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Upstart Americans brandish alligators at the almighty Reg Standards Soviet

Thou shalt respect the Osman and keep your distance, rebels

An American local council has dared to challenge the almighty Vulture Central Standards Soviet by proposing alligators as a standard unit of measure for social distancing during the coronavirus lockdown.

Social media bods for Leon County, a parish somewhere in a place called Florida, many thousands of miles from important parts of the world like Bognor Regis, has defied the recent decree of the Standards Soviet setting the Osman (as in giant Brit TV bloke Richard) as the unit of social distancing.

Social distancing is the government edict which says thou shalt stay at least six feet (or two metres if you're into new-fangled measurements) away from your fellow national inmates during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Rather than knuckling down and getting with the programme, however, Leon County decided to put forward its own rival measure. The cheek of it!

"This is a reminder that during COVID 19, please remember to keep at least 1 large alligator between you and everyone else at all times," Leon County said on Facebook, as reported by US telly channel CNN and spotted by one of our ever-vigilant readers noble standards-upholding praetorians.

The County also took to Twitter to show off its plan.

Of course, this is nonsense. Average American alligators measure around 21 and a half linguine in length, or just over a tenth of a brontosaurus if that’s too difficult to imagine. The largest specimens, by contrast, measure about half a standardised double-decker bus from snout to tail. All of this is far longer than the single Osman of social distancing, a much shorter 14.l strands of linguine. While the US measure increases the distance between you and a potentially infectious person, it's… well, just not cricket.

For a US state the size of 8,100 milliWales (or 0.07 Democratic Republic of Congos), this is just too far.

CNN, unhelpfully, decided to try and trample all over the Standards Soviet's turf by proposing all kinds of silly measures.

"Other ways to visualize 6 feet include imagining two golden retrievers, the width of an average sedan, a sofa, a dining room table, or the length of a mattress," their scribe wrote.

Anyone know the length of two average family hounds? If so, we may - may - consider adding it to the Register Standards Converter. ®

Bootnote

Australia's embassy in the USA complicated matters further with this effort, which is now appearing in outdoor ads down under.

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