Pokémon Go players fined for breaking down under COVID-19 lockdown
- Reference: 1594798150
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/15/pokemon_go_players_covid_fines/
- Source link:
Victoria’s capital city, Melbourne, has returned to lockdown after new COVID-19 cases reached new highs after weeks in which only isolated cases emerged. The city’s four-million-plus residents are now only permitted to leave home to shop for food and supplies, provide care to others, exercise, or study and work if they’re not possible at home.
The State’s police force today revealed it’s issued more than 200 fines to people found breaching those rules, including a group of people who left home to play Pokémon Go.
Another 20-plus people were fined for having a party that was detected when ambulance officers who had popped into a KFC for a bite noticed fellow patrons making an enormous order. The officers reported their find to Police, who followed the haul to a home and found a large and currently-illegal gathering in full swing. The fatty-chicken-fanciers tried to flee or hide before being issued with $1000 fines.
All jokes aside, the situation in Melbourne is fraught because in March authorities recorded around 100 COVID cases each day. Over the last week that count has often risen beyond 200 cases a day, leading politicians to warn that continued non-compliance such as Pokémon-playing could lead to even tougher lockdown measures.
Complicating matters further is news that Australia’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app only works about 25 percent of the time between iPhone users, and that the app has yet to find a single contact that could not be established through conventional contact-tracing practices. ®
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Crazy
As much as I find a single Pokemon player to not really be a problem, a 20+ KFC reunion in the middle of a pandemic is really pushing it.
It's like taking a stroll in a forest. Honestly, officer, apart from you, who do think I came in contact with ? You're the only other person around here, so you're the one putting me in danger.
Now Pokemon Go could be a problem if many players are congregating in the same place. If I understand the game, there are a limited amount of physical locations where those things can be found, so you're likely to see several people go to the same place, hopefully not at exactly the same time. But still, roving Pokemon Go players seem to me to be largely less of an issue than full-blown KFC parties.
Re: Crazy
Less likely to come into contact - maybe. More likely to be from totally different places and hard to identify - definitely.
Re: Crazy
"It's like taking a stroll in a forest. Honestly, officer, apart from you, who do think I came in contact with ? You're the only other person around here, so you're the one putting me in danger."
But the trouble is you can't have discretionary rules because many people's discretion is poorly founded (as just a cursory glance of Facebook will confirm) - Pascal went walking [in the forest] and encountered a police office and that was OK, so I can also go for a walk [in a highly populated area].
But as soon as you start trying to be more granular with the rules (it's OK to go walking in forests but not in highly populated areas), people say the rules are too confusing - is a wood a forest? how many people makes an area highly populated?
So you're back to having a simple one-size-fits-all rule which has to be enforced with no scope for discretion.
Re: Crazy
Nightfox you've hit the nail square on the head. Now if only more people cared to understand the necessary simplicity of the rules there'd be less wailing and gnashing. People choose not to understand because it suits them. So many people in the world couldn't care less about doing what's right for everyone, so they carry on as normal and pretend the rules were confusing.
I live in Melbourne. These people are morons, pure and simple. While the vast majority of us are doing the right thing, people like them put us all at risk.
Enjoy your $26,000 bucket of KFC, dickheads.
Enjoy your $26,000 bucket of KFC, dickheads.
Words out of my mouth.
And to think there are people who have actually asked what a DH is.
O.
Yeah, the virus is all nonsense bla bla....
Human stupidity never ceases to amaze me.
It did seem odd to me that Pokémon Go launched a TV ad recently in the middle of a pandemic
Conflicting Laws in this instance
As while the police are doing their bit for immediate public safety and upholding the regulations set out by the elected authorities, they are in effect nullifying the effect of a much more important “law”.
Darwin’s.
As a medic, I break this regularly by saving certain individuals from the consequences of their own actions yet, strangely, this is not what might get me into trouble.
Pokémon Go is still a thing?
Can;t they set up a version that works in Second Life for the die-hard players?
So have these Bozos been on a Pokemon hunt in a car, or have the cops become Judge Dredd and decided the law on the street that this doesn't count as exercise. As I recall when Pokemon was released it was seen as good exercise.