In SoCal here, and many shelves bare, frozen food sections totally empty, cleaning products, pasta and rice are particularly difficult to find, and of course, tp. We were happy to see our local Costco is doing its best to ration tp to one package per customer. Vitamins were also difficult to find at Trader Joe, but we lucked out one day last week and found them restocked. We normally don’t have a lot of frozen meat, but we did buy a couple extra packages of chicken and sausage to freeze this weekend. I also made a big pot of chicken soup and froze some individual soup servings to have handy for future.
I’ll admit a personal bias, but IMO instead of issuing a blanket order to shut down all business, the decision should be based on if the business is able to maintain a CDC approved separation of workers and proper sanitation and protective gear. For example, production at my business is set up so that we can have employees separated in their own rooms. One employee operates the room with the pick and place equipment, another operates the room with the reflow oven, etc. The only time they’d ever interact would be in the bathroom, and even that interaction can be eliminated with a schedule or communication system. There is no reason to shut something like that down if the employees are segregated and the bathrooms regularly cleaned.
Our Winn Dixie and Publix as well as Trader Joe’s and Walmart have lots of completely empty aisles never mind shelves. In Publix, meat is put out first thing in the morning and empty within the hour. There were 83 people lined up to get into our St. Pete Beach Publix the other morning. Of course we are inundated with spring breakers who are here because of beach closures in Clearwater, Miami and FLL. It is a mess.
The Governor of Ohio is asking that all businesses in the state check the temperature of each employee daily to help screen out the sick.
“The temperature check is not perfect but is one way to screen out employees who may be sick,” DeWine said. “Businesses should do everything they can to monitor their workforce. We’re dead serious about employers taking temperatures. We’re expecting them to do this.”
Maybe they can make ventilators instead…
60,000 California homeless could contract coronavirus in next eight weeks
The governor of California said on Wednesday that modeling done by experts has shown that an estimated 60,000 homeless people in the state could become ill with coronavirus over the next eight weeks.
“Over the next eight-week period we have modelled that (with 108,000 unsheltered people in the state), at an attack rate of 56%, we’re looking at 60,000 individuals who could have Covid-19,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a Facebook broadcast. (Guardian)
Here we go, this is what it is coming to, folks:
Washington state is setting up a hospital for coronavirus patients at a soccer field
From CNN’s Andy Rose
King County in Washington state is taking over a public soccer field to use as a hospital for people who may have coronavirus.
The facility in Shoreline is designed to accommodate up to 200 beds, according to an announcement from the city. Shoreline officials said they are hoping to save traditional hospital beds only for people with the most serious needs if there is a surge in suspected coronavirus patients.
A video from CNN affiliate KOMO shows a group of workers on Wednesday laying construction materials on the field.
However, city officials said the hospital will not be allowed to operate unless all city regulations are followed, including obtaining a permit. It is unclear when the hospital will open.
" if the business is able to maintain a CDC approved separation of workers and proper sanitation and protective gear. "
That’s a nice thought, but asking to some at the CDC to inspect huge factories in order to give approval to say open, when its all hands on deck for ALL government health services during this Health Emergency is not in the general public’s interest.
That’s good to know. It’s the one thing that’s been making me antsy. I went food shopping twice today and both places (Hannaford and Whole Foods) were pretty picked over. A few people started losing it in Hannaford, but that may have been more from the fact that only 2 checkout lines were open.
Grrrr. They just showed a clip of 5 kids they interviewed about their graduation being cancelled. The teens were standing right next to each other. Why didn’t the film crew and interviewer tell them to stand 6 feet apart? Because they wouldn’t fit in the shot? Sheesh!!!
That is not good. I have a friend in California who said his Whole Foods has plenty of beef chicken bacon type things. But the plant based and vegan things are cleaned out.
BAD idea! If anything, that could add to the spread if someone is sick. The nontouch forehead thermometers aren’t very accurate and still require people to come face to face well within the 3’ minimum separation. God help us if nonmedical people without protective gear decide to use the more accurate but even more risky with regards to communicable disease oral thermometers. This is not something employers or random people should be doing. It’s inaccurate and requires people with no protective gear to be really close, plus creates a bottleneck and potential system that concentrates germs. No. Just no.
@mathmom - Italy has sent 500,000 swabs to the US, carried by our Air Force.
The title says “test kits” here but it was just the swabs, and we need them!
Louisiana will use state park cabins to house some people who need quarantine:
Even if not required by public health orders, factories will shut down if no one is buying. Seems unlikely that people are going out to buy cars in the normal volume these days.
Colorado will close schools until April 17
From CNN’s Andy Rose
Colorado is the latest state to shut down elementary and secondary schools to combat the spread of coronavirus.
In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said he signed an executive order suspending in-person teaching and both public and private schools across the state. The order will go into effect Monday until April 17.
This website might give an indication of possible hot spots for Covid-19 outbreaks – it is data collected by Kinsa, a company that makes “smart” thermometers – that is, digital body temperature thermometers that connect to a smartphone app, and also supply data to the company. They have years of data tracking flu-like illnesses – and they are able to use current data to see unusual or unexpected upticks of people running fevers. https://healthweather.us/
Did I miss this somewhere? Two US congressmen have now tested positive - Republican Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida) and Democrat Ben McAdams (Utah).
My sister who lives in the Bay Area, she was looking for house to buy for months and finally signed the contract 2 weeks ago with the interest of 3%. Within 2 weeks so many changes, it spooked her and she cancelled the contract. She asked if it’s the right move I have no idea. Does that mean the housing cost will go down with this recession? Usually when interest goes down, housing cost goes up. But what will happen now is anyone’s guess…
California to provide $150 million to protect homeless from coronavirus pandemic
California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order today to allocate $150 million to mitigate the spread of coronavirus among the state’s particularly vulnerable homeless population.
According to Newsom, the state will provide:
$100 million directly to local governments for shelter support and emergency housing for the homeless population
$50 million to purchase travel trailers and lease rooms in hotels, motels, and other facilities in partnership with counties and cities to provide immediate isolation placements statewide for homeless individuals.
The state is immediately procuring 1,309 trailers and is leasing two hotels to provide emergency isolation units for homeless people, Newsom announced at a news conference.
About 160 million – more than the population of Russia – of India’s 1.3 billion people don’t have access to clean water.
“It could prove disastrous for people who don’t have access to clean water,” said Samrat Basak, the director of the World Resource Institute’s Urban Water Program in India, AP reports.
UNICEF said last week that almost 20% of urban Indians do not have facilities with water and soap at home. What could make things worse, experts say, is that social distancing is nearly impossible in many Indian cities that are among the world’s most densely populated areas.
So far, the government has apparently been able to keep a lid on community transmission of the virus. Authorities have confirmed 147 cases and three deaths, all linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad.
India’s government has made fervent appeals to the public to practice social distancing and good hand hygiene. India also was one of the first countries to essentially shut its borders and deny entry to all but a select few foreigners. But in a country as big as India, community transmission is all but inevitable, experts say.
Clean water is the first line of defence, said V.K. Madhavan, India chief executive at WaterAid, a global advocacy group for water and sanitation. If there is no access to clean water, the situation could worsen.(Guardian)
There’s no need for the CDC to inspect anything. There are plenty of orders being made right now that aren’t being inspected and employees will of course have the right to quit, sue or whatever if they feel the employer violated the 3’ spacing requirement.
The plan of social isolation and eliminating risk areas makes sense from a standpoint of saving lives, which most people agree on. But it also extracts a huge toll financially. Let’s at least be smart enough to recognize that not everything is a high risk and only kill off the things that are risky. There are plenty of small to medium sized business making and producing and creating all sorts of things; if those businesses can operate in a way that’s not exposing their employees to high risk, we should let them for the sake of the economy’s survival.