COVID fascism didn’t take a vacation
This is the time of year when more folks in the Northern Hemisphere start planning a summer vacation. But one thing that didn’t take a vacation was COVID-19 lockdowns and other “new normal” fascism. Surprisingly, some people went on vacation in places that had some of the worst COVID restrictions in the world.
An online thread from October 2021 discussed what confronted visitors to Belize. It was noted that Belize still had a COVID curfew from 9 PM to 4 AM each night. In October 2021, long after vaccines came out.
Historical negationists now claim that lockdowns only closed certain businesses, that they were only closed at certain times, and that nobody was kept from merely walking down the street. Yet residents and visitors of Belize in 2021 would have begged to differ. A commenter in the 2021 thread wrote, “Everyone has to be inside at 9pm. It’s a curfew, no walking around, driving around...nothing.” This was punishable by a steep fine and jail time. Even hotel bars had to close.
Belize had apparently dug in on COVID rules since a year before. The country had reportedly begun requiring masks on beaches in August 2021. Before then, however, authorities were already harassing people for not wearing masks while riding in golf carts.
A February 2022 post said the curfew was still in place even then!
I myself visited some of the biggest outposts of COVID fascism in the U.S. This includes Ocean City, Maryland, in September 2020, when the boardwalk had a mask mandate that was issued unilaterally by the mayor. Yet—as I’ve mentioned before—about two-thirds of visitors ignored this rule, and a local newspaper confirmed this. The apparent lack of enforcement siphoned tourists from smaller communities in Delaware, where enforcement was reportedly very severe and authorities became combative with violators. Delaware lost a lot of tourist money, and there’s been no introspection about the costs to the state’s small businesses and workers.
In October 2021, I went to New Mexico, one of the worst states for COVID totalitarianism. By then, the federal government was as big of an offender as the state was. National Park Service properties had doubled down on mask mandates over the previous year, despite the introduction of vaccines. In addition, customers of a Smith’s supermarket in Los Alamos infamously behaved as if it was still March 2020, marching precisely six feet apart with masks on. That’s the origin of the term Los Alamos goose-step.
It’s easy for Americans to criticize foreign countries’ human rights records, but America’s record during COVID wasn’t so great either. That doesn’t make the wholesale abdication of international concern for human rights in recent years right.
I think it’s fair for countries and states that were the most extreme offenders to face government sanctions and boycotts by travel agents.