My county closed down the public beaches and boat ramps, not so much because they couldn't be used safely, as because the citizens vocally feared an influx of bored tourists fleeing quarantine in the teeming, scary, infected cities. It surprised me: I thought the voters would rebel, but instead a solid majority cheered the measure.
Several weeks have passed, however. We have had only two confirmed COVID-19 cases, neither of which had to be hospitalized, and both are recovering, perhaps even past the presumed contagious phase.
Yesterday the local Navigation District commissioners met. They are bound by the county's order, but most of the affected beaches and public boat ramps are in their geographical jurisdiction. The Nav District voted to remove the barricades the county had asked them to place on the beaches and ramps, and announced their intention to ask the County Judge to modify his lockdown order. In the meantime, everyone appears to acknowledge that the beaches and ramps technically still are closed, but no one from the Nav District or, apparently, the local police, intends to enforce the closure. Part of the reasoning was that local short-term rentals are still prohibited, so we shouldn't face much of a tourist influx.
I foresee an upheaval in the next few weeks as counties begin to implement the governor's instructions to re-open businesses carefully, starting with curbside delivery. A constituent called me earlier this week wanting to know whether the county was enforcing any requirement for take-out restaurant workers to wear masks. There is no rule requiring food workers to wear masks, though I did encourage her not to patronize any restaurant whose safety practices didn't suit her. She wanted to discuss her unhappiness with a particular restaurant. I urged her not to eat there. She wanted to talk about the special health needs of a live-in relative. I suggested that, given that relative's special needs, she might want to consider not eating at any restaurants for the duration. I mention her because I get the impression from social media that she's far from alone. She wants to concentrate on limiting the freedom of others rather than on her own options for hunkering down in safety, at some minor inconvenience to herself, but at no serious cost.
As always, my concern is less with these inconveniences, and almost entirely with the people who are missing paychecks, and for whom the situation is getting critical. Those of use who want or need to guard ourselves carefully are getting every opportunity to do so. No one is making us go into any dangerous buildings. The local hospitals are, if not exactly fine, at least no more inadequate than they ever were. We're going to have to open the economy back up, carefully but soon. Lots of masks and spacing, fine, but get those jobs back ASAP. So I'm pleased to see at least one local government flex its muscles a bit, and I'm curious to see how the public reacts.
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The mission creep has been in governments deciding what activities are "essential," and forbidding the others, rather than having a go at what is safe (relatively). Because grocery stores are essential in the current delivery of food to people they get approved, even though they are more dangerous than a lot of other activities. So on one end of the scale, it seems sensible to allow what is essential, even if it is high-risk. What else are you going to do?
But that put their heads into the wrong metric for deciding, unable to look at nonessential things with an eye to relative safety. It's as if bureaucrats and rule-makers can only think along one line at once.
Sometimes it's a candy and a breath mint.
A public service announcement for your information
Alphabet has a very good speech to text system now. They analyze all the words spoken in the video, courtesy of everyone who gave Alexa/Google/Sri their voices to process. They can't pick up "accents" very well still. If you "say" or write in the comments, certain words or phrases, and your channel is NOT an official source such as wikipedia approved or Scopes approved, the public will see your search results, even if you are the top video, on page 10 instead of page 1. All official news source youtube channels will be prioritized over yours, even if you had 15 million hits, and they had 5k hits. They don't often go to the extent of pulling your video, that's what the copyright strikes are for. But they can definitely "de list" your video from the public search and the recommended bar. This began happening in 2015 and after, due to the Flat Earth Theory being promoted by Youtube's algorithms. Since the adapted algorithm worked so well to suppress FE videos, they started using it on everybody else or every other topic in 2016, campaigning for politics. Now we are in 2020 and the algorithms are quite mature. The ways around this voice analysis is to speak in accents in your videos, spell out words differently, or use pictures with words on them.
I wish humanity was free from control and manipulation. That won't happen until people wake up and realize that the shackles exist.
https://youtu.be/Y6oI5rveBU0?t=4952
A few minutes from that time stamp, V P Pence gives a speech to the graduating class. Notice once again the mention of an "Invisible Enemy", which may not make much sense to military cadets or officers, as supply support during humanitarian emergencies is not the primary war fighting mission of the military. Fighting a "war" against X like drugs, is not something military ethos attempts to simulate, as the realm of law is different for civilian matters.
After that G Raymond gives the oath to the Space Force cadets. While this is the AF 2020 graduation class, arrangements have been made to seat the Space Force cadets at the front left, from the podium's pov, and for them to wear Silver, not Gold, sashes.
I have been paying an inordinate amount of time to G Raymond and the Space Force re organization efforts. Trum now has an Invisible War and an Invisible Enemy... but when he had idea of a Space Force and pushed it through, almost no military staff advisers thought that another compartment of the military would be a good idea.
Something else is going on than what looks nice at the surface, I can guarantee that.
Later on, the US Navy will transfer several different assets to Space Force, including Marines. This will create an interesting military culture, as Air Force, Navy, and Marines all have... rather strange traditions that are rather long in the making. The Army Air Force, has probably the shortest tradition timeline in USA, at least compared to Navy/Marines. Now the Space Force has the shortest tradition timeline transition and beginning.
They will be an important component of the war against the Cabal and others.
Consider this- grocery store workers aren't being infected at higher rates than the general public. There may be some skew to the younger side in that group. so perhaps that's part of it, but wouldn't you expect a significantly higher incidence of contagion among them given the measures we're taking?
If they aren't being infected at higher rates, then why can't business with *far fewer contacts per customer visit* reopen? Seems like a minimal risk, that can easily be further mitigated by individuals by not going there.
Hairdressers and others who can still do their job one customer at a time, for example.
I don't use a hairdresser, so this is easy for me to say, but a hair salon is exactly the place I'd hate to be. It's an indoor space with activities that require close, sustained contact.
I'm still doing some shopping, but all curbside and other outdoor things. I picked up a carful of plants from the nursery yesterday. We all gave each other room in the open air.
There is only the tiniest evidence for disease transmission from brief casual contact. There's a good bit of evidence fo transmission from sustained contact in a closed space, like those poor people who stayed in a choir practice room for three hours in Washington State. That's not to say people won't occasionally pick up the disease from casual contact, but with a case fatality rate that's low to start with, a minuscule chance of contracting it starts to be an example of swallowing camels and straining at flies. I'm more likely to fall down my stairs and break my neck, or lose my brakes and accidentally run over my neighbor.
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