This.
I can’t speak for where you live, but in NY where I am, the locally own mom and pop hardware store is open. They did a brisk business once people reported on NextDoor they had hand sanitizer and toilet paper. My town’s small independent bookstore takes orders and over the phone and leaves your purchases outside for pickup. Small, independent pet store was open for curbside pickup, also.
I haven’t been inside a Walmart or Target here so can’t speak specifically, but it’s been reported that in some places the non essential parts of the stores were roped off - as they didn’t want people to come in and “browse.” Just the essential part (groceries) were open.
Both the boutique women’s clothing stores where I shop are taking orders over the phone and shipping . $5 flat rate at my favorite shop. They sent an email with raincoats on sale yesterday and noted they run big so order a size below. Friday you can book a zoom skin and makeup consultation with the woman who runs that department.
Also, there have been reports from all over the country of workers at Walmart and other big grocery store chains of employees dying from CV19. Here is an article about a Walmart SuperCenter in suburban Denver that had to shut last month do to outbreak among workers. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/business/walmart-coronavirus-colorado-death/index.html
Regarding the Pops, - you can’t play most instruments with a mask on and likely difficult to socially distance the whole orchestra from one another.
So it seems my part of MA is peaking right now, or at least Worcester is. We are in a small town nearby. I haven’t heard anything about cases in our town but who knows. Tomorrow son starts his job at one of those large essential retailers that someone was disparaging up thread. I’ll admit I’m getting a bit nervous. I’m going to be a very annoying mother and review all the basic instructions about not touching his face, washing his hands etc.
We are going to be putting our house on the market in a few months. Two bathsrooms had cracked tile. DH’s full bath needed to be completely re-tiled (floor) and D2’s had two rows the entire length that had to be replaced. The workers were here a total of 3.5 full days, and I absolutely HATED having them here. Nothing against them individually, but yes, we had all the windows open (fortunately the weather was pretty cool), and I had to wipe things down like a maniac after they left each day. I have a full bathroom in the master that did not need any work done, and I was none too pleased one day to see that they had been using my bathroom. I understand that they are human beings who need to use the restroom, though. I just wish in retrospect that DH had directed them to use the guest bath.
Not looking forward to future work in the house AT ALL.
All the reasons stated are very valid as to why sports will resume before orchestras.
But if orchestras could bring in anywhere near the money that baseball (insert football or basketball, golf, any mainstream sports league that has television coverage) they would find a way to operate.
I was thinking about this the other day when someone mentioned how that choir practice ended up with the majority infected and several dead.
As someone who plays a wind instrument, I can concur that appropriate spacing of wind and brass instruments would be impossible. These instruments require a huge amount of expelled air to play correctly-just a perfect setting for creating a very large cloud of infectious particles. I am very sad about the immediate future of music performance and education.
We shouldn’t be opening up until all the systems are all in place in every state to handle an outbreak swiftly. Take the instance that happened in S Korea the other day, They were able to immediately trace thousands of people who were in the nightclubs the night the infected person was there.
And everyone should be required to wear masks when out in public. Children, too.
We must follow the science and data - otherwise we go back to square one. Of course, that is unless people want another 200k+ to die just by August.
May 11, 2020, 7:52 PM EDT
By Jonathan Allen, Phil McCausland and Cyrus Farivar
“Coronavirus infection rates are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection, which was obtained by NBC News.”
“The data in a May 7 coronavirus task force report are at odds with President Donald Trump’s declaration Monday that “all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.”
I personally don’t get this desperate need to get a hair cut. I mean, I understand wanting one, but I don’t consider it a true need.
My H, who has always been a fan of those contagion movies, said what of this is like one of them, except inside of this fast moving uncontrollable virus wiping us out, it’s one we could have controlled, but ignored science. So now we get to watch it slowly work it’s way through the population.
The resentment is about taking up resources that are meant for locals. Meaning specifically the hospitals. The hospitals up here were built with the number of locals in mind, not the locals plus thousands of temporary visitors. There aren’t enough beds or resources for the locals plus all the very many people who are coming up from hot spots and then staying/spreading the infection among the locals in previously relatively uninfected areas. That is the reasoning. Also, the taking of local supplies (wipes, tp, food, hand sanitizer etc) and then driving it back down to their primary residence area doesn’t go over well.
I agree there shouldn’t be resentment toward an entire state and I get and understand the point about if you own property then you should be allowed to access it. However, those who are purposefully not following stay-at-home ordinances in not only their home state but their second-home state are coming up from a heavily infected area and helping spread the virus all around a fairly infection-free area.
Nate Silver (on FiveThirtyEight podcast) was expressing his irritation about the news reporting of the data re: C19 cases.
His gripe was there is significantly more testing being done today than two weeks ago. And two weeks from now? There will be even more testing being done. Systems are ramping up & test capacity is increasing.
Strictly hanging on to # reported cases (positive tests) and reporting it in an alarmist way and out of context (increased testing) is not reporting the data well.
He has expectations that the news narrative will go something like this: this state relaxed SIP orders and now has 1200 new cases. And this will be reported out of context that the state is now running X more tests every week versus Y amount of tests several weeks ago.
The public may quickly forget that just a month ago, most people infected with C19 were told to recover at home. No test.
(our experience, for sure).
Our suburb just erected drive thru testing last week. Almost 2 months after SIP.
Hospital capacity is the ball to keep our eye on.
I think states should be concerned with preventing surges and spread in cases and people coming from more highly infected areas (or anywhere outside the state) are a risk. I think lots of rights are great but during a pandemic we should all be doing things to reduce the spread and save lives and our economy. maine already had lots of people come from out of state and spread the virus. So did many other parts of the country.
I’m DESPERATE.
To rub salt in my wounds, I was asked to take a couple shifts helping out with curbside pick up at one of the restaurants to give the managers a day off.
Eeek! I’ll be seeing customers!
I will try to have a sense of humor about my very short hair now grown out into a wild mess. Haha!
The Stanford anti-body test conducted in Santa Clara has been adjusted…
So the mortality rate is still 3X higher than the flu but not the 10X+ that has been suggested.
Okay, but how long is that going to take? “all the systems are in place in every state to handle an outbreak swiftly” is a somewhat lower bar than “until we have a vaccine,” but the timeframe is still pretty nebulous.
I really do believe that if someone could wave a magic wand and say “If you live like this for one year, COVID will go away,” living under severe restrictions for that year would be the right thing to do. A year is a long time. It would be a real sacrifice, for some people more than others. But it would be worth it.
As it is, maintaining the status quo in the more restricted areas for an indefinite amount of time is a non-starter.
And again, I’m not saying open up everything. Certainly not nightclubs. But people have non-trivial emotional and physical demands that cannot be met under the status quo. Most of them could be met by something well short of a return to normal, but not what many states have now.
The science and data can tell us the projected number of COVID deaths under different scenarios. It can’t weigh the other costs that need to be weighed in order to make decisions that involve stripping people of rights as basic as the rights to adequate education, the right to move freely, and so on.
However, the flu mortality rate is that of estimated deaths / estimated symptomatic cases, while this estimate of COVID-19 mortality rate is of known deaths / estimated cases (including asymptomatic). The ratio of COVID-19 to flu mortality rate is likely to be higher than 3X if we knew the true apples-to-apples numerators and denominators (i.e. for flu, known deaths would be smaller than estimated deaths, and estimated cases would be higher than estimated symptomatic cases, reducing its mortality rate).
Also, Santa Clara County is a significantly higher SES area than the US (or New York, where a similar calculation suggests a much higher COVID-19 mortality rate), so people may have better access to medical care. It is also a lower density area than New York, so people may not be getting as high doses of virus when they do get infected.
^^^^ IMO, one of the things that must ‘die’ as part of COVID is high density living. I don’t see how much of what made NYC what is was can continue until we have a vaccine with much better efficacy than the current annual flu shot.
And then more people than not would have to choose to get the vaccine!
Until the Federal govt can get it’s act together. So far all the promises about the ramping up testing have been lies. Tracing is equally important, I haven’t heard one word about a Federal government tracing program. Leaving it up to individual states is worthless as some will do it and others won’t. Not to mention the cost to the states.
The Federal govt has blown this from the beginning and by having states do it all is not only impractical but dangerous.
Exactly this. It has to be a political decision, no way out of that. It should be informed by science and data and economic considerations, but it is a political decision. A suitably diverse group of experts will never agree, so the elected leaders make the call.
And Laramie Wyoming is not Staten Island, so elected leaders have to evaluate the infection rates, economic ruin, and hospital capacity in their own areas.
And speaking of being informed by science - human beings are biological creatures who produce solid and liquid wastes. All day, every day. Opening up parks and beaches without opening up restrooms is a unscientific as it gets. Load up the cleaning crew with PPE and work instructions, but for the love of wildlife, my favorite county park is not the streets of San Francisco, and I don’t want to be stepping around human waste.