Earlier this week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had huge information — the town is opening up its iconic Lakefront Path after months of being closed off as a part of a COVID-19 lockdown.

That Lightfoot saved the path closed even after Chicago had skilled large-scale Black Lives Matter marches — hundreds simply final weekend throughout the “Drag March for Change” — is one small occasion of the flagrant social distancing hypocrisy throughout the nation in latest weeks.

If it’s OK for throngs of individuals to pack the streets, and shout and chant to protest the loss of life of George Floyd, it should be permissible for somebody to journey a motorcycle alongside the lakeside whereas holding to him- or herself. In actual fact, one entails sustained interplay with different individuals, whereas the opposite is a solitary exercise, or one undertaken with a buddy or a partner.

But, Mayor Lightfoot welcomed the protestors — “We wish individuals to come back and specific their ardour,” she mentioned — and nonetheless saved the path shuttered.

Most of the identical officers who have been most zealous in locking down their states and cities immediately made an exception for Black Lives Matter protests. Their rigidity turned laxity in a blink of a watch. Their metric for reopening wasn’t the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention pointers or some other public well being measure, however the “wokeness” of the exercise in query.

Visiting the deathbed of a liked one with COVID-19? Completely not. Having a correct funeral? No approach. Gathering greater than about 10 individuals at a graveside? Nobody must be allowed to place the general public in danger in such a approach.

Bringing hundreds of strangers to march collectively for hours in spontaneous, disorderly teams? Thanks in your dedication to optimistic change.

The wholly unserious Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan professed to be deeply disturbed by a protest towards her arbitrary lockdown guidelines, although it largely consisted of individuals driving across the state capitol of their automobiles. She spun nightmare situations of a spike in COVID-19. That didn’t cease her earlier within the month from becoming a member of an anti-police brutality march with a whole bunch of non-socially distanced individuals, explaining that it was “an vital second to point out my assist.”

To imagine the leaders of Blue America, SARS-CoV-2 is the primary virus in human historical past to have a social conscience — virulent sufficient within the extraordinary course of occasions to justify essentially the most restrictive social controls; not such a giant deal if it’d get in the best way of marches for social justice.

The likes of Mayor Invoice de Blasio have justified the totally different requirements by arguing that preventing racism is vital. Nicely, so is mourning your lifeless, holding your small business from being floor to mud and worshiping your God. It’s an indication of a ludicrously blinkered worldview to imagine {that a} protest march deserves extra consideration than these different elemental human wants.

One other argument is that the protesters are prepared to place their well being on the road for his or her trigger, an indication of their deepfelt devotion to their trigger. However, till just lately, it was mentioned that anybody going exterior wasn’t simply endangering themselves, however essentially the most weak individuals in our communities.

Greater than 1,000 public well being consultants signed a letter calling the protests “important to the nationwide public well being,” thus immolating their credibility on a pyre of motivated reasoning. It’s social distancing for individuals and actions they discover uncongenial, and totally different guidelines for his or her ideological allies.

Wealthy Lowry is editor of the Nationwide Overview.