Well, I caught some lucky breaks yesterday, and I’m out of the homeless veterans’ shelter. Planning to stay out, too; the VA has put me up at the Candlewood Suites down the street from the Convention Center, and I’m going to abuse their wifi to catch up on lost blogging time over the next few days. In fact, I intend to stay holed up in my room all weekend, for I have a lot to post about. Much thanks to those of you who hit the tip jar in response to Stacy’s kind words the other day, and to those of you who bought things through my Amazon links in April.
For what it is worth, Gauleiter Sisolak has graciously decreed that some businesses may open but others may not, and the decision on which is which appears to have been made with the same careful attention lavished on the rest of the state’s response to Corona-chan, which is to say none. For example, this skin care salon is barred from opening, while barber shops and beauty salons are allowed to open for business. The casinos on the Strip are not yet open, with MGM looking to reopen its properties by “early June” and others as early as Friday. Restaurants are gradually reopening as well. This is a Good Thing, since unemployment in the state is currently sitting at 25%, mostly here in Clark County, and the state’s unemployment system is completely FUBAR, so much so that the state is considering waiving civil service rules in order to hire temporaries. The phone system is completely overloaded and the online web portal is scarcely better, so there’s a lot of pissed-off unemployed people around with time on their hands, and Sisolak may find himself staring down the barrel of a hostile legislature after this fall’s elections.
That having been said, while the local economy is struggling to get back on its feet, you can get some pretty amazing deals on hotel rooms and airline tickets if you want to come down here. Rooms at the Stratosphere and some of the downtown casinos are going for rates on Priceline not usually seen until the December doldrums, and Southwest is offering double frequent flyer miles on top of $49 fares for those who book now. (Unsolicited plug.) Stop by and say hi, why don’t you?
It is difficult to describe, and impossible to exaggerate, just how badly Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 response has been, and it has been a catastrophe from the very beginning. In early March, when the country was already becoming concerned about the spread of the virus, Whitmer did not cancel the Democratic presidential primary, and indeed, there was record turnout for the March 10 primary, which turned into a “super spreader” event in metropolitan Detroit. She has since bungled practically every aspect of the pandemic, including her deliberately punitive and irrational lockdown policy. Now she would have us believe that she is the real victim of all this:
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Wednesday that the lockdown protests are “racist and misogynistic” and called on those with a platform to discourage the demonstrators.
Whitmer told ABC’s “The View” that the protests are “really political” as demonstrators have brought nooses, Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism.
“This is not appropriate in a global pandemic,” she said. “But it’s certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic.”
I have no idea who brought nooses, etc., to these protests, although I suspect these were false-flag agents provocateurs — leftists pretending to be part of the protest and acting in ways intended to discredit Whitmer’s opponents. None of this, however, justifies her policies:
The Cult of Eternal Lockdown is always willing to seize on anything that looks like “evidence” of their own superior knowledge, while ignoring every fact that might contradict their worldview. It does not support their argument, for example, to point out that three states (New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts) have a combined 42,326 deaths from COVID-19, which is nearly half of all U.S. deaths from the disease. All three of those states voted for Hillary Clinton by landslide margins, so their disproportionately deadly outbreaks don’t support the Dumb Republicans theory of the pandemic. Nor can any of the Eternal Lockdown cultists explain why Ohio, under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, has a per-capita coronavirus death rate 73 percent lower than the rate in neighboring Michigan, where Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has enforced one of the most draconian lockdown regimes in America.
Whitmer’s latest “scientific” exploit involved revoking the license of a 77-year-old barber who had reopened his shop in violation of her orders. Such authoritarian gestures are perfectly acceptable under the lockdown logic that prevails among Democrats and their media allies. . . .
Andrew Branca, an attorney specializing in self-defense cases, has referred to the “propaganda circus” surrounding the death of Ahmaud Arbery. One of the problems I’ve encountered is that, while my attention to the case has focused on the issue of media bias, which is what this “circus” is actually about, many people seem to think it is necessary to engage in arguments about the incident itself. But this is exactly what the “propaganda circus” seeks — to take a case that ought to be a matter for a judge and jury to decide and transfer jurisdiction to the “court of public opinion,” for a trial-by-media, with people reacting to what cable TV talking heads say about the case. You see this in the comments on my American Spectator column Monday, as well as my blog post Monday.
A 1960s radical once said: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” Whenever the Left seizes on some incident like the Arbery shooting, they do so to advance their agenda, and the role of supposedly “objective” journalists in assisting this project is what we need to focus on: What propaganda methods are involved?
First, consider the factor of selectivity. We must keep in mind that the United States has approximately 14,000 homicides in an average year — about 1,200 homicides per month, 40 homicides per day. Very few of those crimes ever get national media attention. It must be noted that about half of U.S. homicide victims are black, as are about half of known perpetrators of homicide, despite the fact that black people constitute only 14% of the U.S population. Black-on-black violence is a disproportionate amount of crime in America, whereas situations like the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery are quite rare.
So the media have chosen a rare type of incident to make a national story. Why? The agenda is unmistakably political:
Satilla Shores is a predominantly white neighborhood, one the Daily Beast’s Justin Glawe describes as featuring “several homes … decorated with Trump flags, one bearing the president’s smiling face with the phrase, Make liberals cry again.” . . .
>Advocates for Arbery argue his killing is a very clear case of racial profiling; in his caption for the video, Merritt wrote, “Ahmaud Arbery was pursued by three white men that targeted him solely because of his race and murdered him without justification.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by others, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who tweeted Tuesday, “The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood.” Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election and who has said she hopes to become Biden’s running mate, demanded a “full investigation, appropriate charges, and an unbiased prosecution.”
That’s how the left-wing site Vox spun the story last week. They scarcely bother to conceal their message: “Trump voters are racist. White Republicans are the reason Ahmaud Arbery is dead.”
Yet it must be kept in mind that white-on-black homicide is a statistical rarity, a tiny fraction of the 14,000 homicides committed annually in the U.S., crimes that the national media typically ignore. The selectivity involved is driven by a partisan political motive, a desire to inflame public opinion in a way that is disadvantageous to Republicans. Another propaganda factor involved in the media’s coverage is omission.
Most Americans have never seen that 2013 mug shot of Ahmad Arbery, because the media do not wish to acknowledge his criminal record:
This is highly relevant to the circumstances of Arbery’s death, because Gregory McMichael, now charged with murder, was an investigator on that 2013 case in which Arbery was charged with bringing a pistol to a basketball game between Brunswick High (his alma mater) and their arch-rival Glynn Academy. Arbery was sentenced to five years’ probation in that case, and was subsequently convicted for violating his probation:
In an email [Ware County prosecutor George] Barnhill wrote to the state attorney general’s office on April 7, he asked to be taken off the case, stating that his son, an assistant district attorney in the Brunswick prosecutor’s office, had handled a felony probation revocation case involving Mr. Arbery. He also said Gregory McMichael had helped with “a previous prosecution of Arbery.”
Court records show that Mr. Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018; according to local news reports, he was indicted five years earlier for taking a handgun to a basketball game.
How many CNN viewers know about this? And in the endless discussion of the case, how often is the significance of this information pointed out? Because, you see, first of all, that if McMichael recognized Arbery as he ran down Satilla Drive (“hauling ass,” McMichael said in his statement to police), he would have been aware that Arbery was a convicted felon with a history that involved firearms. Was it reasonable for McMichael to believe Arbery had a weapon? Could this explain why the former police officer decided to get his gun and pursue Arbery? Furthermore, because George Barnhill’s son was also involved in prosecuting Arbery, this helps explain why the case didn’t result in an immediate arrest, because Barnhill (who was chosen to handle the prosecution after the Glynn County D.A. recused herself) had to recuse himself after Arbery’s family objected to his possible conflict of interest. My purpose in drawing attention to this is not to argue about the shooting, but rather to show how the omission of these facts distorts perceptions of the case.
So, two methods of propaganda — selectivity and omission — are part of how the media have shaped the narrative of Ahmaud Arbery’s death, and they have done this to advance a political agenda: “Blame Trump!”
When the 36-second video clip of the shooting went viral last week, it was presented without context — or worse, was presented with the inflammatory false context of a “black jogger” being “hunted down” when, as we now know, Greg McMichael and his son believed themselves to be in pursuit of a burglary suspect. Again, this is not to argue about the case, as such, but rather to address the propaganda methods used by the media to advance their political agenda. If all you knew about the case is what you saw in that 36-second video clip, you’d certainly be angry about it, and if you were told that Ahmaud Arbery was just out for jog, you’d be even angrier. Even after it was explained that Arbery was a convicted felon whom the McMichaels suspected of committing burglaries in the area, you might still be angry, but there is a wide distance between (a) what actually happened, and (b) perceptions created by how the case has been portrayed in the media. “The issue is never the issue.”
It would be impossible for me to list everything that is being omitted, or at least not being properly emphasized, in coverage of this case. If you’re going to do hourly updates on cable news about a story, wouldn’t it behoove you to explore the story in-depth, rather than just showing the same video clip over and over and soliciting commentary from politicians and pundits? CNN can’t be bothered, however, and instead all the really useful reporting is done by other organizations, for example the Daily Mail, which interviewed the guy who called police to report Arbery’s trespassing at 220 Satilla Drive:
The witness’s timeline tallies with a recording of a 1:08pm non-emergency call released by the Brunswick Police Department and published last week by DailyMail.com. ‘There’s a guy in the house right now, a house under construction,’ the male caller says in the clip.
The audio is redacted to protect his identity but DailyMail.com can confirm it’s the same voice as the man we spoke to.
He claimed there had been a rash of thefts in Satilla Shores recently that included pistols and rifles stolen from people’s vehicles. Police have said they recorded one burglary in the area since January; there are no records matching claims of firearms thefts from vehicles.
However, he said he had never personally seen Arbery before and had no evidence he was linked to the theft or any other crimes.
‘I saw him running down the street and I know someone matching his description had been entering vehicles and been on people’s docks,’ the witness added.
‘So I went down there to call the police and get a closer look.’
Notice the phrase “people’s docks.” In case you haven’t looked at a map of this neighborhood, it’s waterfront property, on the north bank of the Little Satilla River, and there are boat docks behind the homes on the even-numbered addresses on Satilla Drive. While it’s not Palm Beach or Malibu or some other luxurious resort location, having a riverfront property with your own private boat dock is rather a sizable investment.
If you believed that your property was at risk of being stolen or damaged by intruders, it would not be unreasonable to call the police when you saw suspicious activity in the neighborhood. Does that explain why Gregory McMichael and his son thought it would be a good idea to grab their guns and set off in pursuit of Arbery? No, except that there apparently was concern about crime in the neighborhood and — just speculating here — maybe the senior McMichael, an ex-cop, was feeling ornery that Sunday afternoon. It’s one of those situations where you ask, “What the hell were they thinking?” However, you could ask the same question about Ahmaud Arbery’s behavior that day.
Watch this report from Savannah’s WSAV-TV:
You’ll see that there’s not only the video we’ve all seen — Arbery evidently checking out the unfinished construction site at 220 Satilla Drive — but also other videos, from the same site, taken at night and showing someone who may or may not be Arbery inside the site. According to the report, these other videos date back as far as October 2019. So it was not a matter of paranoid imagination when a 911 caller told the dispatcher the day Arbery shot that this was an “ongoing situation.” There is yet another video I’ve seen which shows Arbery exiting the site at high speed (“hauling ass,” as Gregory McMichael told police), perhaps because he realized that the neighbor had called police.
Recall that, just two years ago, Arbery got busted for shoplifting and violating probation. Even if you think he was just out for a jog and decided to check out this construction site, what would Arbery think when he saw the neighbor standing in his driveway talking on the phone?
“Oh, no. They called the police. Better get out of here.”
This is speculation, but it is a fair guess that if Arbery thought police were on their way to investigate his trespassing on this property, he wouldn’t stick around to explain himself to the cops. You can read the police report yourself and see what allegedly happened thereafter, and you can also read George Barnhill’s letter asserting that the McMichaels’ actions did not violate Georgia law. Many people — including Dana Loesch — have criticized Barnhill’s argument. That’s immaterial to what I’m saying about media bias. If all you know about this case is what you’re getting from CNN or MSNBC, you know a lot less than half the story.
The media are deliberately distorting the case, using it as propaganda to incite racial anger to advance their political agenda.
Stop arguing about the case, and instead “turn the camera around,” as Andrew Breitbart used to say: Force the media to defend their bias. Hold them accountable for their selectivity and omissions. Why are they reporting on this homicide, rather than covering any other of the approximately 40 homicides that happen every day in America? What makes this Georgia case more important than any other case?
“It seemed like a good idea at the time” is not a strong defense in a murder trial, and the question everybody seems to be asking in regard to the death of Ahmaud Arbery is why Gregory McMichael and his son thought it was a good idea to grab their guns, jump in their truck and go out in pursuit of a man they assumed to be a fleeing burglary suspect.
It is not my habit to play Monday-morning quarterback in controversial murder cases. I’m not a lawyer, and my opinion in such matters is no more valuable than anyone else’s. However, I’ve spent more than 30 years in the news business, and I know a thing or two about media bias. In 2009, when I saw a bunch of pundits pontificating about the alleged “lynching” of a census worker in Kentucky, I got the wild idea to hit the road and investigate the reality of the story on the ground. As it turned out, the census worker had committed suicide and staged it to look like a lynching, in an insurance fraud scheme, but by the time the truth came out, the pundits who had smeared this Kentucky community as a haven of “anti-government extremism” seemed to have lost interest.
Could it be that the media’s coverage of the Ahmaud Arbery case is similarly biased? I’m trying to resist the itch for a road trip, but meanwhile I’m sick and tired of the way the story is being spun:
Brunswick is a seaport town on the Georgia coast with which I have a personal connection. During World War II, my maternal grandfather moved to Brunswick to work in the shipyard and my grandmother joined him there, working in the canteen that served meals to the more than 16,000 workers who built 99 “Liberty ships” in the Brunswick yards in a span of about three years. Founded in the 1770s, Brunswick remains today a major harbor, and its picturesque Old Town district attracts many tourists who visit nearby Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island.
Brunswick seldom makes national news, but that changed last month when the New York Times devoted a 1,700-word article to the February shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Why would this homicide be worthy of national attention? Because Arbery was black and the man who shot him is white and, until the case became the subject of round-the-clock coverage on CNN, no charges had been filed in the case. Now that 34-year-old Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, have been charged with murder and aggravated assault, one might hope that journalists would be content to leave the matter to the justice system, but that’s not how the media operate in such cases. Instead, Americans are still being bombarded with updates and commentary on the alleged “lynching” of Arbery, who is described as a “black jogger” who was the victim of racism. . . .
A woman who was attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community in South Carolina on Friday was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her and dragged her underwater, authorities said today.
After briefly getting away from the alligator, the woman stood in waist deep water in the Kiawah Island pond and said ‘I guess I wont do this again,’ but the alligator grabbed her in its jaws again and took her under the water, according to a supplemental police report released Tuesday.
Cynthia Covert, 58, died of drowning before Charleston County deputies and firefighters were able to shoot and kill the alligator and use poles to get her out of the pond, authorities said.
Animal lover Covert came to Kiawah Island, a gated community southeast of Charleston, to give the homeowner a manicure Friday, according to the police report.
The woman told deputies Covert typically was professional in her salon, but was relaxed and excited at the home, talking about her boyfriend’s visit from Tennessee, and brought a glass of wine with her.
Covert saw the alligator while working on the woman’s porch and when Covert finished she started taking pictures of the alligator, the woman told deputies.
The woman and her husband started screaming for Covert to get away from the alligator because they saw it grab a deer a few days earlier, deputies said.
Covert said ‘I don’t look like a deer’ and reached to touch the alligator when the animal attacked, according to the report.
Over the weekend, I saw reports that New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham had invoked the state’s Riot Control Act to shut down traffic in the city of Gallup. The coverage didn’t provide the context to understand why this community of 21,678 people was such a COVID-19 incubator:
Gallup is in McKinley County, which has 1,027 positive cases of Covid-19 as of Thursday. The county has more than 30% of the state’s 3,411 cases and the most positive cases in the entire state, the governor’s statement said.
“Its infection trend has shown no sign of flattening,” according to the statement. . . .
“The spread of this virus in McKinley County is frightful,” Lujan Grisham said. “And it shows that physical distancing has not occurred and is not occurring. The virus is running amok there. It must be stopped, and stricter measures are necessary.”
So I checked the map, and noticed that Gallup is on I-40, where it intersects with U.S. 491, leading north to the Navajo Nation. If you live on the reservation and want to go shopping, Gallup is where you’d go, and the Navajos have been hard-hit by COVID-19. Such was my deduction Saturday, and now the New York Times follows up:
The lockdown comes as state and local authorities grapple with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States on the nearby Navajo Nation, the country’s largest Indian reservation, and a surge in detected cases in places near the reservation.
As of Sunday, the Navajo Nation had reported a total of 2,373 cases and 73 confirmed deaths from the virus. . . .
The refusal to follow social distancing guidelines by some residents of Gallup and other so-called border towns near the reservation has emerged as a source of tension, as tribal authorities say the behavior is undermining their attempts to control the virus.
The Gallup area had the third-highest rate of infection of any metropolitan area in the United States as of Sunday. . . .
Before the lockdown, tribal leaders complained that their attempts to curb infections on the reservation by setting curfews and creating checkpoints were being undermined when Navajo citizens ventured into Gallup.
Residents of Gallup also groused that many people were ignoring social distancing guidelines by crowding into vehicles and food stores. . . . Native Americans account for 53 percent of New Mexico’s confirmed coronavirus cases, while making up about 11 percent of the state’s population. . . .
In the nearby town of Grants, also located near tribal nations in western New Mexico, the mayor openly defied Ms. Lujan Grisham last week by telling businesses to reopen. (The state Supreme Court has ordered the mayor, Martin Hicks, to obey the state orders.) Mr. Hicks has asserted that Navajos were to blame for spreading the virus, openly expressing an unsubstantiated position that seems to be gaining traction in towns near Native American reservations. “We didn’t take it to them, they brought it to us,” Mr. Hicks said in a telephone interview, without offering any proof. “So how are we going to spread it amongst them when they’re the ones that brought it to us?”
Oh, no! He said what you’re not allowed to say!
The question of who is infecting whom is not supposed to be openly discussed. Viral outbreaks just randomly happen, we are supposed to believe, never questioning if demographic disparities in infection rates are anything more than accidental, unless we want to blame racism. The possibility that behavioral differences between groups might help explain these disparities is not permitted, because that might lead to “victim-blaming.” You can’t ask who was “ignoring social distancing guidelines” in Gallup, and the way the New York Times reports the story, you don’t get a clear answer, except when Mayor Hicks expresses his “unsubstantiated” opinion. Well, we might ask, how was it that this disease from China became rampant among the Navajo? One would not suspect that there was a lot of international travel by reservation residents. My hunch was that this might have something to do with the numerous casinos (including the Fire Rock Casino near Gallup) operated by the Navajo Nation. Maybe tourists brought the virus to the casinos, infecting Navajo employees who then spread it on the reservation?
Imagine my surprise, then, at discovering the real cause:
Navajo officials . . . have traced the surge in the reservation’s coronavirus cases to a March 7 rally held by an evangelical church . . .
Infectious disease specialists say the virus is thought to have arrived on the reservation later than in other parts of the United States. It began spreading rapidly after it was detected among members of the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical congregation in the outpost of Chilchinbeto near the Arizona-Utah border.
Families traveled from far-flung parts of the Navajo Nation to attend the rally, which included a prayer service in response to the pandemic already spreading in parts of the country.
You can read more background about that at the Navajo Times, and I confess it never would have occurred to me that an evangelical rally was the event that triggered this pandemic outbreak. So I’ll have to ask readers to accept my sincere apology for my un-Christian suspicion.
Friday, a security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, Michigian, was shot to death after he confronted a customer who was not wearing a mask. Liberals on Twitter rushed to blame President Trump, claiming the shooting was inspired by Trump’s criticism of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Three people are charged with the murder of a Family Dollar security guard in Flint, who was enforcing the store’s policy requiring face masks. Two men remain at large while a woman has been arrested and is awaiting arraignment in the Genesee County Jail.
The male suspects are 44-year-old Larry Edward Teague and 23-year-old Ramonyea Bishop. Teague’s wife and Bishop’s mother, 45-year-old Sharmel Teague, has been arrested.
All three suspects are facing a charge of first-degree premeditated murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole if they are convicted.
Larry Teague and Bishop also are facing several weapons charges while Teague faces an additional charge of violating Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s order to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces.
Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said Sharmel Teague and her daughter went in the Family Dollar at 877 E. Fifth St. in Flint around 1:40 p.m. Friday. Teague was wearing a mask, but her daughter was not.
While inside, security guard Calvin Munerlyn confronted the daughter about not wearing a face mask.
Whitmer issued an order in April requiring everyone entering an enclosed space to wear a face mask or covering over their nose and mouth to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Family Dollar has adopted that as a store policy for customers.
Sharmel Teague and Munerlyn got into an argument about the policy. Leyton said Sharmel Teague spit at Munerlyn, who then ordered her to leave the store and told the cashier to refuse service to her.
Surveillance video showed Teague and her daughter leaving the store in a red GMC Envoy and enter the nearby River Village Apartments complex. Minutes later, cell phone records show Sharmel Teague made a phone call to Larry Teague, Leyton said.
About 20 minutes after Sharmel and her daughter left the store, Leyton said Larry Teague and Bishop drove the same GMC Envoy back to the store.
Leyton said surveillance video shows Larry Teague and Bishop enter the store and start an argument with Munerlyn. Witnesses reported hearing the suspects ask Munerlyn who had disrespected his wife.
During the altercation, Leyton said Bishop pulled out a handgun and shot 43-year-old Munerlyn in the head. He was rushed to Hurley Medical Center, where he died later Friday.
Look, I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but Hillary Clinton carried Flint, Michigan, by a wide margin in 2016, and if you were looking to find violent Trump supporters in Flint, you probably wouldn’t pick Larry, Ramonyea and Sharmel as the most likely suspects.
It is difficult to describe, and impossible to exaggerate, just how evil and dishonest the Democrats have become. Daniel Uhlfelder is a Florida lawyer who previously made headlines by suing over a private beach in Walton County where former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee happens to live. Huckabee is just one of 900 beachfront property owners in the county, but his name was invoked as a publicity stunt by Uhlfelder first during the 2018 campaign, and then in launching a super PAC earlier this year. Now, Uhlfelder wants people to believe they’re going to die because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision to re-open Florida’s beaches:
Most Floridians hitting the newly reopened beaches are trading stay-at-home sweatpants for shorts and swimsuits.
But when he heads out, Daniel Uhlfelder dons a raggedy black robe, conceals his face with a black cloth and wields his scythe.
Uhlfelder, an attorney, is haunting Florida beaches dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest their reopening, which he believes is premature. It’s a macabre plea to beachgoers to stay home.
Uhlfelder is a staunch advocate for public beach access in the state, even butting heads with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose Florida Panhandle home is parked on a private beach. But allowing anyone on the beach during the pandemic is a mistake, he said — one that could endanger the community.
“We aren’t at the point now where we have enough testing, enough data, enough preparation for what’s going to be coming to our state from all over the world from this pandemic,” the lawyer told CNN.
Scythe in hand, he traveled to beaches around Walton County, Florida, that have reopened ahead of the state’s planned May 4 reopening. “Phase One” of the reopening will allow restaurants and retailers to open at 25% capacity. Bars, salons and gyms will stay closed for now.
The beaches he visited Friday were “very crowded,” he said.
“I know how beautiful and attractive our beaches are. But if we don’t take measures to control things, this virus is going to get really, really out of control,” he warned.
Except (a) no, he’s wrong, and (b) the media reports won’t mention the highly relevant fact that Uhlfelder is a Democrat activist, and that this isn’t about public health, it’s about partisan politics — falsely smearing the Republican governor. Actual research indicates that there is little or no danger of the virus spreading outdoors in the sunshine. That’s just not how viruses operate. True, some college kids who traveled to Florida for Spring Break in February and early March contracted coronavirus, but that was probably from partying in crowded nightclubs, or perhaps just from being on commercial airlines. Being outdoors in the sunshine is probably the safest place to be, and if Uhlfelder says the beaches were “very crowded,” could he please specify what that means, in terms of people per square foot? Because I doubt very much that any beach was too crowded to observe the six-foot “social distancing” limit.
Facts don’t matter to the liberal media narrative.
