I shook my head after seeing this headline in the New York Post: “Kentucky sees highest spike in coronavirus cases after lockdown protests.”
Kentucky experienced its highest single-day spike in coronavirus cases after protests broke out in the state to lift lockdowns, according to reports.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced there were 273 new cases Sunday, bringing the total to 2,960, news station WCPO reported.
“We are still in the midst of this fight against a deadly and highly contagious virus,” Beshear said. “Let’s make sure, as much as we’re looking at those benchmarks and we’re looking at the future, that we are acting in the present and we are doing the things that it takes to protect one another.”
The Bluegrass State is among the regions that have seen demonstrators take to the streets last week to call for the end of lockdown restrictions.
Around 100 protesters gathered Wednesday on the lawn of the Capitol building in Frankfort during Democrat Beshear’s coronavirus briefing, shouting “Open up Kentucky!” and “King Beshear,” the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
The same group returned Friday to the Capitol building, where they were met by barricades, the newspaper reported.
Instead, they circled the area in cars for a drive-through protest of Beshear’s coronavirus restrictions, the report said.
It’s unclear whether the protests had any impact on the surge of deaths reported Sunday in the state.
No, it’s crystal clear: protests within the past week had no impact whatsoever on yesterday’s death count. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
I yield to no man in my contempt for yahoos out protesting in the streets over the inconvenience of sheltering in place to help save their fellow citizens from catching a deadly disease.
And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least of the deviation from social distancing from this protest contributed to the spread of the coronavirus and eventually led to a spike in deaths.
But we know for a fact that we don’t go from exposure to death in 3-4 days. Indeed, that’s part of the rationale behind the sheltering in place: people can display no symptoms for two weeks or more, unknowingly spreading the disease.
