No, it was not a typo in the title suggesting that the city has banned public defecation. (They wouldn’t do it anyway. California doesn’t impose “quality of life crimes.”) Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, is beginning the process of removing all publicly owned chairs, benches and tables. Yes, Manhattan Beach has banned “sitting in public” as of today. Seats will remain stored “until further notice”. As if you need me to tell you, this is being done ostensibly to combat the spread of the dreaded new coronavirus. (NY Post)
A city near Los Angeles is shutting down outdoor spaces on public properties starting Sunday night amid an increase in COVID-19 cases across the county.
The city, Manhattan Beach, is located along the southern California coast, about 20 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
As of 10 pm on Sunday, tables and chairs in the outdoor areas will be removed until further notice, the city said.
The announcement came after the city announced on Saturday that cases of COVID-19 – currently 821 – have almost doubled since November 1.
The city mayor is urging people to stay at home, except for “work, essential items and go out to exercise. ”Most people who exercise outdoors are walking or running. When you’re done, you might want to sit down and rest, don’t you think?
Exactly how dangerous does the mayor think sitting is in terms of transmitting the virus? If the park benches are at least six feet long, couldn’t you just put markers on them indicating where people can sit, maintaining the mandatory social distance? (Assuming they are too stupid to find out for themselves.) The same could be done for the benches at the picnic tables. If there are individual public seats less than five feet away, you can place a bag over some of them to ensure that the minimum distance is observed.
Instead, it will send a band of workers across all public spaces in the city to dig and destroy all seats and remove them and look for a place to store them. Then, at some point, they will need to pay the same people to reinstall them all. It’s not exactly an efficient use of resources, is it?
But all of these observations are only about the logistics of the order, rather than the underlying absurdity of the whole idea. Your municipal government will actually ban seated? What if people just choose to stick around? What about residents with partial disabilities? They will have even less motivation to go out and exercise if they can’t rest comfortably when they need to.
Hey, here’s an idea for you. The virus is transmitted through the air, usually when people cough or sneeze. How about forbidding coughing and sneezing in public? This would reduce transmission of the virus. Or, better yet, just forbid breathing. If no one is breathing out, no one else will get COVID!
There is. Maybe I should have run for mayor of Manhattan Beach. I never realized that he was such an effective problem solver. I would be natural!
