A county official called the behavior “reckless” and dangerous for others.
Local officials in major Missouri metro areas are imploring residents to self-quarantine for two weeks if they took part in Memorial Day weekend festivities that were anything but 6 feet apart.
As reports emerged nationwide of Americans ignoring public health guidelines to live it up over the holiday weekend, footage of major crowds at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri triggered fears in other parts of the state.
St. Louis County’s public health department issued a travel advisory: “Any person who has traveled and engaged in this behavior should self-quarantine for 14 days or until they receive a negative test result for COVID-19.” County Executive Sam Page called the behavior “reckless” and dangerous for others.
The mayor of St. Louis (which is distinct from St. Louis County) issued a similar quarantine advisory.
And Kansas City’s health director deployed the hashtag #COVIDIDIOTS, tweeting, “Anyone who didn’t practice CDC, DHSS, and KCMO Health Department social distancing guidance should self quarantine for 14 days if they have any compassion for others.”
Lake of the Ozarks, a popular regional vacation spot, drew larger-than-expected numbers of partiers. In widely circulated videos, many of them lacked masks and didn’t maintain social distancing, although the Osage Beach mayor told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that other spots saw better adherence to the rules.
The state health director, Randall Williams, warned in a statement Monday that if healthy, asymptomatic people contract the virus at such gatherings and transmit it to vulnerable people, “this is when we tend to see the long-lasting and tragic impact of these decisions that are being made.”
In neighboring Kansas, the Department of Health and Environment recommended a 14-day quarantine if Lake of the Ozarks travelers didn’t take preventive measures, which the secretary said “risks setting our community back substantially.”
The admonitions cut to the heart of America’s central tensions as states and localities lift restrictions: whether the public can handle a phased transition back to normalcy, and how much additional coronavirus spread (and death) people are willing to accept.
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Local officials in major Missouri metro areas are imploring residents to self-quarantine for two weeks if they took part in Memorial Day weekend festivities that were anything but six feet apart https://t.co/zZAU4nGOnX
— POLITICO (@politico) May 26, 2020
No covid concerns at the lake of the ozarks😳 #loto pic.twitter.com/Yrb4UNM64u
— Scott Pasmore (@scottpasmoretv) May 24, 2020
Good luck getting people to isolate themselves again after having been on lockdown for so long. Now that they have been “liberated” this weekend, they are not likely to shelter in place again unless they are forced to do so. Try forcing them and these officials are going to have some massive riots on their hands.
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