NYC Defeats Entire Purpose of Contact Tracing by Not Asking Subjects if They Protested
There is little doubt that the coronavirus poses a serious health risk to some people.
In fact, more than 100,000 American deaths since March have been attributed to the illness, and countless other lives have likely been lost or forever altered as a result of government-imposed shutdowns that attack mental and financial health.
Many Americans have questioned the official response for varying reasons, and their resistance to taking the government’s word at face value is reasonable, given the apparent politics of “science.”
The so-called experts who make policy and guide science have outed themselves as being driven, or at least influenced, by leftist political causes and the ideologues who push them.
Americans were sidelined for months, told by experts that the virus was so deadly that even going outdoors was a risk.
That all changed when the left desired to watch people in New York across the country protest, riot and loot in response to perceived racial biases within the country’s institutions, which superseded the danger posed by the virus.
It was about science, until it wasn’t.
Many of the same people who are barking mad about President Donald Trump resuming campaign rallies over their potential to spread the virus praised mass gatherings after the death of George Floyd while in police custody un Minneapolis.
It is not about science at all, and it never was.
That is more evident than ever, now that we know, thanks to the New York-based digital news outlet The City, that those whose job it is to track the spread of the virus in New York City are being prohibited from investigating a link between anti-police protests and the coronavirus.
The contact tracing program in New York City, which is designed to track infections and notify people of potential exposures, has been compromised for apparent liberal political purposes, and the program has lost any credibility it might have enjoyed.
In May, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would hire 1,000 contact tracers to narrow down infection hot spots. But it turns out that those tracers have been leashed.
The City reported that hundreds of contact tracers in New York have been strictly prohibited from asking people who test positive for the coronavirus if they attended a protest.
“No person will be asked proactively if they attended a protest,” Avery Cohen, deputy press secretary for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, told the outlet in an email.
Instead, those who test positive will be asked generic questions about those they might have come into contact with or whom they might have exposed to the infection.
On the possibility of the coronavirus spreading at protests, Cohen’s email further stated: “If a person wants to proactively offer that information, there is an opportunity for them to do so.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged last week that officials don’t know if the virus that ravaged his state and its nursing homes is being spread by protesters.
“That’s the one variable in this equation that we’re not sure of: We don’t know what the effect of those protests are,” Cuomo said, according to The City.
And as demonstrators have ransacked businesses and attacked cops, the governor has limited attendance at churches, synagogues and mosques to 25 percent capacity, according to a WWNY-TV report from June 6.
In the city, however, gatherings are still limited to 10 or fewer people, according to the New York Post. That prompted a lawsuit last week against Cuomo, de Blasio and New York state Attorney General Letitia James by religious groups claiming a double standard is at work in decisions supposedly based on “science.”
While churches and synagogues are forced to go to court to fight for their rights, huge crowds of protesters gathering in front of New York City’s Brooklyn Museum is apparently fine behavior during a pandemic — if the cause is leftist enough:
Thousands gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum in NYC for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally and march. https://t.co/QjYg7wmQH1 pic.twitter.com/pwrTY1E4Qn
— ABC News (@ABC) June 14, 2020
Cuomo, meanwhile, seems to hold his criticism for those violating social distancing regulations in social settings in the Hamptons resorts areas or Manhattan night life.
“We’re not going to go back to that dark place because local governments didn’t do their job,” Cuomo said, the New York Post reported.
The governor even threatened another shutdown over people seen not living in fear while simultaneously not protesting anything.
We have received 25,000 complaints of reopening violations.
Bars or restaurants that violate the law can lose their liquor license.
People with open containers in the street can be fined.
Police & protesters not wearing masks can be fined.
Local gov’t must enforce the law.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 14, 2020
Naturally, Cuomo has not disavowed Black Trans Lives Matter protestors for potentially spreading the virus.
That is because the Democratic response to the pandemic is not about public health.
Does de Blasio look like man worried about contracting a highly contagious disease?
Hi @NYGovCuomo I’d like to report someone not wearing a mask at a protest. pic.twitter.com/FGCgpYMpEY
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) June 15, 2020
Mayor de Blasio chooses to ignore the spread of disease where it relates to his political preferences, and the people of New York are supposed to buy into programs and ideas such as social distancing and contact tracing, even though New York City’s idea of contract tracing doesn’t include some of the biggest potential points of contact in New York City at the moment.
New York’s leaders seem to care less about whether the protests are spreading the virus than they care about being able to blame any resurgence in cases on anything other than the protests.
The implication of the contact racing policy is that the risk of spreading the coronavirus at a protest is not significant enough to even warrant a question about it. That’s not “science,” that’s politics in action.
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