Holiday revelers flouted social distancing. Now, Missouri officials are urging them to quarantine.
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.”
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.
In Houston on Sunday, Mayor Sylvester Turner said fire marshals would start enforcing restrictions at establishments exceeding their 25 percent occupancy limit. The city had received more than 100 complaints since Friday about rules not being followed.