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Stay Home! Get Out! At the Same Time!
Hurricane Isaias (Where do they get these names?) is projected to hit the South Carolina coast Sunday night. Which, as you might imagine, is likely to make our confused citizens even more confused. It will for me, at least. The last time I drove on the interstates, there were flashing signs along the highway saying, “Save a life – stay home!” So when they schedule the hurricane evacuation, I guess they’ll just have to add one word: “Save a life – don’t stay home!”
Even at this early date, all the hotels in the region are booked solid, because they’ve been instructed to use only every other floor, every other room, and so on, markedly reducing their capacity. Much safer, of course, because of COVID-19. But what if there’s a hurricane coming, and there’s nowhere for people to go? Is that safer?
You can’t avoid risk. You can sometimes choose one risk over another. But risk of some sort is always there. I’m looking forward to watching the breathless weather reporters, standing in the rain wearing a poncho and a surgical mask, imploring us to stay home and wear a mask and go pack ourselves into hotels that won’t let us in to save us from the hurricane that’s going to miss us anyway but don’t thoughtlessly expose others to COVID-19 by leaving home and don’t risk the hurricane by staying home and stay tuned for further instructions. I suspect it will be complicated.
But in reality, it’s not. There is always risk. That’s it. You make the best decisions you can, but there is always risk. The important point, that neither the government nor the breathless weather reporter is likely to admit, is that no one can assess your risk better than you. Centralized planning is of limited benefit (and comes at enormous risk of its own), because everybody’s situation is different.
You do the best you can. Sometimes things work out well. Sometimes they don’t. It’s called life.
Americans used to be the cowboys – the rebels – the entrepreneurs – the risk-takers. Now I swear some of us wear life jackets on rowing machines. Democrats have won a lot of votes by promising people protection from everything from warm weather 100 years from now to an inadequate supply of trans-sexual bathrooms. I’ve got a news flash for these people: There is always risk. No one can protect you completely. And the only one who has a chance at protecting you with some level of success is not your Democrat congress-human.
It’s you.
There’s a disease going around. Is it a good idea to go stay in a hotel right now, just to go on vacation? Maybe not.
Ok, now a hurricane is coming. Maybe staying in a hotel 100 miles inland might make sense now, whereas it didn’t before. Or maybe not.
You make the best decisions you can.
Unless government tells you what to do. And tells the hotel how many guests they’re allowed to have. Then you can’t make the best decisions you can. Then, you pray the government is right. And it is.
From time to time.
Big government is dangerous, because it reduces our ability to assess and react to risk.
Although I suspect that Dr. Fauci and Suzy Weathergirl would take a different view.
Dr. Fauci should tell me what the latest COVID-19 statistics are.
Suzy Weathergirl should tell me what the latest weather forecast is.
I wish both of them would stop telling me what to do. Assessing and responding to risk – that’s my job. Not theirs.
Published in General
Best line. I’m stealing it. Unless someone else tells me that’s too risky.
Exactly. I never knew this before Covid. Now it’s all that I can see.
I’m fairly sure there’s a point on the crazy-hot scale for weathergirls at which she can tell me what to do.
Even calisthenics?
I see that Dr. Fauci, et al, are now advising us to wear face shields. I’m sure the next step will be to make them mandatory.
I think I’ll invest in a hazmat suit manufacturer; that will surely be the next universally required Covid prevention measure.
In even the most erudite posts, the comments are always the best parts of Ricochet.
We may get winds and rains here in FL. I’m going to just have Scotty beam up and bring me back when it’s all over. Yep, sounds like a plan.
Is it at all possible that a larger mask–worn outside in heavy winds–could act as a sail if not completely airtight? I would think that there should be warnings about this.
Heh. Heh.
Or of the mask is worn too tightly such that water that seeps in to fill up around the nose and mouth, causing said person to drown via mask. As some of these mask wearers will not take a mask off no matter what.
I work for an insurance company, so storms like this can really impact our bottom line. Today we spent about 15 minutes of a half hour meeting trying to figure out “how do we even pronounce this ?”
Mrs. Tabby and I became particularly aware during our nearly twenty years of living in New York State that there was a large portion of the population who truly believed that the government could and should remove all risk from our lives. They believed there was no need for tradeoffs – perfect safety was achievable if the government implemented the correct policies.
They are not allowed to leave New York and come to my state.
I think this is a good place to repost the linked video from a post by @shaunahunt the other day:
Another bailout or two and we’re going to have a government-controlled economy. Are you sure that’s what you want to invest in?
Since I live here, I caught this headline on Fox News:
Amid coronavirus, Alaska sees surge in syphilis cases
My thought was, if only they had worn masks.
It would have reduced the risk to zero, right?
Profound…
It’ll take several minutes for the bulges in my eyes to go away. My kind of forecast!
We get phonetic tips on pronunciation in our internal storm emails.
Wouldn’t want any young hurricanes out there to get the sense that they’re not valued.
Full Size Tabby
Mrs. Tabby and I became particularly aware during our nearly twenty years of living in New York State that there was a large portion of the population who truly believed that the government could and should remove all risk from our lives. They believed there was no need for tradeoffs – perfect safety was achievable if the government implemented the correct policies.
one up side of the surreal year so far is that we are force to see how inept those in authority really are
they are in charge because power and control is important to them, not due to intellectual capacity
most of our compatriots are mentally lazy, we’ve had it too good for too long
our education system tells us what to think, original thought is lost concept
Apropos of nothing, other than that, as a craft it’s rather lovely:
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2020/07/31/tsuchiya-kaban-leather-watermelon-bag/
Good luck with renaming. They tried that with hurricanes and the woke progressives still weren’t happy since it turned out that female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes, according to CNN. What about the other 70 or so genders who aren’t properly represented in hurricane naming?
When they realize that not making them happy makes them happy, we can all be happy.