Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage.
One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most of those are White people).
And the ultimate irony is far more Black people are going to die as a result of these protests (since Black communities are disproportionately affected by the virus) than will be saved by whatever temporary curtailment of police brutality this yields.
Those are the real facts. Not the alternative ones you and people like you would like us to focus on. It's like it suddenly became acceptable to wantonly suspend rationality because it suits certain interests.
It is important to not the latter did not mitigating police brutality as a public health interest, but racism in general.
From the letter:
> White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19. Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police compared to white people, but the effects of racism are far more pervasive. Black people suffer from dramatic health disparities in life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic medical conditions, and outcomes from acute illnesses like myocardial infarction and sepsis. Biological determinants are insufficient to explain these disparities. They result from long-standing systems of oppression and bias which have subjected people of color to discrimination in the healthcare setting, decreased access to medical care and healthy food, unsafe working conditions, mass incarceration, exposure to pollution and noise, and the toxic effects of stress. Black people are also more likely to develop COVID-19. Black people with COVID-19 are diagnosed later in the disease course and have a higher rate of hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, and death. COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy. In addressing demonstrations against white supremacy, our first statement must be one of unwavering support for those who would dismantle, uproot, or reform racist institutions.
The remainder of the letter goes into strategies for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 during protests.
I think it's incorrect to only count deaths as the fallout from police attitude towards minorities. An entire group of people is effectively controlled and held back my the police. As we have already seen, the impacts are generational and have gotten us to where we are today. COVID-19 is the thing will most likely be forgotten next year with some sort of vaccine or herd immunity arising. Even if the protests are successful, it will still be only another step on a long road of equality.
> In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands
I agree with you! I don't think I was clear in my original post. The human toll of systemic racism and police brutality is much greater than the 'deaths by cops' number. Look at how COVID-19 is much more dangerous to the Black communities. Why is that? Lack of adequate healthcare, opportunity, and lagging economic outlook linked to systemic racism.
You see the deaths from COVID-19, and they are horrible. I'm thinking about COVID-19, and the next 10 pandemics that will disproportionally impact Black and minority communities. In aggregate the death toll could dwarf COVID-19. How do we avoid those deaths?
Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage.
One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most of those are White people).
And the ultimate irony is far more Black people are going to die as a result of these protests (since Black communities are disproportionately affected by the virus) than will be saved by whatever temporary curtailment of police brutality this yields.
Those are the real facts. Not the alternative ones you and people like you would like us to focus on. It's like it suddenly became acceptable to wantonly suspend rationality because it suits certain interests.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_...