Keep Your Distance.

Life The BBC has a short piece about the police issuing fines because of lockdown breaches in the Tower Hamlets area. They're shown approaching and fining a group of four men using gym equipment in a park in Poplars, breaching the rules (more than one person, also there are signs forbidding the use of the climbing frames and whatnot. "We ain't doin' nothin' wrong" one of them plaintively says as he's handed a £100 fine.  I have no problem with any of this, this I have no problem with. 

Except, I live next to a park and it isn't safe more me to go walking there. One of the assumption that the virus can't be transmitted outside, and although the potential is greatly reduced, it's not impossible especially if you're engaging in activity which involves heavy breathing, like running.  The narrow pathway around a large section of the park is usually full of joggers, few of whom are social distancing, none of whom are wearing masks.  On occasion, people even stop to have a chat making the situation more precarious.

But such activity is if not mandated, encouraged.  I don't understand why enforcement is being carried out in some scenarios and not others, why four blokes in a park wrongly using gym equipment is policed, but groups of people jogging together on narrow pathways, inches away from each other and impossible to avoid if you're just out for a walk is given a pass.  But the lack of masks is the worstRunner's World recommends it and 78-year-old Joe Biden is fine with it.  If you're in a place were social distancing is knowingly impossible, why risk it?

The upshot is I've given up my daily walks for now.  Pretty much anywhere I've tried strolling with intent, especially around the park, I end up dodging into the road to distance from people and with my heightened anxiety the process becomes far too stressful to be of much use not to mention dangerous.  On occasion, I've had to stand facing a tree, bush or wall with my hood up to let a person by, like a hedgehog curling up to avoid danger if only to reassure myself.  Perhaps all of this is just paranoia, but a risk still feels like a risk however risky that potential risk might be.

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