Protesting an Non-Essential Acivity?

[InbetweenDreams]

I'm not quite sure how I feel about everything going on. I don't think enough people will take the stay at home order issued in North Carolina or in other states. Too many people think the virus is fake, some sort of conspiracy or just not serious. 

I also understand why people are protesting. Many many people have lost their jobs and unlike other countries are not getting any relief, other than the one time $1,200 check. Unemployment works very slow and a lot of red tape in this country and every state operates differently, so understandably people are unhappy. I don't think people in the country take the virus serious because it hasn't hit them personally.

I also understand the perspective those who are concerned about the government breaching constitutional rights, particularly the 1st amendment, right to free speech, right to assemble and so on. That is something many Americans take very seriously. 

I also understand the implications that rescinding the shutdowns will likely have. It means that in a month or two people will know someone personally who has it or even worse died from it. Truth is we don't really know what will happen. There's a lot of "noise" if you will about the testing and how many people are asymptomatic. 

People need to be able to keep a roof over their head, food on the table and be able to pay their bills just as someone who owns a business should not have to go bankrupt. Other countries seem to be doing more to keep things afloat. I mean am I wrong? Would it seem that people in other countries are more complaint with the orders because their governments are doing the right things to make it successful?

Anyway, I'm not sure what the full story is, but it sounds like this might have been a bit overreaching.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/15/ral...-activity/

[CellarDweller]

I think that people don't trust the government, and therefore, they are not inclined to listen to the directive to isolate.

My mother has been furloughed from her job, my father is a state employee, and is still getting paid, they are following directions and staying home as much as possible.

I get that people are angry and nervous, but they are only putting themselves and their family at risk for exposure.

[Mark]

America seems to be handling everything very differently - but speaking to friends I have that work in the same company as myself just in the American arm they are being handled very differently due to regulations over there. Here we are being protected somewhat with furlough but over there you just don’t seem to have that protection so it seems.

However that being said the protesting seems to be extremely wreck less and I think it was scenes of the beaches in Florida opening and being packed out within 30 minutes is just madness. I can’t form too much of an opinion as I’m purely basing it on the news and we know how bias that is... but are most states being that lax with lock downs over there? Is Covid really being seen as less of a threat than the economy?

[InbetweenDreams]

@Mark Every state is different. New York for instance they're pretty strict and some of the people protesting the lockdown are from the more rural upstate area... To no surprise the rural areas are more conservative. That being said, out here where I am is rural and I went for a 5 mile walk and while there are people out I hardly saw anyone. They also closed the dam which has a paved path going over it but it is also a Federal facility. It would be less likely to spread COVID-19 going for a walk, even if there were a lot of people out walking...at least from my perspective...I avoid people in public anyway. I also was walking in closed areas... I guess I'm another stubborn American

Most people do not trust the government. I don't really trust the government, there a lot of waste and mismanagement. I also feel there's a lot of corruption. The same people who work high up in oil companies are running the EPA and other agencies. Just a lot of conflict of interest. As we speak, they're rolling back parts of the Clean Air Act which was made law back in 1970. So there is a cause for concern.

That being said, I don't agree with the purpose of the protest. However, I think it is also reckless for the police to disregard the 1st Amendment, which includes the right to protest (peacefully) and the police department could be in violation of the 14th Amendment which is that states cannot infringe on constitutional rights. So I expect lawsuits, we like to sue here...seems to be a thing. Is it in good spirit to protest considering what's going on? No.

Is Covid really being seen as less of a threat than the economy?

Depends on who you ask and where. In the county I live in, which has around 10,000 residents has 5 reported cases, not sure how man of that 5 have recovered. I know there have not been any deaths whereas in the neighboring county has had 12 cases and 2 deaths but there's also about double the people. So the rural areas are probably going to see the response out of proportion.

How bad will it hurt the economy? I don't know, one could argue that an economic downturn will cost lives and it will. How do you factor those things in? At the same time, people are driving less which we do a ton of in the US. Unless you're in somewhere like New York City you're driving to the store, or where ever it is you're going. There is no walking to the store... Work for me is a 19 mile drive (one way).

I do think places like beaches should remain closed. It seems to be the small things like stores that sell books for instance have been closed. So those bookstores are petitioning to local government that any retail places, like grocery stores, should not be allowed to sell books. Bans on "non-essential" items being sold, what's is non-essential exactly? I'm not necessarily disagreeing. I saw a clip showing an Amazon worker complaining about what people are buying, like dildos for example. I guess dildos aren't an essential item, but if it helps keep people from going out and being a hoe I suppose you can argue a dildo can be essential and that selling those items could save lives.

The media doesn't help either. There's a lot of misleading information. A good example is an was a tweet (can't find the specific tweet, seems the news has caught on) made be a journalist depicting mass burials in New York, indicating these people being buried are all COVID-19 related. Turns out that this isn't anything new. People who die and the people aren't claimed get buried there and they have been doing that practice for quite some time.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus...g-pandemic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island_(Bronx)

The other thing is how deadly is COVID-19. We have heard over and over 3%...4%...1%. South Korea which has done 140,000 tests came up with 0.6%. This also would suggest that due to the lack of testing we have a large number of people who have the virus and are either asymptomatic, mild cases as well as more serious cases where people simply don't get tested because they're not at risk. So if you run with a 0.6% fatality rate that means we have more like 6.7 million people who have the virus...not 750,000. I don't know what is actually true, but there are plenty of cases to suggest that we are not testing nearly enough so there's no way to know how many people actually have it and makes it especially difficult between the incubation time and that some people don't get sick at all.

It's an all around nightmare at any rate. I couldn't imagine a pandemic that was more severe, like the 1918 flu.

[LJay]

Telling people to stay home and not to infect each other is not about restricting free speech. It is simply a common sense measure in the interest of public health. You can go outside and stand six feet from each other and babble all you want., Also, unlike the days of our founding fathers, we have such things as telephones and the internet to allow us to communicate widely and constantly.
as for the Covid-19 virus not being real, it is real. I have a neighbor who works in a large hospital here. She says that statistics being released are conservative because testing is not a readily available as it should be. In other words, people are being treated and even dying but they are not listed as Covid-19 cases because kits are not available to test them.

[InbetweenDreams]

@LJay That is a good argument. By no means am I taking the stance that COVID-19 is fake, I am concerned...about all of it. My parents who are both in their 60's and neither of them are poster children of good health. My dad smokes and my mom has COPD from smoking.

I know in other states the protests were very much in violation of any social distancing guideline. The article pertaining to North Carolina said that most people were staying in their vehicles (some weren't and one got arrested for walking through a parking lot). That being said, I suppose protests can be done in the form of online petitions, can one argue that isn't good enough? Probably so, I don't know what would or would not stand in a court case -- that's way out of my league.

What really has me concerned is what I've been experiencing when I go for a walk. Without just taking oodles of pictures of the walking path let me assert that there is plenty of space to keep far enough away from people and there's usually not that many people out, even before COVID-19, even less now. The TVA controls the dam and being a Federal entity they can do what they want with the land. They have closed the area around the dam, specifically the 1/2 mile stretch over the dam and parking lot. There are two campgrounds, the campground and facilities are of course closed, but you can still put your boat in the water and go for walks and so on. That is allowed under the stay at home order, you can travel to go for a walk and that is something that is normal here, we don't have sidewalks. The path from the dam connects to these campgrounds making about a ~4 mile out and back walk/run. The TVA has closed the gates at the end of the dam on the walking path to deter people from walking...but some people just walk around. In front of the gates is a note saying the area is closed, nothing major. What I didn't know was that at the gates on the other end where you would normally enter the parking area has a much different tone on the note on the orange barrel. Basically stating that entering is a big no no and we might prosecute you...so you could, in theory, be arrested for walking your dog on the dam.

Do I understand why the area is closed, sure, do I think someone should be arrested for going for a run or walking their dog? Of course not, that's crazy. Would they actually do that? I have no idea, we live in crazy times.

Perhaps I'm just bitching because if effects me

On a more serious note, this *is* definitely crazy....