DAVID BERNSTEIN: Public Health Experts are Embarrassing Themselves. “Yet epidemiologists and other public health gurus have been overwhelmingly reluctant to criticize the loosening of public health restrictions on public gatherings to accommodate the current large public protests. Some, including hundreds who signed a public letter to that effect, have explicitly supported them. In doing so, some of the latter group have blatantly contradicted their own prior public statements on the dangers of public gatherings. . . . But here’s the thing: while it’s understandable that people want to take to the streets to protest racism and state violence, there is no epidemiological or other scientific evidence that such protests will have positive public health effects by spurring positive social and political change. Any scientist or public health expert who suggests otherwise is engaging in political and sociological speculation that is not only beyond their expertise, but that really beyond anyone’s expertise. But it’s worse when such speculation purports to be scientific, from experts whose credibility is crucial for containing the current and future pandemics.”
Huh. I wonder what brought that on all of a sudden?