As I’m watching the protests, which have been incredibly powerful and important, I’m acutely aware as a medical professional of how the protest situations fly in the face of the pandemic guidelines and I don’t mean because people are in groups…I’m referring to the use of teargas and its affects on the situations.
Consider this, if someone is wearing a mask and teargas is sprayed on them, they HAVE to take of the mask to breathe and they CANNOT wear it again as teargas stays on the mask, as does pepper spray. These are TOXIC chemicals being sprayed directly at individuals with no effective physical barrier and they don’t just go away with a breeze, they stay on the skin and infiltrate the respiratory tract.
Then consider the fact that those who are sprayed will have to cough, sneeze, scream out in pain as the body has to find ways to deal with the pain and they have no control over this. According to all pandemic guidelines, consider how quickly we are told the virus spreads this way.
Further consider that chemicals like these trigger asthma and respiratory attacks in people of all ages. Those who may already have covid and/or any disease where they have restricted airway such as asthma and even allergies could die from inhaling teargas. Those with anxiety issues will also at times hyperventilate in situations like this and those who do could also have problems breathing.
The fact that teargas and pepper sprays are being used to spray large groups of people is insane both from a humanity level and during a pandemic.
We are already in an unusual situation having a pandemic and these critical protests happening at the same time. We have to have this movement continue for systemic changes to occur. To do this safely, we need recognize barbaric chemical warfare CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be used for crisis measures. We need to stop this now.
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