Bad faith shines through all the politicians’ rationalizations
In the face of a double standard, which is also a denigration of everything we’ve been told about public health since the COVID outbreak, the apologia for public protests minus social distancing is this: “Oh, but these protests call attention to systemic racism, which takes lives. Witness: George Floyd. To protest is also to save lives, the same as social distancing.”
On this logic, almost any other issue can be recast as saving lives, worthy of overriding the public health threat of COVID and its social distancing restrictions.
We are told that climate change threatens human life. Shall protests against what many see as inaction, or insufficient action, on climate change now justify public protests, minus COVID restrictions?
We are told that people who are ill, and for whose recovery other people pray, do better than people for whom prayers are not offered. Shall we retract the COVID closures of houses of worship, so that life-saving prayer proceeds apace?
We are told that severe isolation takes human lives. Shall we retract the COVID closures of hospital rooms to close relatives, so as to alleviate life-threatening isolation? The high rate of death in the worst hot spots included isolation as a factor.
We are told that physicians have learned a lot about how to fight COVID, that methods have changed dramatically in just three months; that, for example, oxygenation levels at what are typically deemed life-threatening, may not be life- threatening to a COVID patient; or that ventilators are not the cure-all and be-all, and should be used more sparingly than deemed medically necessary a couple of short months ago. Shall we tell the front-line health workers that they need not follow COVID restrictions so that they can more handily and efficiently delve into these medical discussions and thereby hasten the saving of lives?
Or what about political gatherings to plot how to defeat a candidate whose policies are deemed a direct threat to public health? One can justify just about any public gathering that flouts the COVID restrictions on the grounds that it will lead to a saving of lives.
That which distinguishes the other causes from COVID is obvious. With COVID, there is a direct threat to the lives of countless people and an even worse direct threat of a massive plague that would make even the current mortality rate look small. “Systemic racism,” “climate change,” “prayer,” “research,” etc. etc. may all affect the mortality rate indirectly, or over the long run, but not like a plague. Not like COVID. Other concerns do not have the direct, immediate impact of COVID. In the last three months, COVID has killed more people than racism, carbon emissions, etc.
Which, of course, is not to diminish the importance of other concerns. It is to circle back to the obvious: Politicians who urge us to listen to the science and thus impose severe COVID restrictions, yet who attend protests where the COVID restrictions are observed mostly in the breach, convince no one with their rationalizations. They act in bad faith. For shame.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
