God willing, we’ll have sports to talk about this week, but the big story on Action News is this gym in New Jersey, which is opening up despite Governor Phil Murphy’s shutdown orders.

The news trucks are everywhere. You probably saw the clips this morning outside of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, where we’ve got police, reporters, supporters, and pretty much everybody under the sun. It’s not really a complicated story. The owner opened up even though he’s not supposed to, resulting in clips like this one:

And this one:

 

No police response yet, at least not that I’ve seen cross the wires. Keeley had an update later saying that no state police were on hand, just local officers to keep the peace, which has happened thus far. No incidents to report and it seems like business as usual inside of the gym.

Here’s my moderate personal take on COVID-19 and the gatherings you saw this weekend:

First, I think people are looking at the concepts of “risk taking” and “individual freedom” the wrong way. It’s not about putting yourself at risk, it’s about putting other people at risk.

Example:

There’s a rickety old wooden rollercoaster at the park, which is dangerous. Person A rides the rollercoaster, knowing the risk. Person B doesn’t ride the rollercoaster, also knowing the risk. In a vacuum, these two folks make a decision that’s appropriate for them. No problem, life goes on.

The issue with COVID-19 is that risk doesn’t exist inside a vacuum. If you go to to Manco and Manco and get Coronavirus, then go to the Fishtown ACME, you might infect a cashier who is just trying to do their essential job with as little risk as possible.

That doesn’t make the cashier a “beta cuck liberal soy boy,” it just means they’re trying to mitigate potential harm as much as possible. You can’t do that when some people are going to Manco and some people aren’t.

Of course, sitting inside of our houses forever is not realistic, and we need to think of ways to safely reopen the economy, or else we’re going to cripple small businesses like Atilis and crush the hard work of people just trying to make an honest living and chase the American dream. The folks running this gym are watching their business fall apart and don’t have a lot of options here, so I can understand why they’re reopening despite orders not to.

We just have to be less selfish overall and stop making this a black and white issue of “you’re either a pussy or you’re not,” because that’s not an accurate description of what’s going on. There’s much more nuance, and if we can find a reasonable middle ground here, we can save lives and help small businesses at the same time.

Thank you, and good morning.

EDIT –

Here’s an update: