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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1313581
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1313581
This is what is written on Minneapolis police cars:
I suggest officers read what it says every time they enter or leave their vehicles. And then practice it.
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Part of what this suggests is that we may also see a spike among law enforcement.
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And all of the red-state National Guard units and other federal officers patrolling DC. Once those people go home, look out for more super-spreader events.
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Some members of the DC Guard have already tested positive. They were medically screened beforehand too, so the infections (barring false negative test results up front) are new.
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The Minneapolis (and NYC, and Buffalo, and Philadelphia, etc. etc.) Police Union’s response:
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I have a direct view of one of the primary staging areas for the police in Brooklyn and have been able to watch the transformation of the neighborhood into a mini police state since the protests began. The cops hassle the residents of the buildings regularly, demanding ID that proves residence and rerouting residents on their rightful way home. They deny access to our streets for deliveries, and they enter our buildings whenever they want to use our building staffs’ bathrooms – all without any attention to social distancing or any masks. It seems they only put those on when they head out into the crowds on Flatbush Avenue and the Barclays Center Plaza.
Judging from the percentage of cops who have had the virus, about 20%, I think it’s a fair guess that a roughly equivalent number of them are carrying it pre-symptomatically at any given time. Or in other words they are willfully endangering the people they are paid to protect. I watch them on and off from my window all day. They hang in the staging area like they’re at a party and maybe one in ten has on a mask.
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The pattern and extent of Covid-19 spread increasingly suggests that superspreaders and superspreader events – situations such as groups in enclosed areas – play a large role in infection rates and that pattern also strongly suggests that airborne infection rather than contact infection is the most significant factor in such situations.
There are probably superspreaders in both the crowd and the police facing them but neither are just spreading it there, they are taking it home.
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And in NY, the police are also taking it into residential buildings where thousands live by hanging in front of the buildings all day and going in and out of the buildings all day. My building alone has 330 apartments and roughly a thousand residents, including many children.
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Have any of you heard any statements from DIBlasio or Cuomo about this?