Dumb and Dumber
Pandemic suggestions and rules
I think we can now all agree that in the early days of the 2020 Covid pandemic the ‘suggestions’ to prevent passing the virus and some of the ‘rules’ established by governments were pretty weird and just dumb.
Here are examples of a dumb suggestion and a dumber rule that we encountered while living in Costa Rica during the first months of the pandemic shutdown.
Dumb Suggestion: Groceries
In Costa Rica, like other parts of the world, grocery stores and banks were deemed essential businesses, so they were open.
Our Canadian neighbors who owned property at the end of our dead-end mountain road, read and listened to a lot of news about the new virus. They were rightfully very nervous about getting sick and isolated themselves as much as they could.
But they were out of food and needed to go to the store. They asked us if we needed anything so we asked them to pick up a loaf a sandwich bread and some peanut butter and jelly. Our pantry was full of fancy hotel-like food for guests, and Mark and I were dying for a simple PB&J!
They told us that they’d be happy to grab those things but, on the way back to their house, they would just leave our bag in our parking lot. They wouldn’t stop for a ‘hello’, and we wouldn’t connect to hand off the bag. They were going to WhatsApp us when they left the bag so we knew it was there. Just a bag drop and go.
In the first weeks of the pandemic, it had been “suggested” (not sure by who?) to prevent the spread of this new virus that no one knew much about, that you should let your groceries sit in ‘isolation’ when returning from the grocery store before putting them away in your kitchen.
So, out of caution and nervousness, we brought the bag our neighbors left for us into the hotel’s dining room, took the items out of the bag and put them on one of our dining tables. We then let them sit there for hours.
Hours! Really? Was this going to kill any virus that was ‘attached’ to them?! We probably also sprayed the loaf of bread and peanut butter and jelly containers with sanitizer! God forbid we touch anything that was in the grocery store or that our neighbors handled and get this mysterious virus! 🤦🏻♀️
I’m pretty sure our neighbors went home and stripped off the ‘contaminated’ clothes they wore to the grocery store right outside their door before they went inside their house!
Dumber Rule: Driving
In early April 2020, as Holy Week approached, to prevent the spread of the virus by eliminating non-essential travel, the Costa Rican government imposed driving restrictions.
Restrict driving? Really? There weren’t many places to go anyway!
The driving restrictions were based on license plate numbers. For Holy Week and the following week, the restrictions were very strict. The government didn’t want people congregating for the holiday and even stopped public transportation those weeks.
For the rest of April, the driving restrictions were enforced between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m. There was a total driving restriction every night from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. And anyone who violated these restrictions was fined 110,000 colones (about $195 USD).
Here was the dumb ‘rule’ based on your license plate:
Mondays: Vehicles with license plates ending in 1 and 2 cannot drive. All other numbers can transit freely.
Tuesdays: Vehicles with license plates ending in 3 and 4 cannot drive. All other numbers can transit freely.
Wednesdays: Vehicles with license plates ending in 5 and 6 cannot drive. All other numbers can transit freely.
Thursdays: Vehicles with license plates ending in 7 and 8 cannot drive. All other numbers can transit freely.
Fridays: Vehicles with license plates ending in 9 and 0 cannot drive. All other numbers can transit freely.
Saturdays: Vehicles with license plates ending in even numbers cannot drive. Vehicles with license plates ending in an odd number can drive to supermarkets, grocery stores, pharmacies and health centers only.
Sundays: Vehicles with license plates ending in odd numbers cannot drive. Vehicles with license plates ending in an even number can drive to supermarkets, grocery stores, pharmacies and health centers only.
Could this be more confusing or any dumber?
If we did have to go to the store or the bank, we had to plan our day in accordance with our license plate number.
What world were we living in? Oh, the early Covid one.
At first, I thought, no problem, we have 2 cars so we can drive one on the day the other isn’t allowed. Not that we were really going anywhere, but when you’re told you can’t drive, you want to drive!
I knew our personal car’s license number ended in a ‘1’. I couldn’t remember the license plate of our hotel pickup truck. I ran to the driveway where we had parked the car for security to look. Dang! Wouldn’t you know it? That license number also ended with a ‘1’. We couldn’t drive either car on Mondays or Sundays. Ugh.
These driving restrictions were supposed to be lifted by the end of April 2020. They weren’t. Although the restrictions changed a little over time, they stayed in effect in the whole country until November 1, 2020, when the borders reopened. And continued in the San Jose metropolitan area until March 2022!
Did these dumb suggestions or rules help prevent the spread of Covid? Probably not, but we were all trying as best we could.
Did you have a dumb suggestion or dumber rule where you were during the 2020 pandemic lockdown? Comment here and please💜 this post!
If you’ve missed why we were stuck at our hotel during the beginning of the pandemic, read this:
I remember seeing people driving in their own cars with the windows rolled up in full mask and latex gloves BY CHOICE!! I guess we were all just scared and uncertain.
This does seem odd, in hindsight. And I remember thinking that leaving stuff out before putting it away, and the extreme use of sanitizer, which some people continue to regularly use today, seemed odd. I didn’t do everything that was recommended, but I did some, because I am not a medical professional and have never lived through a pandemic before, so I felt like I had to trust. The extreme use of sanitizer felt like a sales opportunity, not to mention our knowledge of super bug encouragement, so I rarely participated in that nonsense. It was such an unprecedented time and so many people were dying around the world, so it was hard to always decipher what did and didn’t make sense, considering what we knew at the time.
Having to plan your life around what days you’re authorized to drive would not be fun.