Los Angeles County announced last week it would implement a three-week-long “safer at home” order in its effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the county of 10.04 million.
Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county’s health director, announced last Friday that there were an additional 19 deaths, 3,143 new cases, and 1,951 hospitalizations.
“If we really care about each other and we care about those essential workers taking risks everyday… we need to not gather with anyone outside our immediate household at least for the immediate future,” Dr. Ferrer said. She said those who disregard social-distancing guidelines need to understand that “dead people don’t get a second chance.”
The Associated Press reported the order calls on residents in the county to stay home as much as possible. If they have to venture outside, they must wear facial coverings.
The order is specific to how many people can be inside businesses deemed “essential” and “non-essential” by the government. For example, retail stores can operate at 20 percent capacity while essential stores – like grocery stores – are allowed to operate at 35 percent capacity. Church services and protests, which are deemed “constitutionally protected rights,” are exempt.
TRENDPOST: We have detailed in numerous issues of the Trends Journal the idiocy of rules and regulations with different limits being imposed by different nations, states, and cities on how many people can meet, what the proper social distance is, the number of people that can congregate, restaurant capacity limitations, etc.
Several days before Thanksgiving, Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence under President Trump, took to Twitter to mock what he apparently viewed as arbitrary restrictions in California at the time.
He tweeted, “6 people are allowed for Thanksgiving, but 30 are allowed for a funeral. So I will be holding a funeral for my pet turkey that will pass away on November 26th. Refreshments provided.”
The most important decisions about our well-being are being made by lifetime bureaucrats, and we are supposed to just bow to their commands.
Global Make-Ups
With the earth-shattering news that there were 76 reported virus cases in a city of 7.5 million people, of which the grand total of 109 died of the virus in 9 months, Hong Kong issued new no-sense COVID rules yesterday.
According to the South China Morning Post, “Entertainment and leisure venues such as game centres, theme parks, karaoke lounges, mahjong parlours and swimming pools will be shut down.”
They quoted Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who said, “Law enforcement must achieve a preventative effect, and thus we must raise the penalty… The fixed penalty now is HK$2,000 (US$258); we need to raise this, hopefully multiple times over.”
Among them, restaurants will only allow only two diners per table, and they have to close indoor dining by 10 PM.
Only two people will be permitted to congregate outside, thus further clamping down on the protests that had rocked the city last year… and could not be stopped until Beijing imposed strict lockdown/no protesting security laws.
TRENDPOST: Joshua Wong, one of three other activists who pleaded guilty for ties to a protest last year that eventually led to the siege of a Hong Kong police building, has been held in solitary confinement in a room that has lights on for 24 hours, a report said last week.
The South China Morning Post reported that Wong, 24, was in custody at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, which is located in the city. A post on his Facebook page said he was being held in a single cell in the center’s medical ward after an X-ray found “a shadow” in his stomach.
“We do not know the situation well as the Correctional Service Department refused to show the images to Wong,” the post read, according to the report. “The authority said the examination process could take three to five days. Until then, one needs to stay in the single cell.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Wong and the two others will be sentenced on 2 December. Wong told Die Welt, the German paper, that he is having difficulty sleeping due to the bright lights in his cell, and he does not believe he will experience a fair trial. The paper reported he faces up to three years in jail.
The protests last year were over the Hong Kong security law that came into effect in June, which included new provisions that – among other things – can allow for some in the city to be tried in mainland China for breaking the law.
“I have long since lost confidence in this legal system,” he told the paper in a written response. He said he wants to tell the world that “the movement in Hong Kong will not come to a halt just because Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam, and I are in prison.”
Chow and Lam are the two others who have been jailed. The Journal reported that Wong was accused by prosecutors of “playing leader role” in the protests at the time.
