[anticonformist]

These protests are going to result in the deaths of thousands of people. They are clearly irresponsible during a pandemic. Gathering in large groups with no physical distancing is tantamount to conspiring to commit mass murder.

The problem of racial inequality has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives?

There is no reasonable suggestion that police will kill thousands of innocent black people in the next 12 months. There is no actual emergency here that can justify killing thousands of people.

It is incredibly obvious that the urgency here is false. The false urgency is driven by pandemic-related issues like stress and unemployment. Anyone can see how clearly thse protests have become an outlet for a number of issues, only one of which is racial inequality.

It is possible to fully support racial equality, elimination of poverty, and modernization of policing and also believe these protests have been carried out in an incredibly unethical and irresponsible way.

Claiming to support a good cause does not make it okay to inflict death on innocent people.

[dang]

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[glofish]

Look up the Massachusettes death rates.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-june-7-2020/down...

In the age group of under 50 years old, the death rate due to COVID 19 is 10 out 100,000 (!), that is half of that attributed to the flu, no seriously

it is very unlikely that the protest will have much effect

[n9]

if everyone that protested self isolates at all other times for 20 days after they stop protesting, yes, I agree.

[thethethethe]

Edit: The parent edited their comment with no edit note, so my comment might not make as much sense because it remains unchanged

There is a lot to unpack here but I will do my best.

> I shouldn't have to say this but people these days: I fully supports racial equality, elimination of poverty, and modernization of policing in the U.S.

It doesn’t appear that you do, as you are actively speaking out against an anti-racist movement supported by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

> The problem has existed for "hundreds of years" so why not push the protests back 1 year so it won't unnecessarily cost many people their lives?

This is not how social movements work. You can’t just “push it back”. Additionally, black people a disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, so these issues are not completely separate.

> It seems incredibly obvious that the urgency here if false

I suspect you feel this way because you are not an affected demographic. The police have been terrorizing and murdering black people in their own neighborhoods for hundreds of years. If this was happening to you, I’m sure it would feel ‘urgent’. Additionally, the president of the most powerful country in the history of the world has literally been calling for the military to kill protesters and labeling them as terrorists. This is incredibly scary and I’d say speaking out against this is very urgent.