I think something people are missing in the discussions around stay at home orders is limiting the exposure for essential workers.

People saying “well I have to do [fill in essential task—grocery shop, feed the cows, take care of aged relative, go to work]” you’ll still get to do those things, and you’ll be safer while doing them.

A stay at home order means you aren’t playing volleyball at your apartment complex, picking up the virus, and then going to the grocery store and passing it on to a worker there or another patron. You’re just shopping.

A stay at home order means you aren’t going to Zion National Park, where you don’t realize you’re a presymptomatic carrier and you pass the virus on to a grocery clerk and park ranger. It means not becoming symptomatic in Moab where they don’t have the resources to treat.

Let alone being miserable in a tent and trying to get yourself home. It means getting sick in Draper, where you can isolate at home, be more comfortable, and have access to a more robust healthcare system right now.

A stay at home order means not going to your gym that refuses to close where you are exposed to the virus, and then going to help grandpa clean his house. It’s just helping grandpa. Because if you’re sick, who’s going to help gpa? If he’s sick, there may not be a grandpa to help.

A stay at home order means a paramedic is probably going to be exposed to the virus at work but she isn’t going to be exposed at the grocery store and she isn’t going to pass that grocery store germ on to her colleagues and the non-COVID-19 patients she treats.

A stay at home order is not about prohibiting essential actions from happening. It’s about making sure we still CAN do the essential things. If you’re sick, who is going to feed the cows? If you’re sick, who is going to restock the grocery shelves?

Many of us have the privilege of being able to stay home and protect the people who don’t. But story after story, video after video, shows us flagrantly disregarding that privilege, thinking the rules don’t apply to us, or this one time, this one person won’t hurt.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness long-term.

Muting this because I’m not going to argue about this. So if I don’t respond, it’s not because you’re right.