Fetch Me My Louisville Slugger!

I have to start with this:

Trump on why he picked Easter as the day he wants to end strict social distancing and reopen American businesses: “Easter is a very special day for me … Easter Sunday, and you’ll have packed churches all over our country.”

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

The States are in trouble if he gets his way. (Which may not be such a bad thing, come to think of it … )

But our Prime Muppet is just as bad. He delivered his Stage 2 restrictions last evening in a snarly aggressive and completely impenetrable series of aggressive riddles rather than directives, and what people can glean from them is scant guidance indeed, so most of them are just ignoring him. It’s sad, but that’s how much sway he holds, people dismiss him as a totally useless twatwaffle – AND THEY’RE RIGHT TO DO SO.

Non-essential places are to close from midnight. That should have happened a week ago FFS. Just overnight on the night he delivered his wafflings, the state of Victoria had a 10% jump in confirmed infections. By the time people realise he’s serious, that rate will have shot up to 50% or even 70% per day, which becomes a geometrically larger and larger pool of infections.

Hairdressers are not restricted from opening but they must observe the 4sqm per person physical separation limits, no-one is to remain in the shop longer than thirty minutes. Assuming three or four barbers (I’ll take the slightly simpler case of men’s barbers as they have far fewer dye and bleach jobs where the preparations alone take half an hour and then another half hour for setting) and 4sqm spaces for ten or maybe twelve customers at a time, the first ones take the chairs and it takes twenty minutes to get a decent haircut, so factor in the checkout process and the other six (or eight) have been sitting for 25 minutes. You see the problem? By the time THEY get finished, the last four have been sitting there for 40 – 50 minutes already.

And that doesn’t even address the physical separation limit of 1.5m between persons. How will the barber cut my hair from three arm lengths away? Or does that limit magically vanish and no matter how infected the barber is, COV-19 will obey some unwritten rule and not infect me?

Children are to stay in schools. Let’s put a few hundred impulsive and uninhibited children together in a confined space for six or eight hours, and let’s just tell that COV-19 that this is another one of those times when infection is not an option.

Kids are the BEST spreaders of community acquired diseases … And even if they aren’t infected themselves, their lunches and school bags have been handled by their parents, who may be infectious but not know it yet. Kids share and touch, so that afternoon a few kids go home with COV-19 on their hands and skin and school bag. Their home MAY have been virus – free before then.

So it ‘s no wonder people are ignoring contradictory and seemingly random rules and regulations.

Meanwhile, kids are taking advantage, naturally. And playing hooky from school, and ending up in the shopping malls that are – what was it again? – classified as prohibited places but also staying open as being essential. But any food halls or restaurants will only be allowed to serve take – away meals. So for sure kids will go in, not not touch all surfaces, get their take – away chips to take away – and then stay around to eat them.

Ummm also – FIVE people at weddings? TEN at funerals? TEN at outdoor gyms but indoor gyms are closed? This is seriously like the House That Jack Built, only with less structure and planning.

(UPDATE: As I’m writing these articles here weeks after I put them in my diary, I can now say any more than TWO people – for any reason – is now the outdoor gathering limit, people are “encouraged” to stay home except for essential purposes such as grocery shopping, medical reasons, and exercise. But that took a week to drag out of the government’s aggressive little Punch n Judy puppet.)

But They All Have ‘Compelling Reasons’ …

And our useless populace are still not even concerned at the fact that we’re heading for a far more meteoric rise than Italy. COV-19 can live for three days on some surfaces. If you don’t have any people to walk by and touch those surfaces (or strong breezes dislodging the virus maybe and by luck landing on a human) then that patch of virus is DEAD DEAD DEAD. It is just more microscopic RNA dust.

(UPDATE: People defied the first day of lockdown by gathering en masse at popular beaches. They defied the lockdown and the Po-po by exercising together in larger groups because it was “important” they were – and still are – going to shops without a clue. I saw people wearing dress and cycling gloves with badly adjusted facemasks, they have no idea what either is for or how to use them. I’ve sworn that the first of those idiots that comes near me on the once a week shopping day will get their faces keyed. )

If you self-isolate properly for two weeks, (and everyone else does, too) then we could in theory walk out of our houses and be virus – free. The people who discovered to their horror that they have CoV-19 are going to have been scooped up into the quarantine / medical management / treatment programs and those are reasonably contained places.

But – the virus came from animals, what are the chances that it’ll jump back to an animal host and just start again once all surfaces show clean of contamination? Mind you – our Prime Muppet says he knows stuff. Nothing useful, mostly hate driven rantings, but stuff. I’m inclined to not believe him, and it’s him and his ilk I want that baseball bat for…

(And as I rework this from a mere 20 days ago on the 25th March, it turns out that SARS-cov-2 has jumped to tigers in the zoo and can also jump to our pets. Since I couldn’t tolerate myself if I abandoned our pets, I am only going to say that our cats have a large back yard specifically fenced to keep them inside and other cats out, and we’ll continue to look after them as it’s our duty to.)