Are The Protest Demonstrations Going To Make The Pandemic Worse While President Dunsel Looks On Impotently?

In his Bloomberg News column yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein noted that as America's upheaval mounts, Trump has no plan and recalled "The Ultimate Computer" episode from Star Trek (above) in which a rival captain calls Kirk "Captain Dunsel" after a fancy new computer takes control of the Enterprise, making Kirk superfluous; Spock explains that "dunsel" was cadet slang for "a part which serves no useful purpose."

"This," wrote Bernstein, was "Donald Trump’s President Dunsel weekend. Not, as in the original, because he had been replaced; Trump simply seems to have given up on the job. He’s had no policy on the pandemic for about a month now. He basically has no policy on recovering from the economic calamity. And he has no policy to deal with the police violence, demonstrations and the rest of the upheaval that has gripped the nation for the past week. As Philip Rucker put it in the Washington Post:"

Never in the 1,227 days of Trump’s presidency has the nation seemed to cry out for leadership as it did Sunday, yet Trump made no attempt to provide it.

That was by design. Trump and some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing to say, according to a senior administration official. He had no tangible policy or action to announce, nor did he feel an urgent motivation to try to bring people together. So he stayed silent.

"He did have his Twitter account, of course," Bernstein reminded his audience, "and he made a few comments to reporters over the weekend. But that was far from policy. At one point, Trump echoed civil-rights era reactionaries by threatening “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” only to back down when Republicans urged him to. That is, even when all Trump has is words, he’s easily rolled by his own allies. (They’re not willing to remove him from office, partly because they know how easy he is to defeat any time they want to.) By Sunday, he had moved to one of his favorite devices, the fictional tough stand. This one was a tweet about designating “ANTIFA” a terrorist organization, something the president very likely doesn’t have the power to do. It joins other fictional tough stands such as his threat to shut down Twitter or to order state governments to exempt churches from distancing rules. It’s all phony, bluster instead of policy... President Dunsel, indeed."

Death Of A Salesman by Nancy Ohanian

Sunday another Bernstein, Lenny-- presumably related to neither Jared nor the actual Lenny-- addressed the widespread concerns about the renewed spread of the coronavirus through the demonstrations against racism and police brutality. With infections going down in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Newark, no one is eager to see anything spark new outbreaks. With the country hurtling towards 2 million cases, in states where the pandemic is getting stronger-- like in California, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada Ohio, Indiana and Alabama-- people are legitimately wondering if the demonstrations are going to make things even worse. Don't look towards President Dunsel for any answers-- let alone guidance or hope.




Bernstein reminded his readers that "The rules of the covid-19 pandemic, so recently learned at considerable inconvenience, have been discarded on the streets in recent days. Protesters frequently find it impossible to stay six feet apart, to avoid hand-to-hand contact or to dodge the respiratory droplets of their shouting, chanting comrades amid the swirling chaos. And because the virus can be spread by people with no symptoms, it can be impossible to figure out whom to avoid. Officials are clearly worried about the possible impact of the protests on the health crisis. As of Sunday, the United States had recorded 1.7 million coronavirus infections and 103,000 covid-19 deaths-- a disproportionate number of them black and brown people."

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said she is concerned about renewed outbreaks caused by large demonstrations in the nation’s capital. And Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) urged her city’s demonstrators to seek tests for the virus as soon as possible.

“If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week,” Bottoms said at a news conference Saturday. “There is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.”

Experts said it remains to be seen whether the protests will produce a surge in infections. Given the behavior on the street, they said, there is cause for concern.

“Crowded protests, like any large gathering of people in a close space, can help facilitate the spread of covid-19, which is why it’s so important participants wear masks, eye protection and bring hand-gel,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, wrote in an email.

“Shouting and screaming, as some studies have shown with singing, can project droplets farther, which makes the use of masks... and eye protection... that much more important.”

...Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses, said that even when people are crowded against each other, it takes time to transmit the virus in significant amounts-- especially outdoors. She said she would worry if the density of the crowd approximated the conditions of packed seats in a basketball arena, and if people did not move much for at least a half-hour.

Mask-wearing by infected people would cut down on the spread of respiratory droplets, offering some protection to people nearby. Unless they are rated N95 or better, however, masks offer only limited protection against the microscopic virus for the people wearing them.

On the streets in recent days, many protesters, police and reporters appeared to be wearing masks, though some did not. Some police officers also wore plastic face shields.

“Outdoor contact is far, far less risky than indoor contact,” said Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When outdoors within 6 feet, a mask will further reduce risk.”

2020 America

Shouting projects droplets farther than speaking, however. The best-known incident of this means of infection came in March, when 53 members of a Washington state choir were infected during a single rehearsal by droplets expelled while they sang. Two of them died.

Even ordinary speech can send out droplets that carry virus. One research group found these can linger for eight minutes-- and possibly much longer-- in stagnant air under laboratory conditions. The study could help explain why infections so often occur in houses, nursing homes, conferences, cruise ships and other confined spaces with limited air circulation.

The report, from researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania, was published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal.

Frieden raised one other aspect of the protests that may contribute to the spread of the virus: the breakdown of trust in government. “Successful public health requires engagement and trust of the community,” he said.

Some demonstrators said they weighed the risk of covid-19 when deciding whether to attend a protest. Columbia University student Juliet Shatkin, 26, said her friends were “nervous about coronavirus,” so they did not join her during a protest Saturday on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“It’s scary, but I don’t know,” Shatkin said. “People are mad, and everyone I’ve seen is wearing a mask.”

Elise Barr, a teacher at a child-care center, wore a mask to attend a protest Sunday in Kansas City, Missouri., but she said she was not worried about catching the virus.

Coronavirus is going to have to take a back seat. This movement is about more than that,” she said. “Black people are being murdered.”

"This was a peaceful protest until the cops showed up." Watch:





And for those who think the pandemic is over (because they really, really, really want it to be over... because we've all had enough of it... well, I feel your pain but, no, it's not over. Chris Martenson has cut back his broadcast to just twice a week instead of 5 times a week. I cut out the whole boring beginning-- although, obviously if you want to hear him read his increasingly uninteresting fan letters, you can start from the beginning-- but here's the important stuff from last night's podcast: