Yeah, we know we said we weren’t going to say anything else about the COVID-19 crisis, but sometimes there’s just too much stupid going around to stay silent.
A disturbing number of people appear to have interpreted the undoubted seriousness of the pandemic to mean that nobody is ever allowed to be even slightly happy for the briefest of moments until it’s all over.
As a result, while half the country is full of people just trying to cope as best they can while acting sensibly and responsibly within both the letter and spirit of the emergency restrictions, the other half has elected itself officers of the Lockdown Gestapo, pointing fingers and shrieking at anyone deemed not to be miserable enough.
Please, please, can we stop doing that, folks?
Quite aside from hundreds of examples of overzealous policing that we won’t list here because police are largely trying their best at a tough job in extraordinary times, social media is also full of pious, virtue-signalling lockdown-shaming, almost all of it directed at people who aren’t actually visibly breaking any of the rules.
Most of all, people are witch-hunting what they deem to be breaches of the exemption for “exercise”, for example castigating anyone found “sunbathing”, otherwise known as “being stationary and non-vertical in a public place during daylight hours”, and in some particularly heinous cases also eating food, the monsters.
But to illustrate the flaw in that reasoning, let’s walk through a scenario and see if we can find out where the legal line should, or indeed could, be drawn.
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(1) If you’re exercising, are you allowed to stop for a rest? It’s pretty much the definition of exercise, after all, that it’s supposed to make you tired and a little out of breath.
If that happens, does the emergency legislation require you to carry on regardless until you collapse of exhaustion and require the assistance of hard-pressed emergency services? If not, must you sit down at exactly 90 degrees, or can you lean back a bit? If you can lean back, can you lie down all the way to a full 180 degrees? If not, what is the permissible maximum angle of recline and are the police going to be issued with protractors to enforce it?
(2) Exercise depletes energy. Are you allowed to eat anything, eg a protein bar, while you’re sitting down during your exercise period?
That’s surely fine, right? Food is the body’s fuel.
(3) But if you’re allowed to sit down while exercising and eat a protein bar, why not other sources of energy? Why not a packet of crisps or a Twix? They still provide fuel.
How could anyone possibly legislate between acceptable and non-acceptable sources of bodily energy? Many supposedly “healthy” snacks contain huge amounts of sugar and/or fat, are those still okay? Can’t we just have a nice packet of Starburst?
[EDIT 2.14pm: a very serious runner friend interjects with some expertise: “A Twix is a better immediate energy source as it’s largely simple sugars. A protein bar wouldn’t be absorbed during exercise so best taken after.”]
If you’re allowed to eat during your exercise then the law cannot realistically distinguish between permissible and impermissible foods.
(4) If you’re allowed to eat any sort of food while out exercising, it follows that there also can’t sensibly be any restrictions placed on the temperature of that food. You’re still allowed to buy hot food from takeaways and places like Greggs (and ice lollies from supermarkets for that matter), so it’s clearly not outlawed in itself.
And if you’re allowed to eat hot food then why – if you’re obeying the laws on keeping a safe distance from others and not congregating in non-household groups of more than two people – couldn’t you, for example, have a mini-barbecue in a park or on a beach? What difference does it make to anything if you’re heating it up yourself?
The people sitting down in that picture are miles from anyone else (or at least they were until the police showed up) and there are only two of them, so nothing we can see actually tells us that they’re infringing any rules, any more than they would be if they were having a salad or some hummus.
(A salad would in fact probably present a higher infection risk.)
(5) If any kind of food is okay then the same must logically follow for any kind of drink. If someone can pause during their exercise to rehydrate with water, which is obviously reasonable, then why not Diet Coke? If Diet Coke is fine then why not full-fat Coke? If regular Coke is okay, why not shandy? If shandy, why not normal beer? Etc etc.
Again, how could you possibly legislate the distinction? It’s technically a bit easier with liquids – alcohol content, sugar content and so on are all measurable and labelled – but since Coke and beer are still perfectly legal (off-licences are among the categories of shops still allowed to trade as normal) it would be entirely unjustifiable.
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What we’ve just shown above is that it’s perfectly possible that a family of five people could be sitting in a park having a barbecue and drinking alcohol and still be in total compliance with the law, because while nobody would consider that to be exercise in itself, it’s still covered every individual step of the way by the exercise exemption.
You’re allowed to be out for exercise, and the simple act of walking to the park or beach or wherever is exercise. Nothing in the law says that you have to be in constant motion the whole time. Nothing says you’re forbidden from sitting down at some point or consuming food or drink, or imposes limits on what food or drink it could be.
Just so we’re clear, this site absolutely urges everyone to obey the law and act safely and responsibly towards themselves and everyone else. Don’t gather in large non-household groups. Don’t get within 2 metres of anyone else, and be much further apart than that if you can manage it. Don’t touch any surface you don’t have to.
But as we’ve explained, even people who don’t LOOK like they’re “exercising” may very well not be breaking any law or putting anyone at risk, and if we’re all going to get through this without murdering each other then maybe we should leave them the hell alone and get on with our own lives.
(The absolute worst possible argument in response to this view, incidentally, is “But if we let people find moments of quiet lawful pleasure in public places, EVERYONE will want to do it and they’ll be overrun by hordes of lunatics crawling all over each other and licking everything!”
But there’s no evidence whatsoever of that happening. People aren’t stupid, at least not when their own lives are at stake. If they head out to the park and it’s getting a bit busy, they’ll turn round and go somewhere else. Below are pictures of our lovely and legally-open local park yesterday, in 21C of glorious mid-afternoon sun.)
As we said last week: you don’t know anyone else’s story. We don’t know what their personal circumstances are and what stresses they may be under. They might have just done a brutal, unimaginably grim week of 14-hour shifts in a hospital or being yelled at by fractious customers on a supermarket till. We don’t know if half an hour by themselves in the sunshine with a sandwich might be the only thing standing between them and a complete breakdown.
“Everyone except me is a reckless idiot who should be chained to a radiator for the duration of the crisis!” is not the mindset that’s going to get us through this.
So we’re begging – unless it’s ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS that people are risking others, leave them be. Every time excessive hyper-policing (whether it’s by the police and authorities or ordinary citizens) gets a beach or a park closed down, we all get jammed just a little bit closer together, and there’s nothing a virus loves more than antsy, edgy, increasingly resentful and mutinous people all being crammed together in the smallest space possible.
Let’s look after each other, gang.
