A Short Note

Probably we are just belaboring the obvious at this point, but another bulletin from the world of social rather than scientific thinking.

From a U. S. News report on the Governor of New Mexico getting salty with the town of Gallup.

“She also required that businesses in Gallup close from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. in the city of about 70,000 people along Interstate 40, which remained open to through traffic.

Gallup is a hub for basic household supplies, liquor sales and water-container refills for people living in remote stretches of the Navajo Nation — often without full indoor plumbing — and indigenous Zuni Pueblo. The Navajo Nation has imposed evening and weekend curfews on the reservation spanning portions of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.”

It’s not that cutting down on contact is a bad idea. What’s a bad idea is this apparent confusion between vampires and viruses. Gallup is where people from many miles around have their only access to food and water so we can understand wanting to have availability, but what is so special about nights and weekends. Does anyone believe that people are more infectious then?

It’s emotive of course. Nights are scary, and the kind of people who like telling other people what to do tend to be suspicious of anything that might happen on the weekend as it might be “fun” related.  But if you accept the idea (debatable, perhaps) that these measures are the right thing to do, doing them only at certain times really defeats the purpose.

And honestly, wouldn’t it make more sense for the Governor, if she is really concerned, to call out her National Guard, for example, and start making deliveries to all those isolated pueblos and NA communities that now have to drive into Virus City?