@suzyQ7 thank you d22 is much better. Back to exams and papers. Thank god. Wife is good but anxiety has been ramping up. She scared and I’m supporting her as best I can. She’s a fighter.
I hope you are ok and your family too.
Also to those who are quoting my post about Florida.
I want to be clear. Every single person in the country has to follow the national guidelines. The guidelines discussed at length by dr Fauci. Extreme social distancing. Companies except for essential services and farmers etc. work from home. I don’t know many that aren’t agreeing with those. Hotspots lockdown and near hotspot lockdown.
A national lockdown avoids local decision making and states rights. It’s also not necessary or being promoted by the medical experts.
It totally misunderstands the vast distances and sections of the country that dont look or feel like yours. If you haven’t driven through Montana before is hard to describe.
@Nhatrang, @privatebanker, Boston was an early hotspot because of the Biogen conference in late February, which seems to have been a super spreader event. Of the 175 people at the conference over half came down with the virus. Many, but not all live in Boston or the nearby suburbs. Middlesex County (the suburbs just west of Boston proper) has 1340 diagnosed cases for a .084% (diagnosed) infection rate. Suffolk County’s (Boston) rate is worse at .18%. As we all know the official figures don’t capture the full number of cases.
We’re in lockdown but the peak is a week or two away. The hospitals will soon be overwhelmed.
@privatebanker - Will try. Daughter’s hospital in Boston sent someone from the other shift on her ward home with a fever yesterday so they’re all waiting with baited breath for the results of his testing. She’s understandably a bit freaked since they all work in close quarters.
The mayor was the one who didn’t want to shut down schools. The governor forced him to come up with a plan to feed the free lunch kids and close all public schools. DeBlasio was the one dragging his feet about public schools. Private schools had been closed for over a week at that point. Source: me.
The mayor then did a 180 and wanted a shelter in place order, which was resisted by Cuomo because, well, basically semantics, which was dumb. That’s the language used when there is a shooter or other threat where you don’t leave the house for ANY reason and you stay away from the windows.
Blaming FL on NYC spring breakers is inaccurate. Schools were canceled and we were essentially shut down BEFORE school spring break. So maybe some people went but no one I knew, and definitely not people in droves. Source: me and the cancelations I haven’t been refunded for yet.
The midwestern and southern schools and colleges were on spring break the week before, along with some NE boarding schools, at least from what I could tell on my FB page.
I just don’t understand why so many are stranded on cruise ships. Do people really not watch any news, or is it more this won’t happen to me? This virus has been around for two months, infected cruise ships such as the princess were trending in early March. Why the hell did anyone take a cruise from mid March and later??
This may not belong in this thread, but I am trying to think through the unemployment thing and how it impacts companies (Walmart, Amazon, et al) who are trying to hire people.
My niece has been working at Kohl’s. Averaging about 30 hours per week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I don’t know her hourly rate, but I am guessing it is not more than $11-$12 per hour. She is in the South and her state is not particularly generous with unemployment, and that portion will be tied to her previous earnings. But, if I am reading the federal legislation correctly, it appears that everyone is getting a flat $600 per week. That is essentially going to double her income from what she was earning. If this is typical for a lot of workers who are similarly situated, who is going to take those jobs at those places who are hiring? How much are they having to pay or will they have to pay to get anyone to come to work for them?
It’s interesting that cruises may be directed to their ports of registry. That’s the downside to using registration in another country to dodge US taxes. These other nations have benefitted from being tax havens but that may start to look like not such a great arrangement.
The problem is that places like the Bahamas may not have the medical resources to deal with an influx of coronavirus cases. Then again, at this point I’m not sure anywhere does.
There’s enough blame to go around. Skepticism about the impact of the virus and the seriousness of its threat from the government, the cruise industry, and the passengers, because of ignorances and economic motivations.
Some of the cruise passengers would have gotten on in Feb for longer 3 week or so cruise to South America. Then the countries started closing the ports and there was no where for them to disembark. So they have taken on fuel and supplies and headed back to the US or to homeports in Europe.
If they all have to go to their country of registration, then none of them will land in FL. I believe there’s only one cruise ship registered in the US (NCL’s Pride of America) and that one is based in Hawaii.
It’s a tough issue, though, since so many of the passengers are US citizens. If US citizens are using the service, then the US should be helping provide aid if needed. It’s only fair.
@privatebanker: I didn’t know your daughter was sick. I hope she’s feeling better. @Sue22: I hope she’ll be okay, and you too.
(I’ve been looking for some sort of “hug” emoji but don’t know what it is.)
“national stay-at-home”: it’d just mean you can’t travel anywhere in the country unless you have a specific reason to and you can prove it. “national” so that even people who feel it doesn’t apply to them realize it’s a big deal and it does apply to them, and so that it’s not just within one state.
It’s not obvious to all what is “necessary” and what is merely a habit. Some things are just automatic.
You can’t just walk your dogs and stop to chat with the neighbors, ride your bike 20 miles into the countryside, take the train to visit friends or grandkids, go on vacation, return from your beach house you went to thinking that’s where you’d ride it out but where you’re now bored, etc.[ just listing things I’ve heard ranted about in the past week on the phone. I also heard “well, surely spending Easter with the kids would be ok, right?”]
National guidelines would help in determining what is okay and what isn’t, with some flexibility built in (hunting might be Ok in some places and not in others…)
So, you could still go get groceries or to the pharmacy, go to the doctor’s or help someone who needs help, wherever they are. And it’d probably mean 40 miles away in some areas, v. down the street in other places.
In addition, it’d help employees since they couldn’t be fired if they didn’t go to work.
Optimally, something helping businesses furlough their employees and employees get their usual salary/wages minus a small percentage, would be put in place to incentivize people.
Lots of confusion about masks in France, too.
It sounds to me like “you don’t need them” is related to “we don’t have enough”.