Coronavirus: Miles away from ordinary.

Whoever made the decision to withdraw the limit screwed up. You can't let people resort to their base instincts.

 

People really are selfish. Yesterday, I did a Costco trip. I showed up early and before it opened, barely anybody in line and I am mostly focused on one thing because my wife REALLY wants Lysol wipes, she unlike myself cannot stand spray cleaners. So I get in the store. To get Lysol wipes, you have to line up at a pallet where there in an employee monitoring and they could not possibly give you more of an impression that it was “Take Only One”. There are signs saying this. A person TELLING you to line up and only take one.

Soooooooo this toad next to me immediately throws three in his cart. Immediately hear the Ray Liotta version of Henry Hill in my head:

“AND AFTER ALLA THAT ‘YEAH YEAH’ HORSESHIT WHAT DOES SHE DO?!?!”

...so the store employee— very politely and professionally, asks him to only take one. He puts one back, trying to take two. Again, the employee (smiling, but not with his eyes) asks him AGAIN to take only one and he sharply snaps “Why?!?!”

I finally just said “Because you’re not special. Stop being rude.” And the guy behind me just cracks the whip: “What, do you think we come here this early because it’s FUN?!?! PUT IT BACK.”

...by then I finally just grabbed mine and walked, but how selfish do you have to be? People are already moody and barely can do anything, how much more do people want the pot stirred? There are SIX containers in a Costco pack. Most people are lucky to find a single one of those things anywhere these days,

 

I've never worked retail, so I don't know for sure, but I have to imagine one of the most satisfying things for a retail worker is when other customers curse out a problem customer in a way that the worker themselves would be fired for.

 

It is, in fact, one of the most satisfying things for a retail worker. But it's a distant second to catching a customer lying through their teeth and having all the evidence to prove it.

 

A wonderful way to be vicarious, no doubt. It should happen more often. Too many people are so goddamn rude and feel like shooting the messenger every opportunity they get. Chewing out somebody stocking shelves because the store ran out white sauce, as if the lowest people on the store’s ladder have some sort of god-like control over the pattern of consumerism itself.

 

So apparently people are treating this opening up as a reason to party?

took the family on a boat ride, went to check out the sandbar where people always park their boats on weekends and throw footballs and the like. My jaw dropped. Must have been 250-300 boats on there. Not people. Just boats. Easily several thousand people. The vast majority of whom were mingling together like it was the 4th of July or Memorial Day or some shit. Only exception was a handful - less than a dozen — of boats anchored off just people watching like we were. My sister actually went there on her boat and they decided to leave when a needle floated by.

The county currently has no active COVID cases. They’re about to. All those people just brought it with them, shared it amongst each other, and now they’re going back home across the state to spread it. That sandbar was like a COVID bomb.

If you wanna follow along with me, watch for Llano County, Texas to explode with cases in the next week or so.

 

ROTN I hope you are wrong. I fear you are not. My city has a rehab hospital in town that last Friday reported six cases. 8 days later that hospital is at 91 cases and 7 deaths. Of the 91 cases 17 are employees who have been walking around the city, not knowing they are infected.

Of course that did not deter a open up our city protest this afternoon.

 

yeah if anything I was underestimating the number of people there. A lot of college kids. A lot of ladies in thongs doing beer bongs. Great sight seeing. Gonna be a disaster though.

 

Is it just me, or do the occupants of the white car in the first photo look like late 40's to mid 50's women?

Also, in Portland, OR strippers will deliver food: Portland Now Has Hot Dystopian Stripper Food Delivery

 

If anything, the combination of invention and resourcefulness commands respect no matter what a person’s own personal morals are.

It will attract customers just for the novelty, which is perfect marketing in a temporary situation.

 

But, also, everybody loves titties.

 

There's probably a couple factors, each pushing numbers in a different direction.

• The biggest factor is almost certainly underreporting of COVID deaths. A good chunk, if not most, of those deaths are going to be undiagnosed COVID deaths. Especially among nursing homes and other places where the elderly die at home instead of in a hospital.
• People are avoiding hospitals and other medical services out of fear of contracting the virus, and some number of them will have really needed that medical care and have died as a result. This number is probably not huge, but it's not negligible.
• Delayable medical care is being delayed, which is probably reducing deaths by complications due to surgery, infections, etc. We'll probably see a spike after the pandemic when the backlog of these delayed surgeries get worked through.
• Job losses are almost certainly leading to medication rationing among other behaviors, and some number of them will die as a result.
• Social distancing impacts not only COVID, but nearly all infectious diseases, especially influenza.
• People aren't engaged in as much risky behavior (the riskiest of which is driving). Accidental deaths are way down. UC Davis reported that the stay-at-home orders had reduced vehicular fatalities by 50%.

On the whole I expect deaths from accidents, flu, pneumonia, and similar to decline, deaths from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc to increase, and for there to be a lot of undiagnosed COVID deaths.

 

That's actually the same place as the drive thru strippers. Uber put the nix on their delivery service because they called it "Boober Eats."

 

The "excess mortality" is a strong argument for re-opening, because it does pose a certain risk of outweighing the COVID-19 deaths.

We're expecting to see mortality spike in places that re-open, for several of the reasons you mentioned above.

The issue with COVID-19 mortality is that it can take WEEKS to manifest. So, if we re-open now, we won't see the resultant mortality peak for at least 3 weeks. We expect to see mortality spike out of the gate, as "normal" mortality for things like traffic accidents happens, and it to continue to be abnormally high as COVID-19 deaths start to happen.

Remember, kids....this is plan D. We're onto the 4th best set of options here, and more death than is necessary will be a part of it.

It blows my mind how we failed at shutting down: we do it every Christmas morning, and if memory serves, there were no "muh liberty" protesters then, complaining they couldn't get a haircut.

 

Come now. The muh liberty to get a haircut hyperbole is unbecoming. This isn't about getting a haircut. It is about the ability to keep your home, your car, your job, get an education and keep your family together. Creating record unemployment and GDP erosion under these circumstances isn't working out. If it was known exactly what COVID-19 was, I doubt we would have reacted the way we did. The Government kills 72k people each year by allowing manufacturers and doctors to overprescribe pain killers each year and we don't even blink. EDIT: 72k, majority of which are young people with a long-term future. Not the elderly.