> Similar is the pretense that the race protests wouldn’t explode the transmission of COVID — how could they not?

Well, so far its looking like they did not. There seem to be three reasons:

1. High rate of mask wearing,

2. They were outdoor events where people were moving about a great deal, and

3. Only 1-2% of the attendees were infected.

You need to get a certain amount of a given virus to actually get infected. For most respiratory viruses if you are just briefly near an infected person and they do not do something to emit a large number of viruses at one (such as cough or sneeze right near you) you won't get enough viruses from them to become infected.

Here's an article about this for the Minnesota protests [1].

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/what-minnesotas-protests-are-rev...