I Don't Agree with the Rules So I Won't Follow Them


Yesterday's New York Times had a story about people circumventing U.S. restrictions on testing for people traveling home from abroad. They are exploiting a loophole in the laws that requires tests for people entering the country by air but not by land. 

So people who go abroad and test positive change their flights to arrive in Canada or Mexico then drive across the border. Because they have, y'know, shit to do!

One woman at least gave some consideration to her state of health and whether she might be infectious, but ultimately said she didn't follow the rules because she thought they were dumb:

I had zero symptoms, no fever, nothing. I felt fine and when you’re stateside, the C.D.C. says you can end isolation five days after testing positive, so the same rules should apply when I’m traveling. It makes no sense that I can go to a wedding five days after a positive test in Miami, but if I catch the virus when I’m on vacation I can’t fly home. That should be illegal.

She is assuming that an exposure in-country is the same as an exposure outside the country. They are not the same because there are variants in other countries that we would like to keep out for as long as possible. As one public health leader said in the article:

From a public health point of view, the infectious person may be carrying in one of the new variants BA.4 or BA.5 which is more infectious and is not so common yet in the U.S. There may be new enhanced vaccines by the fall and introducing these variants sooner rather than later may be bad.

Another woman quoted in the article, who didn't want her name used, said by the time she and her spouse traveled they had "barely any symptoms." So they thought it would be OK to reroute their flight to Vancouver and lie to Canadian customs authorities about their COVID-19 status.

Yet another woman quoted in the article was traveling with a group of twelve people who all tested positive. So she didn't get tested at all and instead rerouted her travel through Tijuana:

Everyone around me had Covid and I knew with my luck that if I took the test, it would come out positive and I didn’t want to risk it. Looking back, it was kind of a crazy decision and a big schlep, but I had to get back to my life and kids.

In other words, it was OK for her to be away from her kids for her own benefit, but as soon as it was to protect others, screw them. She said she wore a mask on her flights. Very considerate.

This just goes to show that, although there are exceptions, Americans are on average selfish and horrible.

Image by Jessica Fender from Pixabay 

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