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cimoreneI noticed this pattern a few days ago on Twitter and at the time I tried to Google for any news covering it as an international pattern, but no luck. So far I've seen reports from
1. First I saw on Twitter that Scotland has had to ask people to leave the Highlands, which have a total of only 8 ICU beds according to one commenter on Twitter, because people from all over the UK are rushing up there in their camper vans. They also lack enough food to feed vacationers obvs. The article mentioned a possibility of closing the roads or expelling people.
2. Then I heard that we're having the same problem in Lapland. People are thronging the ski resorts and they had to close all the ski lifts because the people were actually trying to go skiing while they were there, as if crowding once you leave the big city is somehow totally safe???
3. Then I read that this is happening in the Hamptons, where the summer beach homes of the wealthy Manhattanites are often located. They are also concerned about a lack of infrastructure and have also already run out of groceries. There was an article where a hospital there said they had a wealthy woman call from NYC saying that she had tested positive and was coming THERE for treatment and to be ready for her. They told her not to come, everyone in New York state is supposed to travel as little as possible and your local hospital is the proper one, and they didn't have resources. But she showed up anyway, having taken public transport on the way, endangering everyone she encountered. They've had patients show up on private helicopters at their rural hospital demanding treatment. The local appliance stores have run out of freezers and are constantly fielding orders for bigger ones for the food the rich are hoarding.
4.laurajv said that her in-laws live at Martha's Vineyard (Massachussetts), where a similar thing is happening except it's also an island.
5.mummimamma posted: Plague diary, day three about this problem in Norway: people rushing to their skiing cabins, which also tend to be in rural areas lacking infrastructure for medicine/food and on top of that are in very close proximity to each other, precluding actual isolation.
6. This morning I read the latest announcement from the Finnish government. They say the numbers they were making calculations with before were too optimistic; they were wrong about the percentage that need intensive care; and they now fear over 200,000 people who have been exposed in the capital city, which has the most infections right now, are otherwise going to be traveling out into the countryside all over the country, and basically nowhere rural in Finland is going to have enough ICU capacity to deal with all this. They're trying to close off the entire Nyland-Uudenmaa region to prevent this but the constitution makes it very difficult and they haven't managed yet; they'll update us on Friday, but they especially hope to have it closed by the weekend to prevent people from going to their cottages and cabins. The army and the army reserve announced themselves ready to help close the region.
I'm not an historian or a medievalist, but this rang a bell because I remember learning about the wealthy doing this during the Black Plague. Specifically I remember it because it's relevant to Edgar Allan Poe's classic short story The Masque of the Red Death, and I've always been a Poe fan. The setting there is an unnamed Renaissance-flavored country estate at which a thousand members of the wealthy nobility have holed up to escape a plague and are having a masquerade ball. The plague is fictitious and the setting vague in that story, but this is a well-documented behavior from the time of the Black Death (eg The Decameron uses it as a framing device).
It was also on my mind because I'd already seen multiple Twitter threads in the past months from either leftists or imitations thereof claiming that the wealthy were [going to] literally ("") escape covid-19 by retiring to their walled mansions etc. in the country where they would survive; but in fact history (and acquaintance with the amount of travel and person-to-person contact involved in most rich people's vacations) already made this doubtful to me before I started seeing these news stories. I suspect there are a lot more of them out there. ETA: But, perhaps ironically, this behavior is actually worse than if they were able to literally escape, because by consuming all the food and collapsing the medical infrastructure they are stealing resources from the less wealthy permanent residents, but worse still, they're endangering those residents and everyone else by accelerating the spread of the disease.
1. First I saw on Twitter that Scotland has had to ask people to leave the Highlands, which have a total of only 8 ICU beds according to one commenter on Twitter, because people from all over the UK are rushing up there in their camper vans. They also lack enough food to feed vacationers obvs. The article mentioned a possibility of closing the roads or expelling people.
2. Then I heard that we're having the same problem in Lapland. People are thronging the ski resorts and they had to close all the ski lifts because the people were actually trying to go skiing while they were there, as if crowding once you leave the big city is somehow totally safe???
3. Then I read that this is happening in the Hamptons, where the summer beach homes of the wealthy Manhattanites are often located. They are also concerned about a lack of infrastructure and have also already run out of groceries. There was an article where a hospital there said they had a wealthy woman call from NYC saying that she had tested positive and was coming THERE for treatment and to be ready for her. They told her not to come, everyone in New York state is supposed to travel as little as possible and your local hospital is the proper one, and they didn't have resources. But she showed up anyway, having taken public transport on the way, endangering everyone she encountered. They've had patients show up on private helicopters at their rural hospital demanding treatment. The local appliance stores have run out of freezers and are constantly fielding orders for bigger ones for the food the rich are hoarding.
4.
laurajv said that her in-laws live at Martha's Vineyard (Massachussetts), where a similar thing is happening except it's also an island.5.
mummimamma posted: Plague diary, day three about this problem in Norway: people rushing to their skiing cabins, which also tend to be in rural areas lacking infrastructure for medicine/food and on top of that are in very close proximity to each other, precluding actual isolation.6. This morning I read the latest announcement from the Finnish government. They say the numbers they were making calculations with before were too optimistic; they were wrong about the percentage that need intensive care; and they now fear over 200,000 people who have been exposed in the capital city, which has the most infections right now, are otherwise going to be traveling out into the countryside all over the country, and basically nowhere rural in Finland is going to have enough ICU capacity to deal with all this. They're trying to close off the entire Nyland-Uudenmaa region to prevent this but the constitution makes it very difficult and they haven't managed yet; they'll update us on Friday, but they especially hope to have it closed by the weekend to prevent people from going to their cottages and cabins. The army and the army reserve announced themselves ready to help close the region.
I'm not an historian or a medievalist, but this rang a bell because I remember learning about the wealthy doing this during the Black Plague. Specifically I remember it because it's relevant to Edgar Allan Poe's classic short story The Masque of the Red Death, and I've always been a Poe fan. The setting there is an unnamed Renaissance-flavored country estate at which a thousand members of the wealthy nobility have holed up to escape a plague and are having a masquerade ball. The plague is fictitious and the setting vague in that story, but this is a well-documented behavior from the time of the Black Death (eg The Decameron uses it as a framing device).
It was also on my mind because I'd already seen multiple Twitter threads in the past months from either leftists or imitations thereof claiming that the wealthy were [going to] literally ("") escape covid-19 by retiring to their walled mansions etc. in the country where they would survive; but in fact history (and acquaintance with the amount of travel and person-to-person contact involved in most rich people's vacations) already made this doubtful to me before I started seeing these news stories. I suspect there are a lot more of them out there. ETA: But, perhaps ironically, this behavior is actually worse than if they were able to literally escape, because by consuming all the food and collapsing the medical infrastructure they are stealing resources from the less wealthy permanent residents, but worse still, they're endangering those residents and everyone else by accelerating the spread of the disease.
(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2020 04:03 pm (UTC)“I came away," the merchant said, / "You can't do business with the dead."
Date: 26 Mar 2020 06:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 11:35 am (UTC)Re: “I came away," the merchant said, / "You can't do business with the dead."
Date: 26 Mar 2020 11:40 am (UTC)And hey, your fictional hero here has failed to understand incubation periods and all that, but in his defense germ theory didn't exist yet... so science probably didn't know about them either. And at least he didn't deliberately attempt to flee when already infected, like some of the geniuses in the Hamptons article!
(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 05:03 pm (UTC)What annoys be with these people is that they argue that it is their god-given and/or Constitution-given right to go to the cabin (I kid you not, some are threatening to drag the Norwegian state before the human rights court), whatever the problems they are giving others. Pointless pointy toed-shoe wearing people, my nurse friend calls them (also probably the parents of my business school students...)
(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 06:41 pm (UTC)The worst thing is that is probably the same social group that brought the corona-virus to Norway. Almost all the inital cases were people who had been on a skiing holiday in either Northern Italy or Tirol. Which is why Norway has more cases of people in their 40s testing positive on covid19 than other places.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2020 09:05 pm (UTC)Actually I was googling for more info on this tourist-destination issue and there's a ton of articles about US skiing destinations doing nothing too, although from the headlines, none of them were doing that in spite of confirmed cases there, they were just like "We're suuuuper crowded and busy but we're definitely doing hygiene now! Trust us!"