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Your Government Inaction: Self Quarantine
My sister in-law was a teacher on the Navajo reservation. When her school shut down due to the Chinese Virus crisis, she opted to retire instead of being paid to do make-work. Since her residence was part of her compensation, she had to move out by June 1st.
My wife flew to Albuquerque to help her sister move. The scene at the airport when I dropped her off an hour before her flight was surreal. Ours was the only car in the departures area. There were a handful of employees visible but no other passengers. She told me that she was the only person in the security queue and was done in seconds. There were only 35 people on her flight.
Apparently New Mexico has a law that people from out-of-state have to self-quarantine for fourteen days after flying in. This does not apply to people who drive into the state, or casually stroll in, say through the southern border. Obviously the rule was crafted due to Science! and is in no way arbitrary. Or capricious. This does make the law easier to enforce, since the Albuquerque International Sunport® is basically the only airport with commercial flights from out of state. The airport I use in the fifth-largest city in Texas gets more traffic than the entire state of New Mexico.
When my wife deplaned, all the clean, healthy New Mexico citizens went out through one corridor, while the potentially disease-ridden out-of-staters were directed down another. She told me there was a folding table in the corridor with a stack of papers on it. The table was not labeled and no one was manning it. She and all the other dirty out-of-staters passed the table by without picking up a paper. Of course, at the end of the corridor, there was . . . nothing. All the unhygienic denizens of plague states just mingled back with the pure New Mexicans.
I was a cop in Albuquerque, and I seem to remember that the Sunport® has its own police department. When I flew in last year to visit family, I saw something very much resembling a police officer at the security line. So, why didn’t they have anyone, at the corridor they deliberately sent people through, to explain the law, ID people and get the location of their self-quarantine? Of course, it was Saturday, so maybe they had the day off. Or were in the office, doing inventory on their bullet.
My wife helped her sister load up a U-Haul®, and they drove out of the state the next day. Of course, nobody stopped them at the border to check their quarantine status.
This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes about the Soviet Union:
A man goes to the store by to buy some meat. Naturally the queue goes on for miles and when he finally gets to the counter, all the shelves are bare.
He loses his temper. “I’m sick of this stupid country, sick of this government, sick of the communists!”
The clerk looks around and says “Calm down, comrade. You remember what this sort of outburst would cause back in the bad old days…” and mimes a trigger being pulled against his temple.
Back home, the man’s wife looks at him returning empty-handed and asks, “They’re out of meat again?”
“It’s worse than that. They’re out of bullets.”
The government will will always have a totalitarian impulse when a crisis occurs. Fortunately, they are usually totally incompetent about it.
Published in Humor
Well done, Jose. And too close to home, too!
And toilet paper, too.
Good grief
They use National Guard to inform you of the requirements. They must have been on drill that day.
So they say.
They do need a lot of training to operate that Vietnam-era equipment.
Who flies into Albuquerque on a Saturday, anyway?
(I can kid because I was in the New Mexico National Guard.)
When I flew in back in March, two 18-year-olds sat at a table, tried to hand me a flyer, and wanted to tell me about the order. I just walked past them.
I got to be range officer once when we were doing live fires on our small arms. At that time, it was WWII vintage M3 “Grease Guns.” The EMs had a lot of fun. I was scared stiff.
There’s this wonderful bit of science!
Texas is going to infect the whole state!
Your wife was able to drive into the Navajo area? A neighbor who drove by Gallup, NM (near the Navajo area on I-40) about ten days ago reported that all the exits from the highway were blocked by concrete barriers and police officers to prevent any and all from entering the area.
Our daughter and son-in-law (north of Albuquerque) are trying to maintain the spirit of the shutdown, and have some concern that some “Karen” would report them to some official if our Texas license plated car appeared at their house, so they won’t let us come visit.
That was just Gallup; if I recall correctly, the mayor of Gallup asked the governor to cordon off the city. Hasn’t shown up in any news story I’ve seen since.
Her sister picked her up at the airport. Since she lived there, she was able to go back in.
They opened up Gallup last Sunday at noon. Because blockading it had absolutely zero effect. And, in fact, people from Gallup were using back roads to go elsewhere. Last Saturday, for instance, the recorded number of people at the Grants Walmart was greater than the population of Grants.
Probably making multiple trips working on home improvement projects.
Well, most homes in Gallup could use improving…
The Navajo nation has been hit hard by COVID-19.
Almost 60% of our cases, and near a majority of our deaths in New Mexico. It’s hard to tell whether it’s purely lifestyle and comorbidities or whether there’s another genetic effect at work.
Of course, no one is willing to look into it, either.