.... I agree with this.
Perhaps understandably.... perhaps even an unavoidable INITIAL response.... we find government making SWEEPING generalizations and measures. Government believes in "one size fits all."
But in reality, it doesn't. IMO, as we "come back" we need to do this far more intelligently and with attention to the situation. It might make good sense to determine "This is the need." Then allow individual businesses, organizations, churches, agencies, etc. to determine how it can accomplish that. For example, my church could EASILY resume public worship - while keeping AT LEAST 6-feet physical distance, no touching, absolutely sanitary conditions - but we are closed because we are more than 10 in a space (of ANY size!) at one time. Now, I agree - this would require government to THINK and to trust the govern.... so, well, maybe it won't happen.
This obsession with wiping and cleaning everything is part of the silliness.
At my local store they wipe the credit card machine every single time someone uses it. What's the point? Yes, there's a nasty virus going about but it's not as if it was sterile beforehand. For all I know the person who used it before me might have taken a massive dump in the bathroom and not washed their hands. It's my responsibility to wash my hands, not everybody else's responsibility to sterilize every single thing I might touch. If I decide to lick the pen used to sign the machine, or handle something of unknown cleanliness and then lick my fingers, that's my problem.
Even the initial response was hugely overblown. When my
fuhrer governor shut everything down it looked like he was making it up as he went along. One order after another after another, coming into effect with as little as a few hours' notice. Because, you know, a business can figure out in three hours whether it qualifies as "essential" and how best to restructure given sweeping mandates to close the doors that might or might not apply to them. And in the meantime they shut down rural counties as fast as urban counties. I often to go my local hardware store and find more staff than customers in there. Thankfully they have stayed open although it's intensely tedious trying to speak through a piece of fabric to an assistant whose hearing aid is covered by his piece of fabric. My local shoe store is usually so quiet during the day midweek that I can go and try on shoes at my leisure, often being the only customer in there. But apparently that's so dangerous they have to close, and yet I can go and buy shoes at Walmart.
A friend of mine works at a retirement home. It makes sense for him to limit exposure to an extent that would look paranoid for someone like me. I live with my wife and find it very easy to maintain a distance from older, more vulnerable people. My understanding of the statistics is that if I get the virus the chances are 99% or better than I'll be just fine. I can avoid the older people who might not fare so well but, if they want to see me, I figure they are all grown up and can decide for themselves whether they want to take the chance. One couple I know are in their 70s and immune-compromised, and they have locked themselves down very tightly; another couple of a similar age and similar medical conditions are going stir crazy on their own and asked my wife and I if we could visit them, so we went to their house and just sat at opposite ends of their kitchen table. I think of it much like drinking and driving - the law allows me to drink as much as I want, and the law allows me to drive. It just doesn't allow me to do both. When I'm in the pub about to drink my 5th beer there is no process that inherently stops me from getting in a car and driving home - I'm trusted to do the right thing. But apparently I can't be trusted not to go to the nightclub, party until 3am and go to the old folks' home the next day.
For good measure it seems piling into Walmart is apparently safe but having someone stand behind me to cut my hair in an otherwise empty room is so dangerous it has to be banned. I'm allowed to hike the trails in the woods but as soon as I get back to the park I can no longer be trusted to keep six feet away from others if I take shelter under a pavilion, so they are all closed. The shelters are large enough that keeping six feet away from people is easy; many of the trails are narrow enough that it's impossible to pass more than six feet from someone coming the other way.
I was encouraged to see articles suggesting that the Michigan state legislature was looking into stripping their
fuhrer governor of at least some of her powers. It seems the rules there are even more stupid than here. As you say, it requires the government to put some trust in the people. Sadly governments aren't often very good at doing that. I wonder how many more county sheriffs are going to refuse to enforce orders they consider unacceptable. That also seems to be a growing movement.
