Three ways
How murderous is this Tulsa rally exactly?
An indoor event. Instead of holding the event outdoors, it is being held indoors in a center that regularly crowds people together for concerts and sporting events.
No physical distancing. The president has touted that his campaign has already received more than one million requests for seats. And he has mentioned that only 22,000 people (or even up to 40,000 if he can get the adjacent convention hall) will be allowed to attend. Someone needs to check that math because 22,000 — already 2,800 people above capacity — signifies there will be no physical distancing in place.
No masks. Trump has also reported that those attending the rally will not be required to wear face masks.
In short it’s exactly what we’ve been told and told and told not to do: mash together in a huge crowd in an indoor space. It’s as if a mayor told everyone to go shop for groceries at the same time, without masks.
Only it’s worse, because it’s a Trump rally, and what do those involve? A whole lot of screaming and cheering and laughing and excitement – so a whole lot of rapidly breathing out great clouds of droplets in a tightly packed crowd. It pretty much couldn’t be made any more lethal if experts sat down and tried for a month.
And we know they know that, because of the waiver.
Trump is committing mass murder in a few hours, because…he likes crowds yelling his name. That’s worth any number of lives, right?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which created categories to evaluate the “riskiness” of activities, having a mass gathering in an indoor venue without wearing face coverings and being unable to practice physical distancing is the highest possible risk.
Mass murder, for a couple of hours of ego-stroking.
Judging from what I saw at one of our grocery stores yesterday, you would think our mayor has done just that. The other store, the one I usually go to, was mostly masked and doing sort of but not very good social distancing (I think people have no idea what six feet is, and don’t seem to equate it with the height of the people they know of that height). Unfortunately, my usual store was out of eggs…and for some odd reason, manicotti shells, though making my own manicotti shells is definitely acceptable. The other store only had one package left, in spite of both stores being well stocked on pasta. I have no idea why there is a sudden run on manicotti.
Or, to paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I kill thee? Let me count the ways.
Iknklast – it could be that manicotti shells are not a big seller at the best of times (spell check thought I meant “manifesto”, I don’t know if that supports my theory). So either producers are concentrating on making the pasta shapes that are more in demand, or they are making the ones that are quicker and easier to make because demand for pasta has gone up, or your stores haven’t ordered them in because they don’t sell that well. The stock they had is gone, bought by the usual manicotti-enthusiasts but also by desperate people who are trying to just buy normal pasta but finding the shelves ransacked, so they’re giving those weird tortilla-pasta things a go (why yes, I did have to look them up)
I’ve been fascinated by the way stock levels of different things have been fluctuating. Two weeks ago, fence paint was “the new toilet roll”. In the sense that it was sold out everywhere, not in the sense of how people use it.
Not this; all the other pastas were well stocked. If we had a large Italian community here, I could easily understand, but we have mostly German and Polish, and a rapidly growing Mexican community which is bringing some wonderful new spices and vegetables to our grocery stores.
We did get off on a tangent, thanks to me. By the way, in case you’re interested, the manicotti was delicious.
Hooray for tangents, I say!
I was thinking more that the mainstream pasta sold out, but then people bought the stuff that they don’t usually buy because there’s nothing else and they’re feeling under pressure to buy something, anything. Then the stores concentrate on restocking the fusillis and pennes because they know they’ll sell tons of them.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear you enjoyed your manicotti, probably more than I enjoyed my lasagne made with distinctly inferior pasta sheets to my usual brand. It’s the texture, it’s just not right.