Pirate's Cove

Apparently, COVID is more dangerous overnight

(The Columbus Dispatch) Saying “this is not some game, this is life and death,” Gov. Mike DeWine began a series of airport news conferences Wednesday pleading with Ohioans to comply with an overnight curfew in an attempt to ward off a record spike in coronavirus cases.

“We are in a critical, dangerous time … we have to look at this as a time of crisis,” DeWine said in Toledo while speaking about the still-to-be issued order confining Ohioans to their homes between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. for three weeks starting Thursday.

“Stay home. Don’t go out,” he said. “I’m asking every Ohioan to find a way to pull back a bit … pull back from your contacts with other people.”

He doesn’t really say why there’s a curfew for these hours. He just requires Compliance

California imposes nighttime COVID-19 curfew but some resist

California is imposing a nighttime curfew as its coronavirus figures soar but it will lean heavily on voluntary compliance and sheriffs of some counties say they won’t enforce it.

What officials are calling a limited stay-at-home order requires people who are not on essential errands to stay home from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. starting Saturday. The order will last until Dec. 21 but could be extended if disease trends don’t improve.

The curfew is less strict than the near-total ban on nonessential business and travel that Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed in March and which he credited with flattening the rate of COVID-19 cases, despite a summer peak.

But along with many other states, California is now seeing surges in virus infections, hospitalizations and deaths that threaten to overwhelm its health care system.

This order applies to 41 of 58 California counties. And, again, there is no real rationale for the why’s. The majority of people are going to be home anyhow. Bars aren’t really open yet in California yet, except those who can do it outside. Where else are people going to go? Most restaurants do not stay open that late. Where else are people going? It sounds more like, dare I write, an attempt to see what more compliance governors can get out of citizens.

Officials in Fresno and Placer counties say they won’t enforce state rules, and two Republican state lawmakers are trying to rally 14 Northern California counties to formally call for a local approach that emphasizes reopenings.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has said he wouldn’t enforce a nighttime curfew for restaurants and nonessential retail businesses in the nation’s most populous county, where cases more than doubled in the last two weeks and hospitalizations rose 30%.

The county has seen more than 350,000 cases and nearly 7,400 deaths.

Villanueva tweeted that since the first stay at home orders were issued in March, “we have focused on education and voluntary compliance, with criminal enforcement measures being an extreme last resort.”

Wait, wait, an area that is primarily full of Democratic Party voters is having a hard time complying with all the mask, handwashing, and social distancing measures? Huh.