Liberal ‘experts’ lied about racism and protesting during COVID — remember?

The Hill ^ | June 4, 2026 | Robby Soave

[DoodleBob]

Some tweets live in infamy.  

Six years ago this week, NPR shared a link on X — Twitter at the time — to an article by correspondent Bill Chappell, titled “Protesting Racism Versus Risking COVID-19.”  

This was June 2, 2020, in the grips of the pandemic. By that time, Americans had been forced to confront the reality that “15 days to slow the spread” was a lie. Those two weeks had come and gone at the end of March, yet government health advisers had continued to pressure authorities at the federal, state and local level to maintain lockdowns, mask mandates and prohibitions on social gatherings — policies were initially sold to the public as temporary measures that were necessary to give hospitals time to receive an influx of COVID-19 patients.  

By the start of the summer, it had become clear that public health experts would continue to insist on heavy-handed mitigation measures until either case counts crashed on their own or a vaccine became widely available. This meant that in Democratic-controlled municipalities, where it was fashionable to “trust the science,” relevant policymakers would keep lockdowns in place, require masks in all public spaces, and discourage large gatherings — even outdoors.  

Washington, D.C., was once such location. The streets were generally empty. When people did venture outdoors, they were expected to wear masks, even when walking by themselves or engaging in vigorous exercise.  

But then something happened: a black man, George Floyd, died while in police custody after an officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his back for nine minutes. Chauvin would eventually be convicted of second-degree murder. Video footage of Floyd’s death caused a massive public outrage and generated protests against racism and police violence across the country.  

One might have expected public health experts to express sympathy with the cause but maintain their ironclad support for mitigation measures. After all, they had had no problem recommending that government officials close down schools, churches and funeral homes, all of which serve vital social functions.  

They did not.  

“Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests,” noted NPR. “‘White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.'”  

The actual NPR article captured a bit more nuance than that, but the open letter itself is outrageous. It begins by condemning the protests against lockdowns, and then draws an explicit contrast with the racial justice protests, which are explicitly condoned.  

With respect to the anti-lockdown protests, the letter said this: “Infectious disease physicians and public health officials publicly condemned these actions and privately mourned the widening rift between leaders in science and a subset of the communities that they serve.”  

With respect to the anti-police protests, the letter said this: “As public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.”  

The letter strongly implies — in fact, it states it outright — that one kind of protesting is not just morally superior, but actually less likely to spread the disease. This, of course, is junk science. COVID-19 is not sentient. It does not distinguish between activist causes. Its transmission is not dependent on the political agendas of the people it infects.  

Equally bad, the letter also likened racism to a disease, drawing a confusing and totally false comparison with COVID-19. “We continue to support demonstrators who are tackling the paramount public health problem of pervasive racism,” it concludes.  

Racism as a disease is a fine metaphor in other context, but COVID-19 was not a metaphorical disease: It’s an actual virus! Public health experts knew a great deal about how to lessen its spread (though arguably less so than it seemed at the time), whereas their ideas about how to lessen the spread of racism were much less rigorous. This is even more apparent with six years of hindsight.  

From the vantage point of 2026, it is not obvious that the Black Lives Matter protests have done more good than ill; if anything, they seem to have generated a massive backlash against the protesters. (Public perception of the police has remained mostly flat or improved somewhat since 2020.) The Black Lives Matter organization appears to be a giant grift.  

It’s quite possible that even if they sincerely thought fighting racism was just as important as fighting COVID-19, the best thing would have been to tell the protesters to stay inside.  

Now, it’s true that the people who signed the open letter were not actually prominent government health advisers. But the actual leading coronavirus czars — Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, etc.—certainly did not go out of their way to contradict them. Social media being what it was, this NPR tweet became the assumed position of public health experts. And it was self-discrediting.  

I don’t mean to overstate the momentousness of one really bad tweet, but this was a significant “redpilling” moment: what rightwing people describe as the public waking up to some uncomfortable (usually conservative-slanted) truth. When we speak of declining trust in experts, this is the sort of thing we’re talking about: Remember when scientists said protesting was OK but only if it was against racism?

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TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: covid1984; protesting

[DoodleBob]

Reliving the nonsense from 2020 makes you realize who is REALLY the opposition to life, liberty and property.

Here’s another one - Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them. This one from Oct 2020 didn’t age well, with an air of superiority like:

U.S. intelligence agencies have categorically denied the possibility that the virus was engineered in a lab… People want a scapegoat for the immense suffering and economic fallout caused by COVID-19, and China—a foreign country and a competitor of the U.S.—is an easy target. Accidental lab releases of pathogens do sometimes occur, and although many scientists say this possibility is unlikely, it provides just enough legitimacy to support a narrative in which China intentionally engineered the virus to unleash it on the world.

[Steve_Seattle1]

I’m convinced that one of the main reasons for the Covid protocols - and the George Floyd riots - was to create a spirit of national crisis to turn voters against Donald Trump. Yes, the left’s weeks-long rioting was somehow blamed on Donald Trump, as was the Covid epidemic!

[DIRTYSECRET]

Republicans had no fight in them.

[Salman]

I seem to recall the looting and burning did not decrease racism, after all.

[JennysCool]

From the get-go, Covid was a hoax. Remember early-on how we were presented with photos and videos of people in China —some in business suits — collapsing on the streets being aided by workers in hazmat suits? At some point some globalist marketing person said, “Um, you know, that’s a little bit much,” and so they decided on masks and arrows that indicated how you should walk in supermarket aisles. It was a successful real-life exercise on how gullible innocent people can be when they are presented with authoritative media-driven fear.

[DoodleBob]

[lightman]

BINGO!

Plus big Pharma needed a widespread mRNA experiment so first people were conditioned to be scared to death NOT to take it; then, when that failed, mandates ensued.

[KC_Conspirator]

Washington, D.C., was once such location. The streets were generally empty. When people did venture outdoors, they were expected to wear masks, even when walking by themselves or engaging in vigorous exercise.

It was worse than that. Karens and leftists tried to cancel anyone, any business, and any Republican or free thinker in the DC area. The only reason the DC region changed is because Youngkin and his ticket suprisingly got elected and told everyone to remove the masks and act like decent humans.

[Big Red Badger]

FEAR !
We aII Gunn4tha Die!
.
I preached “No Feàr” !
.

[sistergoldenhair]

For some it was the fear of disease. Many more just didn’t want to be the nail sticking up waiting to feel the hammers blow.