@dietz199, your conclusion doesn’t jibe with what a fairly large majority of Americans believe about SAH policies and reopening.
“More than two-thirds of Americans – 68% – are concerned about their respective states being reopened too quickly, and with a growing partisan divide, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center.”
“An ABC News/Ipsos poll out on Friday morning found similar results to the Pew poll, with almost two-thirds (64%) of those polled saying that “opening the country now is not worth it because it will mean more lives being lost” compared to only 34% who would prefer to open the country to keep economic damage to a minimum. “
It definitely seems to depend upon that word, “if.” A couple of weeks will tell us if there are minimal new cases. From what I heard on NBC tonight regarding places that have already opened, it doesn’t look too promising.
I’m behind in sharing this information, but our county’s sheriff’s department now has a beach occupancy dashboard online that is operational on the weekends to indicate how full our beaches are on the weekends. This information is updated every hour. The “fullness” of our beaches is monitored at every single public beach access and reported on this dashboard by each public access point. Many of these are very close together. When the beach is “full” as determined by our sheriff’s department, it is closed and the public access is cut off. During the week, the dashboard does not operate, but she sheriff’s department continues to patrol our beaches.
I talked to my friend today, and she and her extended family did get together with her parents over the weekend so Mother’s Day could be celebrated. She said her dad (probably early 80s), in particular, struggled with the social distancing concept even though he was constantly reminded. No cognitive issues at all. Given photos that I saw on social media, many people saw their moms this weekend. My mom has been deceased over 30 years, my mil is several states away, and our ds lives on the opposite coast, so there was no temptation here. It’s hard to say what I would have done were I closer to mil and ds and had had the opportunity to see either of them. But, I told dh that if I saw ds (last time we saw him was Thanksgiving) that it would be incredibly hard not to hug him. Gosh, such a natural thing to love on your kid. So, I can see why my friend’s father struggled, notwithstanding constant reminders.
I think we never really closed down, so ‘reopening’ to add retain and personal services hasn’t increased the exposure. There were tons of people at the grocery stores and hardware stores and Starbucks and gardening places. I see my friends posting pictures of their hikes or bird watching trips that are a lot farther than the 10 miles from home the governor allowed in his orders. When I’d been home 10 days or more in a row, I’ve gone out and see the grocery stores PACKED and people buying one or two things (so clearly not planned and not an emergency).
I would oppose reopening if we’d ever really closed. Give the retail stores the same opportunities as the grocery stores or Target to open, reduce the numbers in the stores, keep everyone 6’ apart, etc. Why is it okay to go to Target but not Kohl’s? Why can you buy a computer at Costco but not Microcenter?
Let’s just say we’ve found people in Maine are a good bit friendlier than their southern neighbors. We went to Boston for our first wedding anniversary. The hotel clerk was rude, the waiter was rude, everyone was rude. That’s when we realized we’d made a good decision to live in Maine.
I’m not sure how accurate polling on an issue like “should we lift the lockdown measures and resume life as it was prior to the coronavirus?” is. Will admit that might not be a word-for-word transcription of the polling questions, because… I didn’t read them and doubt 95% of those who’s opinion will be influenced by the poll will, either.
There’s a fair amount of “it’s a war and we’re winning… we can’t stop now” rhetoric out there right now (I’ve seen 3 in the last day or so, from various state’s politicians. Since the media has a limited bandwith, there has to be many more saying it - they’re just less important and articulate than the one’s they cover.)which is laughable on it’s face. The virus isn’t on the run, it’s not going anywhere, and calling driving the economy in the ground by holing up in your house and isolating ‘winning’ is a sad, sad spin on public policy.
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Did you see the cases in those “surges” in China and South Korea? 8 in Wuhan and 35 in S. Korea. Testing/tracking/mitigating will help these not to spread…which is the goal. Covid cases are not going to disappear until there is a vaccine, period.
The shut down was supposed to be about flattening the curve, not erradicating the disease. A vaccine could take 2 years. Testing/tracking/mitigation will be the new normal until then. But we can’t be shut down again.
Those polls are worth a lot! (Not). Yeah, people will SAY they are in favor of continued restrictions on businesses and freedoms- as long as they themselves can find a way to see their relatives and get their hair done. People have varying degrees of nervousness, which is understandable, but many, many folks are in favor of a controlled and safe reopening of the economy.
Retail that sold essential goods remained open during the shutdowns. COSTCO sold food and other essentials. Kohl’s did not. If an essential retailer was open, most states did not restrict what items the store was permitted to sell (exception Michigan and a couple other counties in the country where clothing had to be blocked off).
So with all the zoom meetings, family get togethers, etc., I was blown away by this one. We know choir performances are not possible right now. But a zoom acapella performance??
It almost made me cry. I highly recommend using earbuds/headphones.
The last “social” thing I did was attend a fund raiser for a local arts organization. It was held at a crowded microbrewery. First days of March. My husband came down with COVID shortly after that… don’t know if that’s where he was infected or not, but I myself will likely stay away from any group events for a long time…
(my first time trying to quote–hopefully I did this correctly)
Along with everyone else, I’m sure. I’m so anxious to understand this virus, why some become ill, others don’t, whether there are antibodies, whether one can contract it twice, etc.
@katliamom, so, if your husband had COVID, I’m assuming you were exposed. You either had it and were asymptomatic or didn’t contract it. Yet you still are concerned about getting COVID (I’m assuming). No judgement at all. Just trying to make sense of it all. Can we be exposed once ( repeatedly–like from a spouse) and not get COVID or get it and be asymptomatic but go to the market/doctor/salon and catch it from someone else with passing interaction?
I’m not going to type out how one of my friends refers to folks from Massachusetts.
I have observed on this thread a surprising amount of state loyalty! Idk if that is a good or bad thing. But, it is definitely a “thing,” and an observation.
I understand the law but just feel it was inequitably administered. Starbucks isn’t essential. Food trucks aren’t essential. Take out from restaurants is not essential. Ace hardware and Home Depot? Those things were closed in other countries and only true essential grocery and pharmacies were open. Americans would have revolted long before now if everything was truly closed. Denver mayor announced he was closing the liquor stores and people rushed to the stores (all it would have meant was that they’d have to go to another county) so he ‘reconsidered.’ If we hadn’t closed at all, the virus would have swept through schools and hospitals and nursing homes. Everyone would have had it, and either lived or died.
But flattening the curve did not mean the virus would be gone, and many people think that that was the goal. Get rid of every single germ and we’ll all emerge like the Munchkins into a beautiful world. No, that’s not how it will work. I think it is time to get to the next phase, open parks and outside sports (to play, not watch). Treat similar businesses similarly. Figure out social services and primary education.
What people say we should all do and what they are actually doing are starting to diverge here in a big, big way.
I could give plenty of examples, but just run an errand or three and you’ll probably see it for yourself. Governor’s “next phase” orders will be a formality by the time they’re given.
Many non-essential retailers were doing brisk online sales. If they were set up to sell online in the first place. Ask me how much I spent at Nordstrom while it is still closed for in person sales… and it appears that my items were shipped from physical stores from all over the country…
I agree @Groundwork2022. I live in a city and in mid-march it was like a ghost town. I could go to a store (in search of toilet paper) and park in the front row, run in, check for what I needed and leave. I could go 10 days without leaving home. Until this weekend, I hadn’t put gas in my car since February. People were teaching their teens to drive on the Interstate because there was no traffic.
Now we are back to normal, and maybe even worse. People are going to stores just for something to do. Open up the parks and courts and baseball diamonds and they’ll do those things and not go to stores.
Still a relative ghost town here in the greater Seattle area. I guess we have room to spread out… A very popular TJ/Whole Foods plaza had ample parking and no wait time to get inside the stores last Saturday despite it being a pre-Mother’s Day Saturday. In the waterfront parks, at least in my neck of the woods, more than 95% of the people kept their distance (and it was a record setting, hot weekend).
