An oasis of freedom and disease
But it’s the holy holiday of Spring Break. You can’t expect people to obey rules about not spreading a lethal disease during Spring Break. That would be outright fascism, and also infallible proof of a Personality Disorder.
A state of emergency has been declared in the US city of Miami Beach over concerns large crowds gathering for spring break pose a coronavirus risk.
…
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said thousands of tourists had brought “chaos and disorder” to the city.
“It feels like a rock concert, wall-to-wall people over blocks and blocks,” Mr Gelber told CNN. “If you’re coming here to go crazy, go somewhere else.”
No because this is the beach. It’s a human right to go to the beach for Spring Break.
On Sunday, the Miami Beach city commission voted to extend the curfew and other measures for up to three more weeks.
At an emergency meeting, Mayor Gelber told the commission South Beach had become “a tinder over the last couple of weeks”.
He said tourists had flooded into the city since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the state an “oasis of freedom” from coronavirus restrictions late last month.
Freedom freedom freedom, and beach. America. Big Macs. Freedom freedom.
Quite, but then is anyone surprised. Even in pre-covid times Spring Break in Florida was synonymous with stupidity and unsafe behaviours. Excessive alcohol, un-protected sex, multiple partners in short periods of time, predatory sexual behaviour and that’s before throwing swimming while drunk, general alcohol related accidents and whatever into the mix. Why it’s seen as a right of passage I have no idea.
In a related note, our City Council allowed the mask mandate to expire a couple of weeks ago. Now COVID cases are up, and our health district just cannot figure out why! It’s such a mystery…
You’d think that *last Spring Break* would have been instructive, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?
In case you all harbour delusions that Europe is some rational paradise, the island of Mallorca has just been cleared as no longer a “high-risk area”. It is very much Europe’s Daytona or Myrtle Beach, and as the late winter/early spring drags on grey and cold here northwest Europe, more and more people will decide to risk a holiday there to get some Mediterranean sand and sun.
Also we’re not going to have general access to vaccines for an indeterminate-but-probably-higher-than-four number of months.