Tim Blair: Sydney Black Lives Matter protesters spread more than their message
You can get it marching. You can get it chanting. You can get it taking a knee. Matter of fact, protesters might have gotten coronavirus infections in the CBD, writes Tim Blair.
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Two weeks ago, the only Floyd they knew was Pink and they couldn’t find Minnesota on a map, much less its largest city.
But thousands of Australians slavishly copied their American role models during the weekend by putting on their own Black Lives Matter shows.
They waved signs demanding justice for Minneapolis police victim George Floyd, took knees and generally presented tribute band versions of original US acts.
All of which is absolutely fantastic, at least from a scientific discovery perspective.
Without any larger purpose beyond chanting and marching, our protesters have signed up for a gigantic and potentially revelatory pandemic experiment.
The same is true in the US, where the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle last week wrote:
“In a few weeks, one of two things will have happened.
“Either COVID-19 cases will abruptly reverse their decline in some of America’s largest cities, and we will know that they were seeded by the days of rage we are living through … or they won’t. Either way, social distancing is over.
“In the happy scenario, the protests will have performed an enormous public service, even beyond agitating for justice.
“They are basically running a natural experiment that scientists could never have ethically undertaken: Do massive outside gatherings — including singing, chanting, screaming and coughing — spread COVID-19, or not …?
“Unfortunately, it’s also grimly plausible that in a few weeks we’ll see new outbreaks that will soon surge out of control.”
Our situation is identical.
In a few weeks we’ll discover if all the lockdowns and business closures and lost jobs and economic damage were worth it, or we’ll find out that the coronavirus just needed massive rallies to once again roar into action.
Australia’s experiment has one significant advantage, too, over the experiment now underway in the US.
With so few current cases of community transmission in our country, there will be very little static in any new infection statistics.
Naturally, leftists here and abroad are already shifting blame for future outbreaks away from protesters.
Former social worker turned amateur epidemiologist Bernadette Lakerink claimed on Twitter: “There was more safety & social distancing by protesters than at my local shopping centre … no social distancing, masks. If there’s a surge in C19 it’s from this not protests.”
Because people in a shop are more of a virus-spreading risk than tens of thousands of people tightly packed into city streets. Obviously.
“Let's be clear about something,” leftist New York City Councilman Mark Levine announced. “If there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, don't blame the protesters.
“Blame racism.”
Hey, why not blame racism for parking fines and electricity bills? Makes just as much sense.
One deeply worrying line emerged from weekend protest coverage. According to former black deaths in custody activist Raul Bassi, organisers could not agree with police on one specific issue ahead of Sydney’s rally. That was a police request to bring the march forward from 3pm to noon.
The reason organisers rejected the request was because, as The Sunday Telegraph reported, “Aboriginal elders from Kempsey and Newcastle had already booked coaches”.
And now those elders, along with many others, have returned to their communities — having potentially been exposed to the virus.
Considering the elevated risk to Aboriginal Australians from existing respiratory illnesses, perhaps those rally organisers might have thought better of arranging their attendance.
All of this presents a challenge to lockdown eternalists who previously condemned as murderous any moves to open the economy.
After Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last month that infections would rise as a consequence of reduced restrictions, ABC presenter Jonathan Green snapped in response: “Some of you will have to die.”
Green hasn’t had much to say about the rallies, however. Odd, that.
Also last month, Sydney Morning Herald head hanky model Peter FitzSimons slammed the “Coca-Colonisation on Australian life, that pernicious influence of America on our language and culture that sees us sometimes look and sound like the 53rd state of the union”.
The US has 50 states. FitzSimons can’t count.
In any case, lockdown fan Peter is now completely on board with a local movement that takes its slogan (“Black Lives Matter”), gestures (taking a knee, black power salutes) and tactics (mass protests, police shaming) holus-bolus from the US.
And his lockdown love is sadly no longer absolute.
Writing on Sunday about protesters who violated public safety restrictions, FitzSimons casually dismissed coronavirus concerns.
“It just means,” he wrote, “their commitment to change the problem of centuries is greater than their commitment to beat the problem of months.”
What is now merely a “problem of months” for FitzSimons was in March “a life and death issue for Australia”.
And he still opposes any further relaxation at all on crowd restrictions for NRL games.
Screw that. The NRL should invite “protesters” to watch Black Lives Matter “tribute matches” that award four “knee taking” premiership points to winning teams.
No woke leftist lockdowner could possibly object to a season-long roster of Floyd tribute games. That’s because the coronavirus is plainly no longer a life and death issue.
As protester Aleksandra Trkulia put it prior to Sydney’s combined rally and virus share-a-thon: “Racism is bigger than your COVID-19 shit.”