It seems to me that in the conditions we live in now, we must all sacrifice a bit for the common good.

In my life, I have never been subject to something as nasty as COVID-19. Whole countries and cities do not close down for the heck of it. But, they are. I am a great reader of history. Rarely has anything of this magnitude in human history occured. Perhaps the closest were the several wave of the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. People had the same arguments that many of you have expressed here. There were those who wanted to close down everything until the plague passed. There were those who said no way, I want to go about my business. History does not tell us who was right except in a few instances where cities that closed down better survived the plague.

It also seems to me that we have lost our ability to care about our fellow humans. I am too young to have lived through WWII. But, from what I gather many goods were rationed for the war effort. Each made a sacrifice for the common good. Have we lost that ability?

One other thought: We all comply with rules meant for the common good. If we did not and only cared about making a buck, then why should I wait for a red light in traffic. Why don't I just charge across the road to get to my business; the hell with everyone else. Why do I stay in my own lane? I want my freedom. Why should I care about anyone else's safety? I am sorry but we elect leaders to lead us. It is not just about me. It is about us. If you do not like the constraints imposed upon us by our leaders, then just vote them out. But, they are our leaders and they are charged with making decisions for the common good. Have we lost our ability to comply with rules? License is not what we should seek. We should seek some rules that keep our lanes in life clear. And being able to run about spreading a disease that we may or may not have is like running red lights because we really do not care a whit about others.

Can't we just please take a deep breath, watch another episode of Leave it to Beaver, knowing that the restrictions will be lifted when it is appropriate that be lifted. Perhaps that time will be when we can all be tested?

What happen when there aren’t no dollars. Man against man and the strongest survives. If we go another month or two thing are going to get really bad IMO. the scales are tipping.

Not about neighbor’s safety
 

This is not really about you being responsible for neighbor safety — it’s about stopping a pandemic from spreading. If your loved ones neighbors don’t know they have it and they don’t follow the guidelines the virus continues to spread and Eventually your loved ones will get the virus. That’s how plagues work.
It’s not about responsibility for neighbors—and what about the health care workers who have to take care of the neighbors you don’t care about —do you care nothing about the sacrifices they are making to take care of your neighbors?

You do realize it’s not about our little bubble. People that make the world go around are suffering. When they suffer we WILL eventually suffer. I go out on limb here and say 98% in villages have never been hungry and I don’t mean missing lunch or supper either

DOUBLE DITTO. :ohdear:

Most TV residents can’t manage their own lives, over 70% are overweight and their added healthcare costs are born by the rest of us. We need government to set the rules, it’s called living in a civilized society, otherwise people left to their own devices just dig their graves with a knife and fork as proven by the high rate of obesity by residents here. By the way I walk the walk, BMI of 23 and weigh the same now 170lbs at 6ft 1 as I did when I graduated from college in 71. Get outa the golf cart and start walking

oh quit with the Universal Healthcare BS....England and Canada have it and it didn't stop the spread of/deaths from covid-19 in those countries

it's true! speak to someone from a country with single payer & they can tell you they were happy to get out of a socialist 'paradise' with whatever cash in pocket & clothes on their backs. talk to my hubby, he came from a socialist nation & would NEVER go back--same reason we left Connecticut to head straight here: we didnt even see the place personally, just pics, & that was good enuf for us. we sold the house, got cash $$, packed the dogs in the car & here we are,..lovin' the lifestyle,. oxo

Is it okay to make choices and then expect others to "fix" (health care workers) them?[/QUOTE]

We (healthcare workers) do this daily. We “fix” (or at least “patch up”) those that are non compliant with medications and diet, those that smoke, those that are alcoholics, those that are substance abusers...and the list goes on and on. We get them well enough to leave the hospitals and rehabs only so that they can begin the cycle all over again!
As the saying goes, we can’t fix stupid. It’s up to the individual to use the information provided to stay healthy!
And we can’t fix dead.

Most people I've met, and most stories I've read, people on single payer health care are happy with thier system, and oh by the way, they still pay for thier health care only the money goes to thier government rather than a for profit company. It's kinda like the socialist Social Security and socialist Medicare, which I'm almost certain by your post that you've refused to take money or services from because you know socialism and all.

Most veterans fought for the freedom we have. We were trained for all types of warfare to include biological. There were standards we had to measure and meet to neutralize the situations. Forget about your selfish bs and do what we had to do and deal with it maybe when you get through all of it you will understand the real meaning of freedom.

Let me pose a thought experiment for you.

Suppose your best friend has asthma or COPD and has been pretty religious about staying away from people and staying safe because people with lung disease are the most likely to die from the disease. But, you're bored and miss your friend, so you call and ask if you can come over. Your friend says that it wouldn't be a good idea, but you keep pushing and your friend finally relents. You come over and you have a few drinks, laugh a lot and have a great time. Your friend goes back to the solitary life, but the next day you start noticing the C-19 symptoms. But, you're healthy and although you feel poorly you get over it. Your friend comes down with it a week or two later and eventually dies in the hospital due to lung failure.

Tell me. Do you feel sorry for your best friend, who had just retired and was finally getting to live the good life and for all the others who lost someone they cared a lot about? Could you live with yourself for being so selfish and being directly responsible for your friend's death?

Or, would you just be bummed because you no longer have a best friend and you're lonely now? My guess is that the latter is the case because you come across as the kind of person who thinks only of yourself.

Great point
 

Great point, I feel like there are people that only care about themselves. I have a friend who is deathly allergic to nuts, walnuts will kill him. So we make dietary adjustments so as not to kill my friend. However, I feel there are people who'd be like screw your allergies here eat this walnut muffin I made just for you!

Open the pools for swimming, golf courses keep open
 

The pools provide exercise for people unable to run or walk. I for one have lower back issues. The only exercise that keeps the pain away is swimming laps/walking in the pool. Now that the snow-birds are gone OPEN UP THE POOLS. The volley ball, sports activities will have to wait. BUT the pools are not crowded this time of the year and those who want to sun bathe can alternate lounge chairs.

I see the beautiful golf courses CLOSED at 4:00...WHY, everything else is closed why not keep the only activity that is going strong open longer...maybe till 7:00pm. I went out on a course at 4:30, alone. It was as beautiful as ever, weather, sun going down, EMPTY! At the 6th hole the AMBASSADOR started YELLING at me. She told me there is a VIRUS going around....WOW!, didn't realize it!! She told me to immediately pick up my golf balls (2) AND NEVER DO THIS AGAIN!! I felt like I had to stand in the corner for an hour. Last time I looked we still pay our HOA FEE? IF, they reduce most of the activities in one area, why not increase them (GOLF) in another to off set it??

In 2018, according to the CDC, the country had 45,000,000 infected with flu and lost 61,000 people that year. We did NOT have the panic we are experiencing now.

Pools
 

Actually not read anything related to the virus and pools. Clearly you can't swim with a mask on. I wonder if the pool water would kill the virus? If an infected person's mucus was in the water and you ingested it would you get sick? I know they close the pools when people accidentally poop in the pool but that may be because you know... 💩. You can see it and all. At this point I think I'd take my chances with poop over the virus, not sure ingesting someone else's poop will kill you. Hang in there, life will get back together soon.

Heart disease and cancer kill every day of the year. This virus does not, so your numbers are deceiving and there are many viruses like the common flu which takes many more lives and no one blinks twice!

The answer is a definite NO. It is not your responsibility to keep someone else safe. However, it is your responsibility to avoid doing things that endanger others. By spraying C-19 germs around, your are endangering others.

Let's look at a couple of related moral examples.

Suppose you are rushing down the sidewalk so you don't miss the bus to work. You see a child start to chase a ball into the street just as a car is coming. Is it your responsibility to stop that child from running into the street even though you might be late for the bus? I wouldn't think it was my responsibility, but it would be the moral thing to do. Maybe you would think that it's just fate and that life isn't fair. The kid just won the Darwin award. How would you feel if a stranger let your child die because it wasn't their responsibility? Bitter?

Suppose you are rushing to the train station in your car and were worried that you might miss the train. Now, suppose a child chases a ball into the street. Is it your responsibility to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the child? Or, is it infringing on your rights to get to the station on time because stopping to avoid killing the child might make you miss the train?

Easy to say when you are retired. But if you are the only one in the family working and you have to feed your family it very scary to say the least. It’s not about The Almighty Dollar bud. Most people can’t go for even two weeks without income! Sad but still true. You need to think a little deeper.

What to me is a really scary thought, that there were a lot of people
like you who have little or no faith in individuals capacity to take care of themselves,
involved in an overreaching controlling government.

Boomers
 

Great post! Unfortunately since the younger folks tend not to die from the Coronavirus, AKA "Chinese Virus", thier attitude seems to be "screw you boomer, I'm going to the beach, sucks to be you". I believe in karma.

I understand the frustrations that we all share and I understand that in our current situation our life style will and have to change drastically. I know that it hurts to have such a negative impact on ones economy and income. Fortunately, I am not impacted by the economic downturn and so many businesses have to shut their doors and deprive themselves and their employees of income. I also personally feel that I would rather suffer through this situation than to have someone infect the ones I love. I just could not live with that. All that being said, please let me put the situation in a different perspective, which I hope will ameliorate the suffering, pain and frustration:

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE........
1. There are no bombs raining on our heads
2. I am not a prisoner held in solitary confinement, as millions are.
3. I am not a refugee trying to escape with my life.
4. I am not standing in line waiting to fill a pot of water.
5. I have access to fresh food and I'm not starving.
6. I have hot running water.
7. My country has not been ruined by years of war.
8. I can reach my friends by phone and check in on them.
9. My friends check in on me because they care about me.
10. Any whiplash I feel about this strange turn of events is itself a sign of privilege.
11. More than half of the world would gladly trade their everyday problems for the modest inconveniences I am experiencing.
12. I may have anxious dreams but I'm dreaming them on a proper bed and I'm not sleeping on the sidewalk.
13. By staying at home, I'm helping the planet rest.
14. As long as I have my mind I can create, imagine, dream and not be lonely.
15. This global crisis connects me to people around the world and reminds me of our common humanity. This is a good thing.
16. When something tragic happens to another country next time, I will respond to it not with superiority, but humility and recognition. 17. I will fight for positive changes and economically just policies in my own country.
18. I am surrounded by books.
19. I am surrounded by love.
20. The tulips have already begun to bloom.

So, you knowingly broke the rules because YOU decided it was OK for YOU to do so...

Then, you call out the ambassador who is only trying to do their job? And we wonder why activities are closed or restricted because "some people" can't follow the rules???

When Shakespeare was writing plays and a part owner of the Globe Theatre across the Thames River from London, several times when there was a plague raging in London in the summer, the City Aldermen ordered all the playhouses closed as an aid to social distancing. Most of the actors fled town. Some playhouses went bankrupt. Was this a restriction of freedom? Yes! Was it moral? Yes!

In the great Italian writer Boccaccio’s masterwork, The Decameron, a bunch of people social distancing from the Bubonic Plague around 1348 entertained each other by telling stories. They had the money to flee to the country. Most people didn’t have that option. The tale tellers had the freedom to flee, and they fled. Most of us also have that freedom in The Villages. Other people have to work to serve us. They don’t have that freedom. Is our freedom moral? Yes. Is it moral to not do whatever we can to assure their health? No, that would be immoral.

There are many active diseases around the world that sometimes cause epidemics, and when they aren’t, it is usually because some people are giving up their freedom temporarily to prevent the spread of disease. For example, cholera, typhus, typhoid and malaria. Some of these still kill 300,000 or more people a year. They all have the potential to kill enormous numbers of people. Other diseases have come close to breaking loose and killing millions, but again were prevented because of thousands or millions who temporarily gave up freedoms, and thousands who risked their lives to care for people dying of these diseases, such as SARS, MERS, and Ebola. If everyone had insisted on having the freedom to go wherever they wanted, to visit sick patients as they lay dying, to maintain their usual funeral rites, many millions of people probably would have died.

The Villages pays for insecticidal spraying to decrease the number of mosquitoes and other nasty insects and the attendant diseases. Some people say that robs them of their freedom to not have insecticide on their lawns and shrubs. They say mosquitoes and other insects feed the birds. But sometimes there is a hedonic calculus (see the philosopher Jeremy Bentham—a favorite of Thomas Jefferson) that comes into play, letting us figure out what approach allows the most happiness and the least loss of freedom.

I’m a proud American, just like most of you, and I treasure my freedoms, just as you do, but I am also willing to temporarily surrender some freedoms in order to help others (and also myself) longer enjoy the pursuit of happiness. As far as I’m concerned, people who want to insist on their freedom to spread disease to others because temporary laws requiring social distancing, masks, and closed restaurants or golf courses restrict their precious American freedoms are immoral, un-American, and barely even human.

Go complain to General George Washington, who required that all of his troops at Valley Forge receive smallpox vaccinations, whether they wanted to or not. Several of these men died from the vaccinations, but possibly hundreds were saved.

Netflix
 

You forgot Netflix! That goodness for the Internet and Netflix.

So the rules don't apply to you?

like stop signs and speed limit signs, no enforcement = no penalty = no fear = the violations will continue.....

What I heard was that many of the starters and ambassadors are staying home to be safe and those that remain would have to work really long hours.

If you believe false or inaccurate statistics. VERY low percentages

Gee. I have a Canadian friend who hates going home every summer but won't move permanently to the US because she is afraid to lose her great healthcare. 90% of the foreigners I know or meet while travelling are astonished at just how stupid we are.

I guess we hang out in different circles.

I guess when you drive or ride in your car you don’t bother wearing your seat belt. What the hell, live on the wild side.

Yup. They can't go home until all the carts have been returned and sanitized, and the starters have brought any money collected to wherever it's supposed to end up in some semi-central location (I don't know the details on this but the Ambassadors have to sometimes escort the starters so obviously it involves "somewhere else.")

The Ambassadors are supposed to be out on the course, making sure that the folks who went out at the end of the tee-time schedule are moving at a reasonable pace. So if they see someone who wasn't ON that schedule, in the middle of the course, then yeah they would be right in telling that person to get off the course.

If you didn't schedule a tee time, it means you went unauthorized onto a course that was still technically open for business (the tee times stop at 4 - the course remains open until the last golfer has returned from their play).

Those are the people who create the problems - not just that the rules don't apply to them, but that the rules are wrong and shouldn't be followed at all.

That is why the rules are enforced more strictly, and new rules made with more severe consequences.

You want your freedoms back? Then exercise some self-restraint. If you are incapable of behaving like an adult, then expect to be treated like a child.

The 2 most clueless Governors in the US Oh! and throw Conn in there while your at it

While I agree that the courses should remain open after 4, the reason they are not has to do with staffing. There are simply not enough workers to keep them going in the evenings. It has nothing to do with the virus except that many workers are staying home. The rules are clearly posted. No one is allowed to start on the courses after 4.

So they should hire more ambassadors. I’m not playing but i live on a golf course, and all the players i see are practicing social distancing. I wear a mask when i (rarely) go out, and support the quarantine, but golf should not be limited by the absence of ambassadors.

Take care of the health care SYSTEM
 

Wearing masks right now may save the health care SYSTEM. The past six weeks mitigated the virus. It’s not dead, it’s still out there. Wearing a mask will keep the number of new cases suppressed until vaccine.
I for one would rather the hospital be able to resume regular functions.

Did I just hear you volunteer to become an ambassador for minimum wage? It's much easier said than done. Could you learn to do all the things ambassadors and starters do and be ready to go tomorrow? What happens when the threat passes? Who do you let go when the regulars come back?

Thank you Bill 1701 for a bit of wisdom here. We have no idea if this virus is worse than the normal flu that goes thru the population and kills about 60,000 anually. The Government has put out edicts based on models that so far have proven to be grossly overexaggerated. Too many politicians are using this as some sort of power play for themselves, the governor of Michigan for example. I applaud those in Michigan fighting for their rights against the nonsensical edict of their Governor.

I believe that the government should require everyone that works in stores that are considered to be Essential should be wearing a facial mask and also require any customer that enters the essentials store also be wearing a mask as long as they are in the store. That way the employees protect the customer's and the customer's protect the employees as long as this 30 day period lasts unless they increase the time.

People who don’t want to maintain social distancing are like the folks who refuse to leave their homes in mandatory hurricane evacuation orders. When the hurricane gets to them, many call rescuers to risk their lives to come help them. When people who don’t like the stay at home orders get sick, they will expect health workers to risk their own lives to treat them. Maybe if they would agree to just die at home in the hurricanes or when they get Covid, the rest of us would not think of them as selfish? Covid is not just the flu or a car accident, or cancer. It is highly contagious and deadly for many. Listen to the scientists.