So apparently my family is a bunch of hydrochloroquine truthers. My boys facetimed my mother to wish her happy mothers day and she told us that we really need to look into the drug because it does work it's just being held back for "political reasons." She's not the only one who thinks this way, sadly, but it messed up what was otherwise a very respectful call. I'm trying really, really hard not to point out how stupid these people are being, but I might have reached my limit.
Here in Bermuda we're doing a phased return to normal. Right now the restaurants can serve take out only, this restarted last week after they were fully closed for two weeks. There is no public transportation, people who can do so are working from home, and there are essentially no flights in or out and of course no cruise ships coming in. Parks, beaches, and golf courses were closed for two weeks but are now reopened with social distancing required. We wear masks in supermarkets and in face to face contacts elsewhere and people have pretty much bought into the need for social distancing and masks. Shopping is divided into specific days, A-J Monday and Thursday, etc. Shops other than grocery stores are operating on a curb side pick up only status so many are still closed. Downtown is pretty much dead mid-day on weekdays when there are normally people everywhere. 118 cases here and 7 deaths, so it's not been too bad. Things should be booming now with tourism and this is crushing the local economy. There's a lot of concern about how many businesses will never reopen and the long term impact on employment.
This would never fly in the US, but it's things like this which are interesting uses of technology to help during a re-opening phase of a pandemic. The ice cream place is basically the Chinese place in town near me. They have been closed for the past 3 weeks because they get their supplies from a downstate distribution center which closed. When they reopened, with the entire place outfitted with newly installed counters and spacing for people, people just mobbed the place and were complete assholes completely disregarding any social norms even if there wasn't a pandemic. There was one mid 20 something douche bag who comes in without a mask, cuts the line of 15 people waiting, and decides to sit down right next to a 80+ year old lady waiting for her food. Thankfully 3 or 4 of us called the kid out and predictably he goes on spouting bullshit statistics of infection rates, the likelihood of dying, and how it's his right to do what he wants. Just nonsensical for the sake of being edgy or woke or whatever the fuck he was trying to do. It's starting to get infuriating how many people can't deal with even the basic asks of them during a pandemic. It's not terribly difficult. Wear a mask in public. Stay 6 feet apart from other people. I can't even begin to imagine the death toll if COVID had a higher mortality rate or what's going to happen if we get a really deadly pandemic some time in the near future. In another show of just how unprepared we are to reopen in some places, Mark Cuban hired a company to go around and see how local Dallas businesses that reopened were complying with the mandates set by the state. Shockingly, most of them failed miserably.
The comments on the Cuban article. Testing companies to see if they are following safe procedures is akin to the Nazis apparently. People in this country are insane.
Stupid, not insane. Getting sick and dying seems to be the only way to teach someone a lesson these days, and even in their dying breath they’d probably blame it on chemtrails. Fuck them. Feed them fish heads.
My dad was sick for most of March and spent a couple days in the hospital towards the end. He got tested then and it came back negative. He got an antibodies test last week and found out yesterday that the test came back positive. My mom is going in to get the test since she's fairly certain she got a mild case of it from him. The want to give plasma and blood, but it won't affect the social distancing much since they don't know if antibodies means immunity yet. Based on my dad's experience I would say that you don't want to catch this. He's very healthy for his age and it took him out for a month. It's a lot worse than the flu.
Even pre-covid I spend most of my days figuring out how to avoid Karens and generally trashy people (which i normally refer to as the herd). Whatever the herd is doing, I normally try to do the opposite. If usually takes more knowledge than money. Covid example: I have not been in a grocery store in 8 weeks. I found a pre-order drive thru farmers market for weekly produce and reinstated my butcher box subscription for meat. I normally shop hoarder style at Costco to avoid the amount of times I have to go to the store so I was set with tp, paper towels, pasta, sauce, razors, shampoo, etc etc etc ad nauseum. My ability to avoid crowds at theme parks, the beach, and Mardi Gras (we live in Louisiana) are legendary amongst our friends and family.
No shit. There was story this morning about some ice cream shoppe on Cape Cod from this past weekend in that regard. The place could have been open for take-out the entire time, but decided to remain closed until now to protect its employees when MA was worse. Well they opened up with the request that customers order their ice cream ahead of time for pickup, and apparently the wealthy ass-wipes on the Cape couldn't handle that and were screaming at the teenagers working there over having to wait. Imagine being an adult and yelling at a teenager over ice cream?
I cannot imagine doing it. Why I can imagine, is what I’m going to do the first time I see an adult behaving that way. The world will become my message board, I can tell you that. I’ve already seen two people have to step in and speak up for employees because his/her majesty didn’t get enough plastic bags or some other crime against humanity.
I don't know about you all, but as the weather gets nicer and time drags on, I am struggling a little more with deciding what is and is not reasonable as far as social distancing is concerned. We had outdoor, distant mothers day visits with my mom and MIL, brought our own camping chairs, and stayed 10 feet apart in the yard. Hand sanitizer and clorox wipes were involved in gift giving. I've also been on masked, distanced walks with a few friends. Some people I know think this is unnecessarily cautious, others think I am being Very Irresponsible. But I think we just have to figure out how to maintain some vague sense of normalcy while reducing risk as much as possible. Are any of you starting to sneak in socially distant visits? What is your threshold for maintaining your bubble?
It’s crazy, right? Absolute oppression like, I don’t know... sending safety inspectors to factories to make sure human beings aren’t going to be mangled. Papers, please.
I mean I can’t be the only one that goes to Kroger 3x a week for Knick knack items so you can be around people? They opened the Starbucks back up in it and there is always a semi crowd around it drinking their drinks and shooting the shit. I still hand sanitize up at work and wear the required mask. It’s the only place I interact with people. I’ve not gone out to see friends or anything.
I'm paranoid as hell about catching this thing. But, everything I've read indicates that outdoor transmission with proper social distancing is rare to nonexistent. I'm not getting close to people anywhere right now and trying to avoid indoor situations entirely.
I'm going to say this is a bad idea..... https://thewinglet.boardingarea.com...h/?utm_source=BoardingArea&utm_medium=twitter
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...its-are-poised-to-flood-the-courts-2020-05-08 So....about McConnell appointing all those conservative judges....
I was wondering if this was going to happen. Much like AIG in 2007, there's no way that insurers weren't over committed for an pandemic that closed the entire economy.