidemiologists are [now] saying it’s OK to go to mass gatherings – but only certain ones.”
The incoherence of public health officials, regardless of their motives, may be a problem going forward “when it may be all the more urgent to convince skeptical masses to submit to an unproven vaccine or to another round of crushing stay-at-home orders. Will anyone still listen?” Williams writes.
