The coronavirus’ US impact is one thing, but protestors are tuning it out in favor of what they see as a higher mission with an urgency that matters more than the risks associated with the COVID-19 virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert who has been the face of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus, gave an interview Friday to a Washington DC-based radio station in which he addressed a subject that health experts have for days been grappling with and trying to figure out how to talk about.
That subject is the protests filling American streets in response to the killing of an unarmed Minneapolis man, George Floyd, by police there. Health experts, along with their official guidance, have been warning us for weeks that crowds are to be avoided — indeed, that crowds are a breeding ground for the deadly COVID-19 virus that has led to more than 109,000 reported deaths in the US so far. At the same time, officials like Fauci are also grappling with a seemingly contradictory reality, that the protests against the excessive use of force by police and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, in general, are profoundly necessary at this moment in time.
