[nan0]

The article's beginning and very ending was very informative and made clear nuance of the situation of keeping kids/college young adults from school.

The author lost me completely when they started injecting in one sided political perspectives and hindsight bias:

"...opposition to public-health guidance."

Which public-health guidance? Not all of the "opposition" was bad. Example: Any guidance from the W.H.O early on in the pandemic [0]

"Had Trump implored his supporters to wear masks and be patient, case counts might well be dropping across the country. "

Author chooses to show a particular political bias again and fails to mention the other major event that caused a uptick in cases (nationwide protests).

This whole section seems very out of place with the rest of the article, almost like The Atlantic had a requirement to show a left leaning bias to be published...

0: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-changes-timeline-first-c...

[Klonoar]

The protests largely included people wearing masks, and the hotspot problematic areas are not those aforementioned protest hotspots.

You have a political bias and it is showing.

[rednerrus]

There are tons of people in the protest not wearing masks. It's politically dishonest not to assume some spread came from massive gatherings, especially where protesters were gassed. I know it's dangerous to say anything negative about protests but we need to be consistent and honest in order to maintain our credibility.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The point is that despite the article's callout of Trump, his political opponents weren't patient either, and flooded the streets while public health officials were still worried it wasn't safe. Selectively grumping at people for being impatient is unfair, and more importantly degrades the social trust that's required to make pandemic restrictions work effectively.

[tzs]

> Author chooses to show a particular political bias again and fails to mention the other major event that caused a uptick in cases (nationwide protests)

So far the data says otherwise. It seems to be a combination of three things that made spreading at the protests low.

1. They were open air events where people were moving around a lot,

2. A large percentage of attendees were wearing masks, and

3. Not many attendees were infected.

Health officials did heavy testing at several of the protests or of people shortly after they attended. In Minneapolis 1.8% were positive. Seattle was less than 1%. Boston was 1.1%.

If you encountered an infected person at a protest, #1 alone greatly reduced your chances of being around that person long enough to get an infectious dose unless they actually were coughing or sneezing on you.

Then you've got the masks making it even less likely.

With only 1-2% infected, you probably won't encounter enough infected people serially for all the little exposures to add up.

[nan0]

1. "...moving around a lot" Yes, in some cases, but it's not a great point to make because there are also lot of cases where protesters are huddled together for a long period of time [0], [1].

2. I do agree on this point (based on live feeds I observed), but we wouldn't be getting the full story if we just talked about the protesters and not the tear gassed rioters, indoor looters and police officers who didn't wear masks. [2]

3. I have some differing perspectives on this point:

Most of the attendees that were tested statistically were a younger and less vulnerable population [3], this cost time, effort and money. How would this not have a direct impact on the future testing capabilities and resources that some of those cities needed for more vulnerable populations and rising cases [4]?

More than 3300 people who participated in the protests in Minneapolis got tested and 1.4% (now 1.8%) of them had the virus. This is needs to stated along side of the 7 day average infection rate that week of 3.7% out of 13,000 people. [5]

It's also fair to mention the most populated city in the US and the one that had some of the highest protesting wasn't asking people if they attended the protests when they got tested. [6]

I am sure there were other indirect impacts on virus patients like emergency response time and hospital services during the peaceful protests and non-peaceful protests that.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmealSp7Aw

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z82gf5bk8kM

2: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/6/12/21288340/police-offi... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/05/8701444...

3: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/24/recent-prot...

4: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/us-covid...

5: https://www.twincities.com/2020/06/12/mn-coronavirus-george-... (Published June 12, 2020)

6: https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-contact-tracers-not-aski...

[jkhdigital]

It’s The Atlantic, dude.

[fzeroracer]

> Author chooses to show a particular political bias again and fails to mention the other major event that caused a uptick in cases (nationwide protests)

I'm tired of having to constantly address this point. I had hoped that people on HN would be able to do independent research, but I keep encountering this claim. No, the nationwide protests did not cause an uptick in cases. Multiple studies [1] [2] [3] seem to indicate that the coronavirus doesn't spread nearly as well outdoors as it does indoors. In fact, studies have indicated that one of the greatest surge predictors is card-present transactions in restaurants [4].

That is partly why here in Texas we're seeing such a strong resurgence. We reopened our bars and restaurants with reckless abandon and the result is a massive increase in cases across the state. At this point if you're claiming that the protests were the reason then you're showing your own political bias at play.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/494348-new-study-finds...

[2] https://apnews.com/a288340b3bd3fbc62e564b3d0adfaa2e

[3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf

[4] https://fortune.com/2020/06/26/is-it-safe-restaurant-coronav...

[duckMuppet]

Most of the "resurgence" in cases in Texas is from about 3 counties, all in the border, all of them treating individuals crossing the bitter for better treatment.

If course, we could say the rest of the cases are simply from anyone now using the healthcare system who is being automatically tested even if they are being seen for something non covid related.

Of course if you really wanna get in the weeds, you could probably say that the median age for covid is about 36 and the death rate is about .04% for those under 50, well below a seasonal flu. Of course you still have democrat governors letting the bodies hit the floor among elderly nursing home residents. But children who are statistically unaffected by covid remain locked down with their parents, who are also minimally affected.

But hey, i think orange man is bad too..