There are few better ways to spread a pandemic than to cross state lines to scream about a pandemic

[left-of-center2012]

If you wanted to design a mechanism for spreading an infectious disease quickly, you'd be hard-pressed to do better than the method anti-stay-at-home activists have chosen. A new study of anonymized phone data shows that the people who have been attending highly visible rallies against state shelter-in-place orders in places like Michigan, Colorado, and Florida have been traveling long distances to get to their ‘We don't need masks!’ get-togethers.

Some of them, in fact, are even coming in from other states. It's the perfect, worst-case scenario: A group of people self-selected for being aggressively resistant to basic pandemic protections has been gathering together, commingling for a few hours, and then dispersing across a wide area with whatever hitchhiking viruses someone else may have brought in.

Anonymized cellphone data was used to identify devices present at anti-lockdown rallies in five states, and track where the phones moved after those rallies. (Yes, this is a thing now. Yes, it's both very useful and rather alarming.) The now-infamous rally in Lansing, Michigan, for example, cell phones from that armed, storm-the-capitol shoutfest dispersed to "all parts" of Michigan, while others crossed into Indiana. An April protest in Denver saw participants head back to locations in "Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Utah." Florida protesters were trailed back to Georgia, S.C., and so forth.

Collect a group of the Americans most hostile to basic pandemic precautions, put them in each other's faces for a few hours, and send them back out to their own communities and surrounding states and you've got a near-perfect mechanism for spreading the pandemic. You could only improve it by demanding they all lick each other before going home.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/25/1946211/-There-are-few-better-ways-to-spread-a-pandemic-than-to-cross-state-lines-to-scream-about-a-pandemic

[Brainfodder]

1. Could one argue it's OK to kill them, self-defense and enemies - domestic?

Asking for a few million friends?

[unblock]

2. If Muslims did the exact same thing, the same people would scream "terrorism"

[Brainfodder]

4. They do seem to have the market cornered on hypocrites, indeed?

Extremely pro-fetus and extremely pro-guns is such a strange combo as well?

Misguided by the misguided is still misguided and perhaps the unending cycle we are seeing the consequences of?

[Andy823]

3. I wonder how many of them

are also the same people who followed trump around from rally to rally?

His loyal "cult" followers who have nothing better to do than drive around following their "leader" and getting all worked up at his rallies.

[SeattleVet]

5. "You could only improve it by demanding they all lick each other before going home."

No need to demand - they most likely did it voluntarily!