What is the point of city- and state-level lockdowns in a borderless nation with mass gatherings?

by philg

I wasn’t invited to Barack Obama’s 700-person mass gathering and I haven’t followed the example set by the former President by hosting my own. However, I did recently attend my first big in-person gathering since March 2020, i.e., EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”). One thing that I wondered about at Oshkosh, while surrounded at most times by 100,000+ people, roughly 1 in 200 of whom were masked indoors (closer to 1 in 500 or 1 in 1,000 outdoors), was what the point of city- and state-level COVID-19 restrictions are in a country where there are no internal border controls (or any external ones either, assuming that the person wishing to cross is willing to say that he/she/ze/they have suffered from domestic violence, gang attention, etc.?). A relatively quiet moment inside the Garmin pavilion (zooming in, I can find one guy in a non-N95 mask; what’s his rationale I wonder?):

First, let’s assume that, contrary to the lived experienced of folks in the Czech Republic and Peru, masks and police-/military-enforced lockdowns actually are effective. #Science proves that masks and shutdowns save lives, no matter how high on the COVID-19 death rate leaderboard a masked-and-shut country is. Wrapping a population in saliva-soaked bandanas will stop an aerosol virus.

Second, let’s assume that people can travel freely from an irresponsible unmasked un-shut part of the country to a virtuously masked-and-shut part.

Under these two assumptions, is the masking and partial shutting of Los Angeles, for example, effective when people can leave LA, attend an unmasked mass gathering, and return to LA?

Here’s a scene that has been repeated more or less every weekend in St. Petersburg, Florida, for example:

(Phone video of 10,000+ people gathering in various bars along one street. Fortunately the local public health authorities ordered children to wear masks for 7 hours/day in the nearby schools!)

I don’t like to say that everything needs to be directed by the central planners in Washington, D.C., but I’m having difficulty understanding why we ever thought that this state-by-state, county-by-country, and city-by-city policy-setting could be effective, even if we started from the assumption that humans are in charge of coronavirus.

(The 1,000+ government employees, e.g., USAF flight crews, Army helicopter crews, U.S. Navy pilots, FAA controllers, NOAA scientists, police officers, etc. were entirely unmasked at the event, even, for example, when officially hosting the Delta-variant-infected public inside poorly ventilated aircraft or hangars. It seems that scientifically-guided leadership from the White House is not sufficient to convince even those on the government payroll.)

Related:

33 thoughts on “What is the point of city- and state-level lockdowns in a borderless nation with mass gatherings?”

  1. Whether you (meaning anyone) are anti-mask or pro-mask, your (actually meaning you) post is right on target. With no policy consistency nor overall effective governmental strategy, none of this is going to work all that well. For the moment, the virus is out-evolving us, which is rather annoying, since we were just starting to get a taste of “normal” back (and I wonder if the few concerts for which I now have tickets are once again going to be postponed — I feel for Garth Brooks). P.S. Also think your previous post about Sturgis is interesting, but I suspect there were (or will be) many more cases that stemmed (or will stem) from those events than got (or will get) officially reported — though I am not sure that bikers are uniformly anti-vax.

  2. Wrong! The Faa Atc controller support staff were required to wear masks at Oshkosh.

    • Because nothing improves flight safety like depriving controllers’ brains of oxygen.

    • Averros,

      None of the ATC controllers wore masks! Only their “support staff” were required to wear masks.

    • So FAA got enough fainting spells to decide that face diapers on people who need to think isn’t a bright idea, LOL

  3. I was at my local convenience store this afternoon and witnessed the same phenomenon in microcosm. In an unmasked store with at least 10 patrons+staff, a woman drove up masked in her car, then got out and mingled while masked in the store, talking to several other unmasked patrons. She was an older lady, and I’m assuming she was vaccinated also. I asked myself – why? It’s obvious that she does not have COVID (or at least is not suffering from any visible symptoms of it at her relatively advanced age) and I thought masks were – according to the usage guidelines – were primarily to be used to *protect others*. But if she is not infected, what is she protecting them from? And how effective could it possibly be when 90% of the other people around her were unmasked, some of them standing well under six feet from each other?

    Moreover, this woman is familiar to me and I know where she works (we don’t like each other, and she saw me and deliberately avoided me.) She works in a place with dozens of other employees and masks are not required there, either.

    As you know from your own moderation guidelines, it’s very difficult for even people who have had years of professional training and possess a great deal of insight to understand what goes on in someone else’s mind. So I won’t speculate further, but it didn’t make much sense to me, except that perhaps she is trying to set an example for others, very unsuccessfully.

    Since she’s older – at least in her early 70s – and it is warm and humid today, it occurred to me that she was probably suffering more from a lack of oxygen than anything else.

    Anyway, I love the photo – there’s at least one person who attended Oshkosh this year who drinks my favorite brand of coffee. He’s at the lower right, with the shades on top of the baseball cap, and it’s good coffee.

    https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/

  4. You are on to something. The powers that be, hate, really hate, that we have the freedom to travel freely in a big country. It makes tyranny much harder. Electric vehicles are all about tying the distance you can travel to your social credit score. Never mind virus transmission scientology nonsense free travel has been in the sights for a long time. They just haven’t figured out how to kill it, especially after globalizing the economy.

    • This type of post confirms to me just how bat-shit crazy some people are. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by limiting the freedom to travel…jobs are gone, whole industries are disrupted, tax revenue is depleted. To what end does this serve “the powers that be”? On top of that, no one is limiting anybodies freedom to travel freely.

      I hope you don’t actually believe this complete nonsense…but you probably do. THAT is a far bigger problem that we have to deal with.

    • Jim – I’m not sure which planet are you from but it’s certainly not Earth. Try to go to practically any other country these days. Come back to tell us how your right to travel isn’t being restricted.

      Well… I guess you don’t see what is going on if you spend most of your time self-isolating, LOL. The rest of us will appreciate if you stay like that forever. Because the coronavirus is here to stay. Boo!

    • Jim is spot on. “The powers that be hate…” Who are this mythical creatures? I bet Pelosi is sitting in her throne room, her eyes wide with a Dr. Evil sneer, pinky to her lips, saying, “I do not want Californians traveling to any other state. And I sure hate all the tourists who inject capital into San Francisco. I love having Tesla HQ in my area, but no to Superchargers! NO SUPERCHARGERS!!!!!!!!!!!! Mwah-ha-ha!”

      (More than ten people have self-identified as Republicans (e.g. right-wing-media automatons) to me when they find out I drive a Tesla — “Did you know those are far worse for the environment than my Ford F-150? Electric cars suck man… Anything good for the environment is bad on my list.” Yes — those sentences are contradictory, but note I did say they are Republicans.)

    • Expression ” bat-shit crazy ” is common to those capitalizing on political wokeness in anti-reasoning lefty blogosphere, this is first occurrence of it on MIT-related blog.

    • The hate is real. The managerial elites ™ just think of humanity as this organism which causes global warming, is racist and sexist, and generally backwards (eg doesn’t want to get vaxed), and has the temerity of not believing the elites’ divine lore.

      When it comes to travel – yes, they want to stop that because CO2.

    • “…Try to go to practically any other country these days. Come back to tell us how your right to travel isn’t being restricted.”

      Not all countries are open, but you can travel to many with a negative covid test. And I was responding to the assertion that “The powers that be, hate, really hate, that we have the freedom to travel freely in a big country.”

      By “big country” I assume he means the USA. And there are no restrictions to do that. Since March I’ve been from California to Chapel Hill, NC (where my daughter lives). To Haines, OR (where my aunt lives), to Vegas…just to go, Paso Robles, for the wine.

      Perhaps it’s you who needs to get out.

    • “…Expression ” bat-shit crazy ” is common to those capitalizing on political wokeness in anti-reasoning lefty blogosphere, this is first occurrence of it on MIT-related blog…”

      OK..how about just plain old dumb shit?

    • As somebody who just spent an hour and a half in line at the airport to get permission to enter the state where my own home is I can tell you, Jim – you are the one old dumbshit.

    • Hi Jim,

      Many of us here are graduates of MIT

      We’d all appreciate if you left and found someplace else to post until you can manage to string four words together without profanity.

      You have become tiresome.

      Thanks much for the consideration.

    • You’re right, Anonymale, profanity has no place here…my apologies. But I doubt that that’s the reason you want me to leave. As far as I can remember, this is the first and only time I’ve used profanity. If you’re tired of my disagreeing with the general mantra here…well, get over it.

      As if it matters at all, I’m a graduate of USC.

    • That’s not true! Schools are still mostly shut down. It will be interesting to see what happens on August 16th when they are supposed to re open. Courts and many government offices like DWP are partially shut down.

    • Schools will not be shut down. Maybe some are at the moment because it’s still summer vacation.

  6. But none of this matters. It’s never going to end. The FDA is going to amend the emergency-use guidelines to allow for booster shots by September, and everyone is going to get vaccinated against. If CNN is your primary news source, you are freaked. Hospitals overflowing with dying children, Louisiana governor Bel Edwards about to call for students to be masked in the fall, inoculations for under-12s coming soon, and check out that map of “community transmission.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/07/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html

    NBC is running with the story of people going rogue to gets booster shots:

    “Dr. Kavita Patel, a primary care physician in Washington, D.C., said she believes the people who got the J&J vaccine have been left “high and dry,” injected with a vaccine that may not be sufficiently efficacious against delta but lacking a government-sanctioned way to get an extra shot.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hasn-t-ok-d-boosters-those-who-got-n1276225

    There is nothing in the universe that can stop this. By September I expect to see many school districts going back to Zoom unless kids under 12 are inoculated *AND* test negative *AND* wear masks, and the same will be true for many employers. The shutdowns will come back, the interstate travel bans will be back, and we will be right back where we were a year ago, contemplating another few trillion of stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits.

    This nation has to LOSE. It has been decided.

    • “everybody is going to get vaccinated again…” not “against.”

      And then in the winter it will be the Epsilon variant, and then the Lambda variant.

      NJ.com is already reporting that Epsilon and Lambda are vaccine-resistant from the git-go, and we’re just hitting the boost phase for Delta.

      By the time this is over, it’s going to be great that everyone has learned the Greek alphabet, because this country is going to be best remembered by its crumbling ruins.

    • Are the new variants Trump-vaccine resistant or Trump-vaccine caused. Cruise ships suggest the latter. Silly to not consider that the Trump-vaccine could be causing the covid variants it is an experimental product that was rushed to market and the manufacturers have complete legal immunity for any bad results. ADE is going to cut a lot of people down this winter.

    • Early results of boosters are not encouraging. “If confirmed in larger samples, the figures could cast doubt on the effectiveness of the booster shot…”

      Still, the 4th shot will work, right? Or maybe by the 98th?

    • Any anyone who had knowledge of virology knew upfront that coronaviruses mutate so quickly that it is impossible to create an effective vaccine against them.

      The American academia by and large are cowardly cucks, who would rather shut up and not point out the obvious than lose their meager wages. This makes it very easy to the quacks and mini-Maos in government to shut down those few who dare to speak up.

      This is the consequence of de-facto monopsony in academic funding and the back-rubbing nature of peer reviews (which gullible fools consider to be an indicattion of quality of research rather than indication of conformity to the clique’s dogmata).

      (And if you think this is something new just read up on Lysenkoism. Soviets were nearly a century ahead with this kind of “science”.)

  7. So, is there scientific proof that masks actually help? Or is it so outrageous a topic that nobody risks to research it now?

    • There’s a plenty of scientific proof that masks do nothing. I mean ab actual empirical proof in form of actual RCTs rather than theorising blabbering characteristic of the pro-masking “science”. You know the now familiar “we use supercomuputers to model (scratch climate) spread of droplets” kind. Because supercomputers and high-impact journals just scream “Real Science!” ™ and Must Be Believed.

      But Mario is right – the real argument is not about whether magical rituals are effective about cooties, but about the outbreak of totalitarianism. Which after 20th century every person with a functioning brain knows to be the most dangerous infectious disease, by far.

      And I’m afraid that if the current outbreak is not controlled with conservative treatment via ballots, it will necessitate mass vaccination of carriers with lead-based kinetic jabs.

    • https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/

      But the real trick is realizing viruses do not cause disease. It’s the other way around! Disease causes viruses, which are just cells exchanging messages to help coordinate their response to stress, whether internal or external. Google ‘Rosenau 1919’ and then read ‘Fear of the Invisible’ for a good start.

  8. PhilG your Central Avenue pan was beautiful. Smooth and visually pleasing. I expect no less from the founder of photo.net

Comments are closed.