Quarantine Checkpoints and Social Distancing

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How do you feel about the quarantine checkpoints? A lot has been reported about goings-on at checkpoints in the city and countryside but personally I think, with the kind of discipline many of us have shown lately, we badly need them. I'm not for militarization or checkpoints or the like, but when defying rules gets out of hand, we need a measure of them.

There may be abuses. I admit that. But so far the abuses we see are born out of defiance. It's quarantine time and we're supposed to stay indoors if there's no emergency to attend to, but people still opt to go out without valid reason. Paul the apostle told the Roman believers that as long as they behaved properly, the authorities were there to maintain order.

But I also saw a news item on a female health worker who was denied passage at checkpoints simply because she rode at the back seat of a motorcycle rider, who I think was her uncle. That may be against social distancing, but the lady was a health worker. She wasn't just roaming around idly. And her job is a needed service. Can't there be exemptions like that to the rule?

A friend complained to me that he and his wife were reprimanded at a checkpoint for being in the same car together. It was supposed to violate social distancing.

Well, social distancing is designed to prevent contamination in public. Right? But inside private properties? Inside your home? When husband and wife are in their car, they're inside private property. It's like being in their house or bedroom. Fact, it's like being in their bed. You can't tell them to maintain being 3 meters or 13 feet apart because they need to observe social distancing. That's absurd.

No sense in making them keep a distance in public when they'd just sleep together in their bed later in the day. Or drink from the same glass or mug. Or kiss.

Well, the moment they step out of their house or car and don't observe social distancing rules, then they violate something. But not when they're in their property.

I think we ought to change the term to "public distancing" instead. Because we have to maintain the required distance apart when we're outside our private properties.

Public officials have to maintain distancing in their offices or places of work. It's understandable because they're not at home. If you seem to have Covid symptoms so that you need to be quarantined at home then you need physical distancing even at home with members of your family. If you're not, then no sense observing physical distancing at home.

All these are common sense and I think quarantine legislators and implementors should take them into consideration to avoid needless confusion and embarrassment.