Maggie's Farm

We are not a serious country. America's "social distancing" campaign has gone both too far and not far enough. The restrictions and guidelines are arbitrary, irrational and unevenly applied.

While children's swings and slides are now crime scenes, golf courses and pickleball courts in my city are wide open.

Weed and booze stores are considered "essential."

Barbershops and hair salons here were ordered to close three weeks ago, but government employees on landscaping crews who cut grass—like the ones I've seen all crammed together in a city truck—are still earning paychecks subsidized by the taxpayers sidelined from their jobs in the name of safety and public health.

In my state, and across the country, private gyms have been forbidden spaces for the masses for weeks. But if you're a celebrity or Beltway elitist, you can still stay in shape while sanctimoniously taping public service announcements telling everyone else to stay at home.

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez have been racking up social media clicks by sharing cozy family quarantine videos and coping tips from their multi-million-dollar Florida mansion. "We all need to take care of ourselves, mentally and physically, and also be respectful of the health and well-being of others. At a time when people need to stay apart, we can still find other ways to feel togetherness. Stay connected, and most importantly, stay safe," Rodriguez tweeted to his 1.2 million fans. Yet, last week, the power couple was caught by paparazzi exiting a Miami gym whose front-door sign read: "This gym is not open. Stay home stay safe."

Actors Mario Lopez and Mark Wahlberg have also become quarantine time favorites, sharing dance routines, home workouts and homeschool scenes to show their commitment to self-isolation. But last week, the buff Hollywood bros ventured out to a posh Los Angeles F45 Training facility to tape a partner workout together (with a two-person film crew) that they told their viewers to replicate in their apartments or backyards.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's personal trainer bragged that until last week, she was working out at the private Supreme Court gym. "Everybody's been shut down," trainer Bryant Johnson told Law360, a legal news and analysis website. "The only reason why I didn't shut the justice down is because, hey, she ain't having it," Johnson said.

Translation: We are not "all in this together," like the cliched hashtag saying goes. The privileged among us get VIP gym access during lockdown, while ordinary Americans are cooped up inside doing pushups in the living room, lunges through the bedroom, makeshift treadmill runs in slippery socks across the kitchen floor, and bicep curls with their jugs of laundry detergent.

Selective social distancing is a futile exercise in virus virtue signaling. Either we're all in or we're all out. You can't attribute curve-flattening to "social distancing" if huge swaths of people never practiced it or opted out when convenient.

How long must we carry on the charade? Public health autocrat Anthony Fauci insists we must continue living like this until there are "no new cases" and "no new deaths"—and until a vaccine (which his control-freak pal Bill Gates is working overtime to foist on the world) is in place. This is nuts.