LIFTING LOCKDOWNS NOT THE CULPRIT BEHIND NEW SURGE IN CORONAVIRUS CASES, DOCTOR SAYS:
Then [Scott Atlas, M.D., a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution] touched on one of the main issues — the massive protests in the wake of the horrific police killing of George Floyd.
“They correlate mainly to two things — the big thousands and thousands of people with protesting, sharing megaphones, screaming. That’s a setup to spread cases,” the doctor said. “And also when you look at the analysis of the border counties, there’s a tremendous amount of cases coming over the border and exchanging with families in the northern Mexico states.”
The doctor warned that hospitals are getting crowded not just because of new cases but because hospitals are finally addressing “regular medical care” again. “We have locked that down before and that policy kills people. So we don’t want to go back to that,” he said. Indeed, the original lockdowns often put a halt to all “elective” surgeries, including heart surgeries and cancer treatments.
The doctor presented a two-part solution: “really protect the high risk in a more diligent way than we are, the very highest-risk group” and “increase the hospital capacity.”
Atlas’s remarks attributing the rise in coronavirus cases to the protests are important. Many left-leaning politicians, journalists, and even public health officials have insisted that the George Floyd protests and other mass demonstrations would not spread the coronavirus. Even last week, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the George Floyd protests while urging New Yorkers to avoid “large gatherings.”
Why, it’s like the protests are a state-sanctioned religion or something.