These points don’t apply to the UK and elsewhere to anywhere near the same extent, so the post does at least seem like a good argument against the protests in the UK and elsewhere.
There are other factors (relating to points made in the post) to suggest the protests in UK and EU may carry less risk comparatively. Police tactics at protests in different countries may be a relevant consideration—e.g. the heavy use of tear gas in the US (bad for spreading covid, as larks notes) isn’t happening in the UK. R0 also a relevant consideration—likely much lower in many european countries now than in many parts of the US.
Is the R0 lower in Europe? The 3 day average deaths per million is similar in the US, UK, Sweden, and (eg) Italy. Fatal shootings by police officers of citizens per capita are about 170x lower in the UK than the US. Imprisonment as % of the population is about 20x higher in US than US. Prison conditions seem far worse in the US than UK
I would expect deaths to be on a lag (it takes a few weeks on average for people to get sick enough to die). At a quick glance, France, Spain, Italy and Germany are reporting an average of well under 1k new cases a day for the last 7 days, compared to 19-25K/day for the US (obviously necessary to correct for the USA having a 5-6x larger population than these countries).
Edit: this site estimates R0 as being 1.02 in the US overall, and <1 in all western and northern European countries (although >1 in several eastern european countries)
Might suggest that the benefits of protesting in the UK and elsewhere outweigh the costs of virus spread especially given the differential state of the pandemic.
I don’t think this is a counterpoint to my claim which was that the problem of state mistreatment of black people is considerably lower in the UK vs the US. I didn’t claim that there wasn’t unfair mistreatment of black people in the UK.
These articles do not appear to contradict what Halstead said at all.
The first link appears to be an opinion piece rather than a serious piece of analysis—for example it does not include any comparison of the rates of Police killing between the UK and the US. It complains that UK police haven’t been found guilty of murdering black men for a long time, but does not compare this to the number of unarmed black men shot by cops in the UK—a number which is approximately zero most years! It mentions that black men are imprisoned at higher rates than white men in the UK, but does not compare this to the rate at which they commit crimes, which is also significantly higher. Indeed, the only time it actually makes a direct comparison between the US and UK it actually (begrudgingly) agrees with Halstead:
Few people would deny that in many respects life is better for non-white people in the UK than in the US.
Overall I would not consider that article to be a particularly serious analysis of the issue.
Your second link (which I see you found by following a link in the Guardian article) is significantly more data-orientated, but again the only time it directly touches on the issue at hand it seems to agree with Halstead:
14% of deaths in police custody or otherwise following contact with the police since 1990 were BAME. This is proportionate to the population as at the 2011 census.
Finally, neither article contains any comparisons to the pandemic.
These points don’t apply to the UK and elsewhere to anywhere near the same extent, so the post does at least seem like a good argument against the protests in the UK and elsewhere.
There are other factors (relating to points made in the post) to suggest the protests in UK and EU may carry less risk comparatively. Police tactics at protests in different countries may be a relevant consideration—e.g. the heavy use of tear gas in the US (bad for spreading covid, as larks notes) isn’t happening in the UK. R0 also a relevant consideration—likely much lower in many european countries now than in many parts of the US.
Is the R0 lower in Europe? The 3 day average deaths per million is similar in the US, UK, Sweden, and (eg) Italy. Fatal shootings by police officers of citizens per capita are about 170x lower in the UK than the US. Imprisonment as % of the population is about 20x higher in US than US. Prison conditions seem far worse in the US than UK
I would expect deaths to be on a lag (it takes a few weeks on average for people to get sick enough to die). At a quick glance, France, Spain, Italy and Germany are reporting an average of well under 1k new cases a day for the last 7 days, compared to 19-25K/day for the US (obviously necessary to correct for the USA having a 5-6x larger population than these countries).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Edit: this site estimates R0 as being 1.02 in the US overall, and <1 in all western and northern European countries (although >1 in several eastern european countries)
https://covid19-projections.com/#europe-summary
Contra: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/07/britain-is-not-america-but-we-too-are-disfigured-by-deep-and-pervasive-racism
Interesting stats on police violence in the UK:
https://www.inquest.org.uk/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
Might suggest that the benefits of protesting in the UK and elsewhere outweigh the costs of virus spread especially given the differential state of the pandemic.
I don’t think this is a counterpoint to my claim which was that the problem of state mistreatment of black people is considerably lower in the UK vs the US. I didn’t claim that there wasn’t unfair mistreatment of black people in the UK.
These articles do not appear to contradict what Halstead said at all.
The first link appears to be an opinion piece rather than a serious piece of analysis—for example it does not include any comparison of the rates of Police killing between the UK and the US. It complains that UK police haven’t been found guilty of murdering black men for a long time, but does not compare this to the number of unarmed black men shot by cops in the UK—a number which is approximately zero most years! It mentions that black men are imprisoned at higher rates than white men in the UK, but does not compare this to the rate at which they commit crimes, which is also significantly higher. Indeed, the only time it actually makes a direct comparison between the US and UK it actually (begrudgingly) agrees with Halstead:
Overall I would not consider that article to be a particularly serious analysis of the issue.
Your second link (which I see you found by following a link in the Guardian article) is significantly more data-orientated, but again the only time it directly touches on the issue at hand it seems to agree with Halstead:
Finally, neither article contains any comparisons to the pandemic.