Contact tracing by public health officials is done on newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients to track the spread of the disease.  How did they get it, and whom did they give it to?  It's a stopgap measure because there isn't much of a cure for the pandemic.

Now we have this:

Democratic New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio's "contact tracing team" won't be allowed to ask COVID-19 patients if they attended a George Floyd protest recently, The City reported. 

The "contact tracing team" is tasked with finding an infected patient's recent contacts and informing them about their exposure to the virus so they can self-isolate. However, the team is not allowed to ask people if they attended one of the many recent demonstrations where thousands of people gathered closely together to protest the death of George Floyd, The City reported.

So much for science and public safety.  Of what use is this information gathered if they can't pin it on an illegal protest gathering or lootfest, with zero social distancing?  New York mayor Bill de Blasio and all his leftist allies in public health have been eager to pin church meetings, barbershop chairs, nursing homes, cruise ships, beauty parlors, spas, bars, and restaurants as key spreading points of contact, and some of these places really have been critical nodes in the spread of the disease.

And the pieties flow.  According to WebMD:

"One of the most important steps to take to reopen the economy as safely as possible is to create a system of contact tracing. When social distancing is relaxed, contact tracing is our best hope for isolating the virus when it appears — and keeping it isolated," former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is helping lead the effort, said in a statement.

But somehow, protests get a pass.  Nothing to see here, move along...

This is rather a corruption of the whole idea of contract tracing.  The concept has generally been subject to bad press because it can get so Orwellian.  Norway scrapped its contract trace program on the grounds that it violated patient privacy.  Singapore told Google no, it didn't want the tech giant to be mining data from its participation in contract traces.  New York's contract trace program is being run by former mayor and failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, whose very participation draws questions as to what he really might use all that data-mining for.

But now we see a swing in a different direction, not in an intrusive collection of data, but in a selectively filtered collection of data designed to give rabid mobs a pass.

If the inconvenient truths can be filtered out, the data are worthless.  So much for "science."  Democrats always say they are the party of science, but, well...

This is just the kind of politicization we are seeing around this coronavirus crisis as it intersects with the George Floyd protests.  If there was any match for the Centers for Disease Control's endorsement of social justice protests after all its fuss in favor of lockdowns, it might just be in de Blasio's instructions to contact tracers to not ask newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients if they've been to the protests (or the lootings) that followed.  To leftists, every aspect of science is subordinate to advancing leftism.  While it may make leftists feel good to do it, it's pretty much the end of public health as a science.  What member of the public is going to trust them when they call for another lockdown?  Call this bad decision another pork-barrel program, good only if it validates the left.

That's what happens when just leftists are at the helm, as they are in one-party blue cities and in the public health establishment in general.  Any questions as to why the public doesn't trust them much?

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Twitter screen shot and Pixabay public domain image.