Small Northern New England city here. Went to the post office and full-service gas station this morning and observed:
Post office had a staff member going around spraying and wiping down surfaces. Little red footprints spaced 6’ apart on the floor. Clear plastic barrier between the clerk and customer. I saw two people working the counters, the person cleaning, and two other customers. It’s a large-enough space that distancing was easy. Staff, one other customer, and I were wearing mask, one other customer was the only one not.
Gas station owner/manager wasn’t wearing a mask and actually asked me about wearing mine even while I was driving around. When I told him I didn’t want to breathe all over him, he thanked me.
Likely going to be years to learn all the ramifications of this virus.
“Learning about a new disease on the fly, with more than 78,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the pandemic, they have little solid research to guide them. The World Health Organization’s database already lists more than 14,600 papers on covid-19. Even the world’s premier public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have constantly altered their advice to keep pace with new developments.
“We don’t know why there are so many disease presentations,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Bottom line, this is just so new that there’s a lot we don’t know.”
More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. “No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,” said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.”
Have hardly been out, except walking dogs in my neighborhood or driving somewhere to do a curbside pickup - so don’t know if police officers are wearing masks. But I assume so since it’s required in NY that everyone who cannot socially distance wears one.
As for state employees everyone is working from home except front line workers (State Police, for example.)
My H has always been considered essential when State closes down - like during Sandy or even big snowstorms - but he’s not for this. All executive branch employees are also working from home.
About the masks. Not everyone has a mask , or even a bandana. I was working with someone on the adoptions Sat who had no mask and in a nice way I questioned her about it. She said she did not own one. We have someone who is sewing them, but they are going very fast. If she continues to work adoptions the shelter needs to provide her with one. What we do have at the shelter is plenty of Hand Sanitizer and even wipes. We had a good supply before this happened, so we were fortunate. I believe in some countries I read that that the government was able to make sure every citizen has one. I think as people go back to work, the employers will hopefully also be able to supply them.
I am very lucky that I have them from my employer. I know some places are requiring them, such as costco, but hopefully they have some to hand out. They are not always accessible. I know that in our poorer areas not only are they doing testing at the churches, (drive thru) but also handing out masks and sanitizer.
Our N95 masks are getting kind of bedraggled, so I just ordered five cloth ones from a local woman. I am the least handy person in the world, so I can’t make them.
As far as opening things up, I am sort of ready. We have a bunch of cloth masks so we can throw them right in the washer when we get home and grab a clean one next time (we don’t go many places, but have a supply if we do start doing more). But as long as there are people who refuse to wear a mask as some kind of a political protest, I will not be comfortable resuming normal shopping or public outings. These people are really going to cause problems. Unless you have a medical reason that you can’t wear one, you should in order to protect others! I think we could resume a lot of things with that in place along with being careful of handwashing etc.
There was a Good Housekeeping article about different companies making masks, and I bought from a few of those. I figure we’ll be needing them for a while and if/when S does go to college he will need his own supply too. Which gets me thinking, how often will college kids wash them. Ugh.
One of the companies listed (DHVANI) was giving away one cloth mask to people who did not have one.
Since this isn’t the making masks thread I think I can put this here.
I ordered this one a few weeks ago and they came last week. Super comfy. But because I have a tiny head and tiny ears, I still have to use Bobby pins to keep it from slipping off my ears.
May look into masks for kids for a better fit - but these are fine for me for now and H likes it much more than the homemade ones we were given by a friend.
I sewed a few cloth masks, which reminded me that I don’t really like sewing. When we walk around our neighborhood, there’s usually no one else out. But now on nice days, we do often see a few people here or there. It’s pretty easy to avoid them, by crossing the street, which we do anyway so our dogs don’t annoy them. We haven’t seen anyone wearing a mask, just for walks around the neighborhood.
But we’ve started carrying face coverings with us for walks, just in case. I first tried one of my sewn ones, just pulled down under my chin — that is very uncomfortable and it pulls it off my ears. So, I now just use a cloth fashion scarf, wrapped and tied, then I’d pull it up over my face, if necessary. For H, I cut a t-shirt to make a scarf for him and he wears it like a scarf.
For shopping, we’d use either one of my masks or we have a few surgical masks + a nylon over it for a closer fit.
We do have a few N95 masks, but we’re treating them like gold.
I really hope supplies increase dramatically over the next couple of months.
There’s a facebook group in our community of people making cloth masks. They were donating them to nursing homes, first responders, essential workers, etc. Now, they’re making a new push to produce a bunch to distribute to community members, since Gov. Baker made face coverings mandatory in all public places, where social distancing isn’t practical.
It is cases like the one of the South Korea bar hopper which show that it is impossible to rely on peoples common sense or individual risk assessment.
ONE young man in his 20ies, corona positive, probably asymptomatic at the time, felt the need to go to 6 different clubs or bars in one night. At last count, 84 infections could be traced to him, and South Korea’s contact tracers are trying to make contact with FIVE THOUSAND people. Entertainment district closed infinitely. All South Korea’s gains against Coronavirus destroyed in one night, maybe for good. ONE case, and there will be livelihoods destroyed, probably deaths.
If people act like this, there is no choice but lockdown, with all the economic horror attached.
A Cape Cod ice cream shop was inundated Friday, after they tried a soft opening for pickup orders only. Apparently, they posted online that people should order at least an hour in advance. But when people driving by saw that they were open, they would just stop and try to place an order, then get irate that they’d have to wait. They also got way too many phone orders. As orders got backed up, irate customers were swearing at the teenage girls working there. One worker quit at the end of the day.
“All of the sudden word spread like wildfire and nobody listened to what we told them how the protocol we had set up,” he said Saturday. “People have forgotten how to treat other human beings in the six or seven weeks that they’ve been confined to their homes. They have no clue how to respect other human beings.”
The owner posted about it on facebook and got a lot of support, as well as media coverage. After Friday’s experience, he thought he’d just have to close until there’s a vaccine. But Saturday apparently went much better.
*He said he hopes people will be more patient and treat each other with kindness.
“We’re not claiming that we know what we’re doing. We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re giving it a shot,” he said.*
Several pages back someone commented on the fact that 15% unemployment is not good but that means 85% are working so in many areas it must be business as usual. There were comments about those not yet reflected in the numbers (contract work, biz owners, etc) but what was not noted is those that are underemployed and not drawing unemployment.
My company, that is open, is 99% able to work from home, and to date has not lost any income due to the SAH has reduced every employee’s pay by 20%. There is no end date in sight and we are expecting it to last through the end of the year. I imagine this is in anticipation of some of our client businesses not coming back or reducing costs after this is over. We employ over 50,000 worldwide (with a large percentage in the U.S.) none of whom appear in the employment figures but are none the less taking a financial hit.
I felt pretty alone in this but was on a zoom virtual happy hour last week with a group of friends across various industries. I learned that 3 of the 7 (including me) on the call have had their pay cut. The other 2 were 10% and 15% both while still WFH. While this made me feel not so alone it also highlighted how the unemployment figures do not come close to explaining the economic impact.
On another note, my 16y/o son ran to the local hardware store this weekend to pick up some items needed to deal with a clogged drain. He is generally a polite kid and the store did not have an automatic door. He walked through and the door closed behind him. He went to get a cart and was confronted by an older woman due to the fact that he did not hold the door for her on entry to the store.
She went off about how rude he was, how kids have no respect, did his parents not teach him any manners, etc. He responded with “I would normally hold a door for anyone behind me however due to social distancing I am not able to at this time.” This really set her off and he eventually had to walk/run away as she was starting to get very abusive in her words and tone. She was masked and gloved so she is obviously not unaware of the pandemic but apparently felt that courtesy should over rule science.
Georgia is playing with changing how they report their numbers so its hard to compare apples to apples. And the graphs they are producing are a bit… shall we say… odd. So it appears that things may be better than they really are. Hard to tell for sure.
@momzilla2D I’ve posted here before about the bakery where my daughter works, which has never closed. It is unbelievable to me the way the employees are being treated by some of the customers. They are being inundated by orders and can’t keep up. At one point, they turned off the phone for two days to get through the backlog. Of course, with yesterday being Mothers Day, their orders went through the roof again. My daughter was thankful that yesterday she was in the back decorating and not having to deal with customers. She said they were almost two hours behind on pickup orders. When I asked why they didn’t implement some sort of mechanism to stop taking orders after they’ve reached a certain number, she said that only the Corporate office can determine a change in process (or something like that). In any case, most customers have been understanding, but some have been irate. A few weeks ago, one employee had to take a week off after getting berated by a customer (that was the last straw; she was emotionally wiped out and had to leave for the day).
We have a community FB page where I live where people share info about restaurants doing take out and delivery. Yesterday, one restaurant was unable to manage the process well with the number of orders they had. This is a very popular, locally owned place but some people were publicly berating them online. I guess I’m just a little more understanding and reasonable but with so many restaurants currently closed and yesterday being Mother’s Day, you might think yesterday would not be the best day to order carry out/delivery and expect it to be smooth sailing, knowing it’s going to be a very popular day to not cook at home.
That’s awful. People need to be treated with understanding at this point.
Most of the places around here only took Mother’s Day orders until noon on Saturday…and many were only open for pick up of those orders on Mother’s Day.
We did our ordering out this week on Friday…to avoid a rush.