Rightly or Wrongly the local Gestapo yesterday gave a 17 year old learner driver in a Car with her Mother a $1600+ fine for 'non essential travel'. The Crime was caused by trying to keep a bit of normality and doing some Driver Training while isolated from others
I think the problem here is however, that should anything untoward happen then they could potentially be putting the response teams at extra risk.
Hence Rightly or Wrongly. A good stern warning and get home now and even get the relevant State premier to bring it up 'nameless' as a reminder of what is or isn't ok but the fine was OTT in particular where the restrictions are only maybe a week old.
Sometimes overreaction is the only way to "encourager les autres" - especially Dunning-Krueger candidates that think they know best.
Even if this gets quashed by the courts which I suspect it might, the publicity this gains might deter others from doing such frankly stupid things when we don't really understand just how this virus behaves and what can be done to counter it. It is not like the common cold or normal flu, it is an invisible, silent killer that can strike anyone. It was initially thought that it would be most deadly to the elderly and infirm, that has subsequently been shown to be incorrect as there are now many people that fall outside that demographic that have tragically lost their lives. It was also thought that only about 1% of those that caught it would die from it, figures from the UK disprove that theory as can be seen from site https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ it is in fact around 10%.
Until the scientists around the world come up with a vaccine and a proper cure that reduces the severity of it to a level similar to that of the common cold, I believe that it is very selfish of people who try to carry on as if nothing had happened, how can they deny that this is very serious, in just 4 months it has spread from a fish market in China to becoming a global nightmare. Even exercise could be and ought to be done within the confines of your own house / garden to minimise any risk of transferring it to others. Any excursion from your house should be for essential things only like getting food, medicines etc or if your key worker, going to work. My son has is a key worker and has been given a letter from his employers that he has to carry on him at all time to prove to anyone in authority that his trip is essential and should be allowed to proceed without hindrance.
Anyone can be carrying this virus and not have any effect from it, its not as if people who are either carriers or suffering from it suddenly sprout flags from their heads as a warning to others to keep their distance is it?
I personally would hate to think that any of my actions could have or would have caused another person or persons to suffer and possibly lose their lives.
I think we need to look at it rationally at the moment. The statistics we are recording here are absolutely not meaningful or useful as they stand and serve only to make the situation sound worse than it currently is. This is being leveraged by the press somewhat and the governments and being relatively poorly extrapolated by our universities into a set of wild assumptions. Granted wild assumptions are the only places we go but presenting them as fact and policy is somewhat disingenuous. Some problems with our recording:
1. We have no antibody tests that are viable therefore we don't have any "numerator" for the total deaths per infection.
2. We're not recording people who left hospital after recovery believe it or not.
3. We're not even recording the actual health outcomes, just the deaths. Not everything kills you even if it messes you up badly.
4. The recording method they use doesn't actually have a causal relation to the mortality as such. If someone comes in after crashing a motorbike, tests positive for covid-19 even if asymptomatic or if the test is contaminated (a big problem apparently!) then they get lumped in with the death statistics.
5. A lot of the statistical outliers are actually reported heavily on such as younger deaths. These are sad but inevitable. My nephew died from the flu a few years back as an example much to the surprise of everyone who wrote it off as "just flu".
6. The current infection testing is a snapshot of the status quo.
7. Some of the mortality risks are amplified by our handling of it and outcome of "viral load" which overwhelms the immune system.
Alas we have no idea what the outcome is going to be and the data we have is mostly trash. We are unfortunately a reactionary experiment at the moment and there's no exit plan other than "now what?" really. We are 12 months off on a vaccination and we don't know what the mortality statistics are, we have no viable testing and damage to society from the side effects from the reaction may outnumber the immediate deaths over a decade span. I suspect the "now what?" is we either burn everyone or some of us and let it run.
But, so far, all risks adjusted against what data we have, the mortality risk is literally just doubling your base line chance of dropping dead at the age you are. Still not desirable but at the end of the day considerably better than the statistics may suggest. But it's stil a shit show. If we have 10x the deaths we have now, which would be ugly, that still only represents a death rate of 0.79% as an end game. We lose 0.91% of our population every year at the moment as well from normal death as a comparison. 10% I doubt it will be.
Really though, don't get wrapped up in the guilt towards others. We should be respecting and looking after each other anyway, not just because the government told us we should be doing it at the moment...