But didn't have to engage in the same practices. If you were in England you covered your windows and car headlights--but not if you were in Dubuque. Some things implemented were stupid--if you were a farmer in England and they rationed butter and milk, your milk and butter were rationed; if you were in a town and your kids were in day care and you worked in a factory, you'd get your family ration and you and your kid would get a supplementary amount at work or day care. In other words, live in town and get more butter than those producing it. There's a reason food rationing in England ended in 1954 (no, not 1945).
We know this in a panicked sort of way when discussing contact tracing: If a person is found to be infected and it gets traced back, there might be a place of business or network of people infected (maybe everybody who went to a funeral, party, or church). *They* will be locked down, but the rest of the town won't be. We know that when it affects a city, perhaps one-size-fits-all thinking won't work. Because we don't want to be locked down if *we* don't have to be. But between cities and rural areas, well, please, if we're locked down why aren't *they*?
It was the same problem in some large states like Texas. Because Houston and Dallas are locked down, therefore Ozona must lock down. Ozona's been locked down for weeks now. It has yet to have a reported case of COVID or anybody go to the doctor with reportable symptoms or anybody die from the disease. The only thing that the Texas lock-down has done is put close some rural businesses. Those businesses' being closed doesn't "support" Dallas or Houston. At best, it makes the people in the cities feel somehow inferior.
The "if they weren't locked down it would be bad there now" is unprovable and becomes a matter of faith and belief. Better: When it's detected in an area with one or two people there's still the opportunity for contact tracing before destroying the local economy.
Cuomo's "This is all of you" wasn't exactly true. Governor's demand local autonomy when it gives them power; they should be willing to devolve local autonomy instead of letting it all flow in their bucket and accumulate so they can say, "See? *I* have the power!" Governors of states thta did this really came in for some abuse--how dare they not do what the best and brightest do? (The best and brightest ranges from California to New York, but let's *not* emulate NY, okay?)
Note that if you're not in a city there's a good chance you have a garden. Where I grew up in the 'burbs there were some immigrant Southerners who had gardens. One of them had enough square feet under tillage that they grew all the tomatoes, corn, okra, and other veggies that they needed for the entire year. As retirees, that was a big help for their budget. But if they lived in MI now, even if there was maybe one case reported in their county, they'd be prohibited from actually getting the seed to plant or the seedlings to set out.
My family would have been esp. hard hit: We have cats. For some reason, as soon as they realized we were going to be around the territorial divisions they'd set up in the house made little sense to them. Some low-value territory was now higher value because people were there more. They set about re-evaluating their territories, and the amount of cat snarling and territorial pissing skyrocketed. The stuff we buy that decontaminates/descents cat piss is kept in with furniture around here, for whatever reason. In MI, that would have been walled off as contrary to right policy. Proles can't be trusted, you know, and good power is centralized power. (Yeah, how'd that work out with the CDC and the FDA?) Esp. rural proles when it comes to how urban dwellers view them. (It's not like only cats engage in snarling over turf and territorial pissing.)
That "not roping off" the area can be abused. The Walmart that's nearest where I live is 3/4 non-food. Under MI rules over half of the store would be roped off. Walmart admits so many people per 100 square foot to abide by social distancing. But the areas that few go to--furniture, that kind of thing--are included. So the food section tends to be more crowded than the average people/100 sq ft ratio would suggest. (Remember: Averages often hide information. See an average? Question what gets counted and included the numerator and denominator, then question what the distribution is. That warning comes on the label.) Zero-tolerance/broken-windows thinking is not, however, the solution here any more than it is anywhere else.
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