Congratulations to the people of Virginia Beach! They are now allowed to — brace yourselves — sit on the shoreline!
That’s not a joke. The city just reinstated the privilege to sit down on the beach.
Virginia Beach City Manager Ron Williams declared with pride Friday on CNN that his town’s shores are now open again for something that’s supposed to sound almost like “fun.”
“The goal is so people can come and recreate on the beach by sitting,” he said with a straight face. “The past few weeks, we’ve been in an exercise- and fishing-only environment per the executive orders. … So now, you can sit on the beach.”
Oh, but don’t get too excited. Virginia Beach has a few rules, so don’t go all willy-nilly.
Among those rules, according to the city’s government website: No alcohol allowed, no “large” coolers allowed, no music speakers, no tents “OR groups of umbrellas” and definitely no “group sports” like volleyball.
COVID-19 did not return a request for comment on whether banning music or umbrellas would slow its spread.
The rules, Williams said on CNN, are for “voluntary compliance,” but he added that “if we don’t get voluntary compliance through a beach ambassador, then they’ll ask for law enforcement to come and actually enforce.”
Have fun with your new beach ambassadors! (By the way, they will be stationed at every beach access point and will be wearing, according to Williams, “bright, friendly, yellow uniforms.”)
How miserable do these people need life to be before everyone just says, “No, I’m not playing these little games”?
Virginia in total has had 13 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 people. Virginia Beach so far has had only 19 deaths. The statistics say that most or all of them were probably people over the age of 65.
In other words, the type of person most likely to die from COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, is not the type of person who most likely wants to spend a day on the beach drinking with music and playing volleyball. And yet the people who would want to do that and retain minimal risk, the young and healthy, are told by threat of force not to.
A warm and sunny beach is basically the safest place to be right now if you’re trying to avoid infection. Paul Dabisch, one of the leading scientists studying the virus for the Department of Homeland Security, told NBC earlier this month that sunlight is “very detrimental to the virus.” In just minutes, he said, “the majority of the virus is inactivated on surfaces and in the air in direct sunlight.”
If anything, city officials on the coastlines should be mandating that anyone within an hour’s drive of the beach go there immediately and lay out with a pina colada. Anyone who can’t afford it should be subsidized, a form of welfare that would be far more effective in “slowing the spread” than keeping people locked inside without any dependable source of income.
The people in charge, the people like Williams, actually need to do what they pretend they’re doing: Look at the science.
