Wisconsin Running Club Celebrates Return to Complacency
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Members of a running club in Wisconsin met early today to celebrate that state’s newly lifted stay-at-home order, gathering to hug, shake hands, and even kiss one another before setting off on a 10-mile run.
In a 4-3 ruling, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Governor Tony Evers’s extension of an order for residents to stay home to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Within hours, some bars were “packed wall to wall.”
“It feels so good to return to a state of normal, thoughtless complacency,” said Bernard Rieux, 55, a member of the La Peste Road Runners, a group based in the small town of La Peste, near Milwaukee. “After so many weeks of isolation, I’m so happy, finally, to be able to let my guard down.”
The state has recorded more than 10,900 confirmed coronavirus cases and 421 deaths, numbers that have grown steadily since March.
Jean Tarrou, 34, another LPRR member, said she wasn’t concerned about “things like numbers.”
“What I’m concerned about is freedom,” she said. “And getting back to my own personal version of normal as quickly as possible, with self-serving rationalizations, without having to stop and think about others.”
Tarrou then excused herself to get a drink of water from the club’s communal water jug.
“I’ve had this darn dry cough for, like, a week now,” she said.
