Airbnb hosts defy lockdown laws with 'Covid-19 retreats'
bbc.com
bbc.com
Maybe the platform hasn't been in touch, but the government advice has been pretty clear and consistent about no non-essential journeys. Why on earth would they think a holiday retreat would be exempt from that?
Last time I checked, there were still many clearly touristic offerings in what should have been purely residential areas.
That said, I have also rented from AirBnb for 1+ months on a few occasions. But I chose to do so mostly because I couldn't find regular apartments in that city.
Still, I have met a few hosts who truly acted like I'm staying with them, not renting a service from them. But that was a long time ago when AirBnb was still new and a niche thing that early adopters were playing with for fun, rather than money.
One family has no impact but millions of people all moving from cities into the countryside will cause harm.
I'm assuming that people moving in to shelter from covid19 are doing just that - rent for a month and longer and keep the same precautions as they would in a city , wear a mask and gloves to the stores and keep 2m+ distance. Obviously if somebody takes it as a good time to do Hadrian's wall trail with a different Airbnb every night it's a bad idea.
> These small towns would be otherwise shielded from the virus if it wasn't for people from large cities trying to escape there.
This is a terrible assumption to make in the first place and I hope nobody in decision-making capacity in those towns is in fact making it, the added risk to town people should be minimal because no additional interaction should be taking place. And if the town wanted to otherwise avoid lockdown or keep its pub open but won't because of airbnb-ers then it's probably a net win for the town.
And how many vacant houses does an average country town have anyway so that airbnbs are a risk of stressing the infrastructure ?
Do you not stop to get gas? What if you yourself are asymptomatic and spreading it every time you stop.
> the added risk to town people should be minimal because no additional interaction should be taking place
except people need to go to grocery stores still, the amount of food going into local stores is meant to sustain the current population
You wear a mask and disposable gloves which you replace after pumping gas, exchanging cash etc - just like you're supposed to be doing in the city or a suburb.
> except people need to go to grocery stores still, the amount of food going into local stores is meant to sustain the current population
Mask, gloves, 2m+ distance, again just like in the city. The amount of food going into local stores adjusts itself with demand, this is a crisis but still not ww2.
But if each individual gets to decide whether or not to follow the rules, everything breaks down. One family fleeing to "self-isolate" in a remote village, if they plan and provision themselves adequately and take all proper precautions, might not be a problem. What if a thousand families decide they're above the rules? A hundred thousand?
You're not some special individual who gets to make your own rules. You're part of a society (whether you like it or not); and it's up to all of us to respect the restrictions that are being imposed for the sake of us all.
Here's what the rules actually are, in the UK.
Under Regulation 6 it is an offence (during the emergency period – see further below) for any person to leave the place where they are living "without reasonable excuse".
Regulation 6(2) then sets out a non-exhaustive list of exceptions to the prohibition. These include, leaving the place where a person is living: • to obtain basic necessities; • to take exercise either alone or with other members of their household; • to seek or give medical assistance; • to travel for the purposes of work where it is not reasonably possible for that person to work from the place where they are living; and • to avoid injury or illness or to escape harm.
Noticing that last one ? It's there for a reason. And if you don't think it applies to the situation of self-isolating from a pandemic in a remote village just remind yourself that you're not some special individual who gets to decide what rules mean. Re. the scalability of such a solution - it is naturally limited by the amount of units rentable as well as the amount of people for whom such a retreat would actually make sense given their situation, risk group and current living accommodation.
Moreover, it is not a "reasonable excuse". You did not have to travel. It did not contain any likelihood of making you safer, and indeed it endangered you and those around you. You chose to do this, and would like for us to excuse you because it would avoid you having to shoulder your civic responsibility.
Fuck, as a Yankee, this kind of shit is why I'm glad we're not a part of the Commonwealth. You'd rather language-lawyer than acknowledge that you live in a society and that you rely on other people. Y'know what we're doing in Oregon? We're staying home, and we got a cut in half in projected deaths from last week. Work together, smarter, not harder. Imagining you wasting boxes of gloves and masks just to get out to your rustic countryside retreat is making me sick; Oregon is currently loaning our extra medical equipment to other states where the demand is greatest, and meanwhile you're busily computing how many pairs of gloves you can get to the litre of petrol.
I roundly count 9 people, including myself, in this thread, including people that I've politically disagreed with in the past. This is quite literally 9 out of 10 dentists agreeing that one ought to brush their teeth; why are you the holdout? If you're going to be the rebellious Angry Man, then you ought at least to have evidence that supports your position; again, evidence seems to support the idea that you would be risking spreading the virus.
What do you know about my situation that you can declare that moving away did not make me or my cohabitants safer ? I explicitly described how moving from a place to place (which is hardly a road trip and is not done either for leisure or tourism) can be done without endangering anyone beyond the unavoidable risks you take venturing out for groceries etc. Going to a hospital when sick is also extremely selfish, you can just stay at home and cope it out.
> Fuck, as a Yankee, this kind of shit is why I'm glad we're not a part of the Commonwealth. You'd rather language-lawyer than acknowledge that you live in a society and that you rely on other people. Y'know what we're doing in Oregon? We're staying home, and we got a cut in half in projected deaths from last week. Work together, smarter, not harder. Imagining you wasting boxes of gloves and masks just to get out to your rustic countryside retreat is making me sick; Oregon is currently loaning our extra medical equipment to other states where the demand is greatest, and meanwhile you're busily computing how many pairs of gloves you can get to the litre of petrol.
That's because Oregon and most of US already is a rustic countryside retreat in comparison to half of the world in terms of population density and personal space and you should probably put your imagination towards trying to understand people who live in different circumstances than yourself. A few couples of gloves and one mask is all it takes - you're not supposed to wear them all the time in your own car, only when you venture out.
Also you seems to have a strange unfamiliarity with both your own and the commonwealth countries if you think the commonwealth people are more prone to self-interested interpretation of the rules than Americans. The only reason I mentioned UK is because that's what the original submission was about, pretty sure the rules in Oregon are essentially the same.
> I roundly count 9 people, including myself, in this thread, including people that I've politically disagreed with in the past. This is quite literally 9 out of 10 dentists agreeing that one ought to brush their teeth; why are you the holdout? If you're going to be the rebellious Angry Man, then you ought at least to have evidence that supports your position; again, evidence seems to support the idea that you would be risking spreading the virus.
I'm not sure how any of this is political and it really sounds like it is you who are looking for reasons to feel angry and morally superior to people whose circumstances you are entirely ignorant of.
Those places don't have a medical system in place to work with this pandemic, and adding people-- especially people who have been traveling-- puts stress on a small and possibly fragile system.
That seems slightly irresponsible to me. Among several other reasons, that's why I'm locked down in Texas with a friend instead of returning to Durango and the apartment I've been renting for the last year.
So if people who have a high chance of being sick come to rural America, some of them will actually be sick with COVID-19 weather they know it or not and they will overwhelm the limited facilities there, not to mention possibly infect others and make the situation worse.
The rural environment is more protective to the extent it reduces density and contact, its hospital capacity is not inherently reserved for the local population any more than the city hospitals are reserved for the city residents and if other arrangements are in place incoming people should be advised and take it into their calculations. Combined with the general effort to bend the curve the ability to wear- level geographically is a plus not a minus. Frankly I'm surprised there aren't massive medical airtrains being planned to carry patients from overwhelmed hospitals to more coping ones.