Are we still supposed to be sharing observations on this thread?
I’m in Florida, and we started opening up a bit today. Restaurants can be at 25% capacity indoors. Same for retail. Need adequate spacing for outdoor seating. No salons opening yet. Bars are also closed. We have a pub (counts as a restaurant) near us and there was a sign posted indicating the number of people who could be served inside.
Our beaches opened today. The closest public parking lot to us appeared to be about half full around 1:30 this afternoon. We are on the intracoastal side, but I did not walk across the street to the beach today. Supposed to be police presence at all public accesses. I assume that is happening. I saw lots of kids/families heading to the beach.
My dh was supposed to have had an epidural steroid injection right as elective procedures were shutting down. That didn’t happen for him. He received a call about it today. Likewise, I received a call today regarding my upcoming dermatologist appointment which is scheduled for the 21st of this month. As in, a real, live person calling me to confirm. So, it is clear to me that medical folks are eager to get business moving along again. Can’t say that I blame them!
I had a conference call with the CDC today. The tone of the CDC doctors is sure a lot more uplifting than the tone on this thread! They did say that if you make a baseball analogy, we are in the 2nd inning, and the game might go into extra innings. They also said the reliability of the antibody tests is all over the place. Some of the tests are much higher reliability. They are big on social distancing and masks when around people. The tone was certainly not one of fear of reopening, although there clearly will be some spikes as that happens.
The print version of the WSJ carried a piece about the Roche antibody test today. A claim of 100% accuracy at detecting the antibodies, 99.8% at ruling them out.
Not linking, since it’s either pay-walled or they disapprove of an ad-blocker but:
I think I read they expect to produce somewhere around 15mm tests a day by June, doubling capacity by the end of the year. FDA granted emergency approval.
Fwiw: things never really shut down here in Central Alabama, other than personal grooming, churches, retail that didn’t also sell what were considered essential items, and dine-in. The stores that sold both essential and non-essential saw 2 to 3 times the traffic, so I can’t really say there was a net effect, one way or the other.
The Mercedes plant east of Tuscaloosa re-opened a week ago Monday. Had planned to do it two weeks prior, under the same rules they went back to work in other places (China included, I believe): over a certain age, you might opt out, masks, and temperature checked on the way in each morning.
I had signed up about 2 weeks ago to be an Instacart shopper, but the app wasn’t really working that well and it kept offering me assignments that were 20 miles away. Nope. So today one came up at the store near me and I took it. Really, NOT worth it to the shopper. The person had about 20 different items in her cart but multiples of some so it was 35+ items (which you still have to scan and haul to the customer’s door). It took me about an hour to shop, then 15 minute to her apartment, then had to climb a big set of stairs twice.
The grocery bill was about $66 and I made $13 (with a $5 tip) and it took me about 1.5 hours from my door to back to my home.
I hope you people are leaving more than a $5 tip. I don’t think I’ll do any more.
MomofWildChild: I hope the more uplifting tone you heard from the CDC is accurate. I am aware, however, and you probably are too, that the CDC is currently under a lot of scrutiny for not being independent right now. The CDC is under a lot of pressure to appeal to the Administration. So, I think that we have to take the CDC rosier picture with a grain of salt, unfortunately.
@twoinanddone , I have ordered and received deliveries from Whole Foods twice. The first time, I tipped 50% of the bill, the second time, about 33%. $5 as a tip is ridiculous, unless it’s for a $10 haircut.
Soooo… We’re a fifth or a bit more through with 70,000 dead already; does that mean we need to get used to a quarter million dead? Antibody tests are variable, some good, some terrible. Social distancing and masks are a good idea but some states are abandoning social distancing and most are not requiring masks. As we reopen, we can expect to see death rates rise. I must ask, what was the good, uplifting part of this litany of depressing information?
@twoinanddone that’s awful. $5 tips with the risk you are taking, time to pick the items, and all that work and climbing the stairs. Makes me angry for you. I was never lucky enough to get a slot from Instacart. But I give the pizza delivery guy $20 tips every time, for 2 large pies.
@rosered55 that is a good generous tips, I’ll keep this in mind if I ever lucky enough to get a time slot. I checked every morning and no luck.
I tipped 20% last time, and it was a bit order so $70. I appreciate hearing about what it is like as a shopper and will keep that in mind. My brother was working for a similar company until things got bad where he is. He told me how little people often tipped. and also, I understand changing things when they are mid-process isn’t good. The more time they have to spend on one order cuts down on how much they can make total so I try to not do that at all.
As I understand it, South Koreans have essentially opted into being tracked.
That some of us aren’t keen on carrying an ankle bracelet, like a criminal, is neither a new thing or necessarily similar to latin american peoples.
That South Korea, with a history of weathering China’s outbreaks, chose the route they did isn’t that surprising. That they’ll be testing, tracking, etc, for a long, long, while isn’t either.
People are already tracked more informally by cell phone companies and apps. google knows everything about me, I’m sure. FB knows about its users I’m sure as well. Did you see the videos that tracked spring breakers as they traveled back home and spread covid around the country a couple months ago? That was done without any specialized aps. I think privacy is nearly an illusion these days, sadly, but this might be one good thing that can come from that loss. The big difference of not opting into some app that tracks things is we wouldn’t get notified if we were potentially exposed. I don’t think it stops a number of various companies to track our movements.
I don’t think those apps are required to do a good job controlling things in the future. We do need extensive testing and contact tracing and quarntine and protective gear, though. Those are standard things used all over the world. States here are gearing up with them.
Some notes from CT governor’s update. Didn’t capture all things.
Major company in CT is hopeful about vaccine that is being developed.
Governor talked to Dr. Birx who recommends
1 hygiene
2 don’t get dismissive of masks
3 timing, wonder about where you are as a state. We have Boston and NY and so need to be more cautious. Mississippi had to ramp back because they had a short spike.
Crowding, stay out of crowded situations as best you can.
If only have to go to grocery store once a week instead of twice a week, that would reduce the demand by half and what a difference that would make.
Doctor in CT said that plasma will be helpful. If get enough antibody testing and then get donations will very helpful. Can get from people who are a few weeks out from having been sick.
He said that the hospitals here can easily get overwhelmed and one spike at a nursing home would overwhelm a hospital.
He questioned whether opening May 20 was safe from a medical standpoint.
He asked for PPE for nursing homes to be a priority.
Talked about restaurants and etc needing time to set up protective barriers, outside tents for restaurants, etc.
Doctor talked about protests that have taken place and said that ‘in midst of pandemic the responsible thing to do is to do things based on science, not emotion. We have patients dying every single day. Just because the number of deaths have decreased, does not mean we are safe. We still have to the basics that we alluded to. If they are going to try to use these tactics to try and scare people it is going to not be of any benefit. My community, my doctors, my respiratory therapists, my nurses, they will die from some of these bad choices they are making because they will end up seeing many more patients than they can handle. So, please be responsible. Please do the right thing.’ He talked about not putting elderly, seniors, and all ages at risk.
Another doctor talked about the fact that people are asymptomatic and people who shed the virus for 2 weeks before being diagnosed and we have older people. He thinks we can slowly reopen. Small business owners need a lot of instruction on how to do things safely. Can do but need to do with appropriate preparation.
Restaurants will open outside first.
Residence halls are riskier than commuter campuses. Will thinking about how to phase in safe ways to reopen.
Doctor was asked why he felt May 20 too early to reopen. He said that the worst case scenario is that 5% of population gets into intensive care and 15% in hospital. In NJ we saw 100 people die. This disease spreads like fire. Only would take 10-20 or 30 patients to overwhelm any (CT) hospital.
The responsible thing would be to see what is happening in other states and other countries, if the data is correct (they are not reporting the data in FL and Georgia very well), if the data is collected well, he is anticipating a big resurgence in both places in the next few weeks and wants the people of CT to follow a scientific basis rather than emotional need.’
He talked about many doctors living at the hospital to avoid getting family sick.
Talked about not being able to open lower impacted part of state because of location of the whole state between NY and Boston, two highly impacted areas. State is too small so whole thing will open at same time.
Challenge is people are asymptomatic and we don’t know the exposure of people who don’t live in our homes and so social distancing can’t be maintained if eat with people who don’t live in our homes and this can spread disease.
For dental hygiene – high risk profession. Must have rapid testing and test right at site and will need n95 mask at minimum with shield, hair, eyes, all things protected.
Looking to have testing capacity in place so can see flare ups if they come and having protective gear in place and giving businesses times to get ready with safety barriers and precautions.
They have gotten CEOs of testing related companies to get what we need to get testing materials. Feel we will be able to ramp up quickly. Big shortage of swabs but now have them coming. Think close to using saliva to use to take samples. Scaling up lab capacity.
Want to see asymptomatic people’s tests not accelerating.
Actually, it does. Spring breakers can be tracked as long as they are anonymized. But once it narrows it down to Sutieki and found that s/he was on Daytona Beach at noon, then went to airport and flew to Newark on the 3 pm flight…is a no-no.
National Jewish. And unfortunately I don’t know how reliable this particular test is; and yes, I have heard that many aren’t. My husband was anxious to give it a try… if it’s positive then it’s likely that I and my daughter were infected as well.
One of the jobs of the CDC when speaking to the public is to be cautiously optimistic.
My wife, who is a relatively high placed member of the data analysis and modelling team of our state is a lot less optimistic, even though our state has done a good job in dealing with the pandemic. It is fairly clear from the data, that opening things up to soon will result in a return to exponential growth in the number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. For at least half of the country, including many states which are starting to open up, it is too soon.