Holiday Weekend Open Thread: LOCK ‘EM OUT!

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Anti-mask protesters in HB: Our nurses & doctors shouldn’t die for their pig-headed stupidity.

“Lock Her Up” and “Lock Him Up!” have been war cries of Trump’s Social Injustice Warriors since he became a candidate for President in 2015.  Another war cry — which may or not survive Trump’s sudden turn this weak in favor of wearing masks — is howls of pain at being forced by the gummint to wear masks.  Some of this crowd has — in a great example of the unspeakable bad taste that they cherish and flaunt — even taken up the last words of both Eric Garner and George Floyd, “I Can’t Breathe,” as if they equate wearing a mask with having one’s airway crushed by a cop’s knee for eight minutes.

(By the way: I propose giving them a chance to prove the equivalence by having a White mask protester see if he can stand having a knee pressed down hard against his neck as a Black man wear a mask medical grade mask.  You won’t likely hear the Black guy complain within eight minutes about not being able to breathe.)

You can’t discriminate against people for their free speech — and you can’t discriminate against them for being stupid and pig-headed.  But the choice not to wear a mask, while standing in close quarters with other people all shouting and spewing viral-loaded spit into the air — that’s not speech, it’s non-expressive action.  Burning a flag is expressive speech for which, for now, you can’t be arrested.  Throwing a burning flag against a wooden building, though — that’s an action that puts other people’s lives in danger, and it is not constitutionally protected.  It’s not police or protesters who form the threat to them — it’s Mother Nature.

So they don’t think that they have to social distance and put a barrier — and even a porous barrier helps — between potentially infected people like themselves and others?  OK then?  If they think that it’s safe, then they can damn well take the consequences.  LOCK ‘EM OUT of the hospital for CoVid-19 treatment!

I’m not saying that they can’t get medical care — and by that I don’t mean bleach and internal full-spectrum bulbs.  I’m saying that they can get treated at home.  Supplies — except maybe for masks — can be dropped off curbside where they live.  They’re not going to get ventilators, but maybe they’ll have someone who will give them mouth-to-mouth respiration for a couple of weeks.  If there are medicines appropriate for them, they can get curbside what they’d get if they were in the hospital wards.

But they themselves cannot be allowed into the ER or ICU.  Lock … them … out!

The basic rule is this: these jokers don’t get to kill off our valiant doctors and nurses and respiratory technicians and their assistants because they wanted to flip off science and public health.  They made their bed — so let them lie in it, for months, if necessary, before they recover (or don’t.)  What to do with their suffering families is another question — and perhaps medical personnel will still have to face a higher risk of dying themselves due to the people that these idiots infected.  If so, their actions would still constitute reckless endangerment for health care workers — and they should face appropriate consequences.  (One  other obvious thing: any legal cases should be moved out of Orange County.)

It shouldn’t be too hard to identify these people so long as people keep taking photos or video of them.  And some might sneak through — and a new law should make them financially liable for the costs they impose on others for their reckless actions.

These people should be allowed to legally protest as long as they do it with a mask on and from six or more feet away.  But, as an uncle of an ER nurse in a badly hit state, I don’t want her and my nephew dead or injured because they weren’t willing to have their courage of their convictions and face the consequences of their own reckless endangerment.

This is your 4th of July Weekend Open Thread.  Talk about this or whatever else you’d like within reasonable bounds.  Huntington Beach — to its rare credit — won’t be having its parade this year, but do find some other appropriate way to celebrate.  Remember:  If you have Disney+ you have the new movie of Hamilton.  And do embrace communism — whoops, I mean social distancing (like the protester with that sign, I always get those two confused!) — this weekend, plus.