#Protesters need to own up to coronavirus risks they’re imposing on everyone

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Protesters in Brooklyn earlier this month.
Gabriella Bass

When the city finally entered Phase One of the restart last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo cheered: “New Yorkers bent the curve by being smart.” But not all of us are being prudent, and it could set everyone back.

Fact is, the city is still struggling to return to life, with restaurants as yet unable to offer outdoor dining, most retail shops barred from letting customers in and countless cultural institutions closed completely. And some stores ruined by looters may never reopen.

Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx warns of another cause for concern: The protests after the police killing of George Floyd could bring a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases. New York is seeing such protests continue daily — an added burden that complicates reopening.

In a phone call with governors last week, Birx noted that most major metropolitan areas saw a significant drop in new coronavirus cases in May and early June — but the protests may derail that positive trajectory.

Many in the huge, not-social-distanced crowds wore no mask, she explained — and shouting (as demonstrators tend to do) likely makes masks less effective. (Several known “superspreader” events involved choral singing — chanting at the top of your lungs is surely bad, too.)

Meanwhile, mayhem around the protests destroyed some 70 testing sites in various cities — largely in the communities hardest hit by the virus.

Some progressive public health experts justify the protests on the grounds that “institutional racism” inflicts health harms on minorities, yet these demonstrations will themselves give the virus a boost mainly in minority communities.

Overall, Harvard Global Health Institute chief Ashish Jha warns, the combination of protests and people congregating in public places while we await a vaccine could double the nation’s death toll — now around 112,000 — by September.

That’s not worth the risk, not when the data from states ahead of us in reopening show some mixed results: Georgia seems to be doing great, its numbers still flat though salons and gyms have been open for a month and a half; Arizona, by contrast, is heading toward 100 percent ICU occupancy.

Far too much about the virus remains unknown, even as lockdowns rightly end because the economy (and much of the public) just can’t take it anymore. But we know what activities are highest-risk.

Everyone still protesting should set aside their moral fervor for a moment, and figure out how to minimize those risks.