This public service announcement flashing on the highway may be helpful, but for whom?
Many people rely on outdoor jobs. Hardcore hobbyists, such as joggers, will keep their training regimen. State mandates may force schoolchildren to remain inside, while white-collar employees are already trapped indoors.
To announce “limit outdoor activity” as a public health notice is perversely insulting and myopically idiotic. It suggests we have been provided with a way of life that includes options: a liberated self-directed agency (autonomy) that the vast majority of people do not possess.
Most of us are already in cycles of stress management, joggers with exercise, and the rest of us with chemical addictions, now multiplied by the further exasperated teachers and frustrated parents harassed by pent-up students.
Obviously, seeing the government’s well-wishing and valid information as a provocation is a sign of my own cynical cognitive distortion. I could take up jogging.