I think the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD, with 500k people mostly unmasked, went on about the same time. What was anyone going to do? Send the National Guard to stop them? Pinning it only on BLM seems to forget lots of these situations.
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There's a huge difference between "this is a bad idea, you shouldn't do it" (but we're powerless to enforce it at this scale) and "it's ok for people to do it for this but for nothing else".
sep 1, 2025, 6:41 pm • 0 0 • view
I don’t find that fully accurate. CDC issued guidelines, not law. There were lots of factors, such as: edition.cnn.com/2020/06/05/h...
sep 1, 2025, 6:48 pm • 2 0 • view
I’m not talking about the CDC. I’m talking about state and city mandates.
sep 1, 2025, 7:12 pm • 0 0 • view
But wasn’t this thread talking about TN’s view on the CDC?
sep 1, 2025, 7:13 pm • 0 0 • view
No, it wasn’t about the CDC. It was about what states did and what bunches of doctors and public health people were saying states should do. Heck, Fauci did the IMNSHO correct thing of basically throwing up his hands and saying “loosening these restrictions is a bad idea” but otherwise staying out.
sep 1, 2025, 7:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Based on CDC “expertise.”
sep 1, 2025, 7:25 pm • 0 0 • view
And the weirdness of this - relitigating the public health questions on BLM marches while RFK is today trying to end vaccinations and block public health information and discredit scientific integrity - is not lost.
sep 1, 2025, 7:30 pm • 0 0 • view
The state and city mandates were incoherent in most places by the third month of the pandemic. The core controversy here is that a bunch of red state governors and Trump wanted to gin up COVID-related reasons to shut down BLM when everyone had been turning a blind eye to the rules beforehand.
sep 1, 2025, 7:15 pm • 5 0 • view
This is a distinction that exists only in your memory, the fact is that the official guidance was way more porous and inconsistent where it was actually applied and administered: at the state a local level.
sep 1, 2025, 6:43 pm • 1 0 • view
And that did create a lot of infections including deaths in that region. Though later that is thought to be from the indoor gatherings in bars, etc.
sep 1, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, bars were packed, hotels, campsites, no masks. My larger point was this idea of “letting” stuff go on. Trying to stop any of it was not possible for law enforcement, unless you started shooting and tear-gassing, which was not good for the situation.
sep 1, 2025, 6:52 pm • 1 0 • view
But Sturgis was an exception, causing a lot of controversy. Then the public health experts turn right around when it's about police brutality not about motorcycles.
sep 1, 2025, 6:53 pm • 1 0 • view
Sturgis was a big booze-soaked party. BLM involved A1 rights, and potential suppression of the right of dissent. I think there were lots of factors.
sep 1, 2025, 6:57 pm • 1 0 • view
But to suggest BLM got a hall pass while everybody else were being good boys and girls just doesn’t track.
sep 1, 2025, 6:58 pm • 0 0 • view
This is about what public health experts were saying at the time. None were saying Sturgis was OK.
sep 1, 2025, 7:10 pm • 1 0 • view
I already agreed, so we’re good.
sep 1, 2025, 7:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Public health officials largely spoke out against weaponizing public health restrictions to quash the BLM protests when things like Sturgis and rampant low-level violations of said guidance were ignored or even encouraged prior to BLM.
sep 1, 2025, 6:57 pm • 1 0 • view