the leicester misdemeanour.

​Shock, horror! Leicester races went ahead despite being given permission to do so by the Department of Health and Leicester health officials!
I thought the craze for virtue signalling had ended. But no, it remains, lurking in the shadows.
We had all this in the aftermath of the Cheltenham Festival. The hand-ringing and accusations. Yet in retrospect what was the fuss then and what is the fuss about now. Millions of people passed through Gatwick and Heathrow, allowed to go unchecked onto public transport, to take whatever bugs or viruses they carried to all destinations across the country. Even now, adding to a lack of sense that has become the ‘New Normal, people arrive at our airports and even though they must self-isolate are allowed to travel on public transport, to take whatever bugs and viruses they have accumulated on their travels and go live for fourteen-days alongside family members free to come and go as they please. Oh, in case it passed you by, studies conducted in Ireland and Gloucestershire concluded the Cheltenham Festival contributed virtually nothing in the spread of infection. And how many thousand of people attended the four-days? 
Yet one race-meeting held on the outskirts of Leicester where there is quite a minor increase in Covid disease – by the way, are these people actually sick, hospitalised, on ventilators or simply displaying symptoms of a cold? – racing must be dragged over the coals with some of its big players suggesting the sport has committed an own goal.
Yes, in the great scheme of things calling off the meeting would have been no big deal but if that were the path they had chosen to tread, wouldn’t that be setting a precedent. What if there is a spike in cases in the Surry area during the next two days – will the sport have its back to the wall, with no alternative but to cancel the Derby and Oaks? Or, Mr.King (and others) is this a case of one law for the rich and one for the lesser lights?
I thought stalls handlers were tough cookies, brave men and women who go where lesser mortals could never bring themselves to go. Seems not. The stalls handlers who chose to bunk off last night should really be ashamed of themselves. They really need to go do some research on this terrible bug that is wiping out all of humanity, apparently. As the W.H.O. counselled at the very start of this Plandemic, as the Prime Minister advised and Chris Whitty agreed with, only a very small proportion of the population will be seriously compromised by Covid-19. Anyone with a healthy immune system has little to fear from what is at the end of the day little more than a flu outbreak, and even if you catch a dose of the virus the odds are very much in your favour of only going down with very mild symptoms, a fact both the Prime Minister and the Chief Medical Officer subscribed to on many occasions, though more likely you will experience no symptoms at all.
It is time those employed in the racing industry strapped a pair on, looked Covid-19 in the eye and stopped adhering to protocols that are no more than government propaganda. I could give links to a myriad number of science and medical publications that make no bones about the ineffectiveness of masks warding off the virus. As I said when racing restarted, jockeys wearing masks during races will very likely cause harm to them. Footballers were not compelled to wear masks, yet jockeys were. At least medical common-sense prevailed.
The stalls handlers and trainers who took it upon themselves to criticise the sport that pays their wages need to look up the facts about what is going on at present. Covid-19 is a serious health issue to people who live day-by-day with a morbidity or more than one morbidity. But to those of us who are healthy, especially the young, it is no worse than any seasonal influenza bug. The facts around the world confirm this startling fact. The only reason there will be a spike in numbers, and this was predicted by experts at the start of lockdown, is because people kept in isolation will suffer suppression of their immune system and once released from confinement they will be more susceptible to contracting any bug or virus that is about.
The racing industry comprises some of the healthiest people in the country. Yes, it would be wise for any owner (or trainer) with underlying health conditions not to attend race meetings or indeed any large social gathering but for the rest of us it does not represent any sort of threat.
Go racing, be happy, put the fear behind you and for heaven sake, assign virtue signalling to the annals of history.