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Coronavirus: Miles away from ordinary.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Juice, Jan 28, 2020.

  1. Crown Royal

    Crown Royal
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    Just call me Topher

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    Mountain Men were basically right all along. Those guys are true forward-thinkers.
     
  2. Nettdata

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    Mr. Toast

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    I like to think I'll be a Mountan man with Internet and drones.
     
  3. Crown Royal

    Crown Royal
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    Just call me Topher

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    You have Starlink AND a Tin Can. That’s made in the shade. Just work on the musketry and fur trapping.
     
  4. Misanthropic

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    Really? I had no idea.
     
  5. downndirty

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    I would find some of the excess mortality studies, the deaths in Bama are under reported. TN was the worst offender from what i recall, but AL, MS, KY and FL were pretty bad as well.
     
  6. bewildered

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    Deeply satisfied pooper

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    https://www.covidtests.gov/ for 4 free covid tests if you're in the US.

    Takes a week or so to ship, but then you'll have it on hand for later. I just ordered mine. Hopefully we won't need to use them.
     
  7. Revengeofthenerds

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    what’s the better alternative?
     
  8. Rush-O-Matic

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    Amazon? Because Walmart doesn't have any. They would have just said it was political favoring, and Amazon would've just used the USPS. I hate the USPS, and they are incredibly inefficient and mostly incompetent. But, it makes the most sense, I think.
     
  9. AFHokie

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    Took my son to the pediatrician today...managed to not get it last week. His daycare class is up to 4 kids and a staff member testing positive
     
  10. Rush-O-Matic

    Rush-O-Matic
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    Ah, gotcha. Yeah, Amazon does not deliver to me or near me. So, I guess the USPS has that advantage of being able to go to every home.
     
  11. Revengeofthenerds

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  12. dixiebandit69

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    HEY. The post office wasn't totally terrible before Trump appointed Louis DeJoy, WHO IS A MAJOR SHAREHOLDER IN UPS.

    DeJoy is still in power, so only expect things to get worse.

    As a country, we need a non-profit postal service.
    Also, we need to get rid of the stupid USPS retirement/ pention rule that eats a huge amount of USPS money.

    What do you have to say about that?
     
  13. Aetius

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  14. AFHokie

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    I may have spoke too soon. Tonight while putting him to bed he suddenly spiked a fever of 102.7. Tylenol brought it down to 100.2.

    Aside from the 40ish minutes a the pediatrician's office this morning. He's only been around my wife and I since his exposure last Wednesday (and we haven't left the house) so we're afraid COVID is the most likely reason for the fever. For now we're monitoring to make sure his fever doesn't spike again and will test him again in the morning with a home test kit and go from there.
     
  15. Dcc001

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    New Bitch On Top

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    This. Our Crown Corporations suffered the same thing; they were held hostage because of their stature, which caused them to have specific commitments, but then expected to also compete on the open market. It doesn't help that the most lucrative portions of the mail service were already sold to the free market years ago. So, in the USPS's case, they must execute all the expensive door-to-door letter delivery in older neighborhoods, service the pensions of current and former employees while at the same time competing with FedEx and UPS, who sub out the work to the lowest bidder, have no pensions (and barely minimum wage), labour standards, etc. It's really a shitty situation.

    All that being said, I avoid using CanadaPost for the very same reason. I'd actually like the goddamned parcel to get there and be traceable the entire time. Good luck using the federal mail service if that's your goal.
     
  16. downndirty

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    4 tests per address if you order the free covid test.

    USPS is consistently cheaper than UPS or FedEx, and it treats its employees significantly better. I forgot the study, but the USPS loses packages/mail at a much lower rate than other carriers, I think circa 2019.

    The shit pile started during the Bush administration, when they tried to gut the USPS, and never was improved. Trump renewed efforts to gut them, I vaguely recall in an effort to curtail voting by mail.

    Back in the 70's and 80's, USPS was a model of public/private that worked well, and couldn't have worked any other way: they need tremendous regulation to meet the obligation of delivering to any US address, without exception. The protection mail carriers and mail boxes enjoy, for example, couldn't be extended to private carriers. That said, UPS/FedEx and even a lot of delivery companies depend on legal precedent set back in the 1800's for USPS. For many towns, the post office is the only entity of the federal government, and it makes shit like voting, military services, passports, tax forms, etc. accessible that no private carrier would/could bother with. The US government saves untold dollars by having the post office handle some of these functions, rather than farming them out to other agencies or state DMV's. I won't even go into the nightmare of doing some of this shit online, thinking about my parents in their 60's renewing a passport digitally is less realistic than my looming career as a twat taste tester for Victoria's Secret.

    I wildly disagree: setting a budget for USPS would be a disaster, because one administration would gut it to make more money for FedEx/UPS lobbyists, and the next would bloat it to make it cheaper for junk mailers. Fuck that, it works just fine, and I'd argue needs less political influence, not more. Their org structure being political appointees isn't ideal, but it does mean that the folks in charge have a heavy hand in the laws, policy and regulations the USPS functions on, and it ensures there's someone who has experience and vested interest in what functions of the federal government are executed/supported by USPS.

    It blows my mind that a government agency does indeed turn a profit, functions better than the private sector, performs vital functions that the private sector couldn't be trusted to handle (imagine the nightmare of having to pay trillions to ship passport applications, tax forms, miltary service registrations, and them getting lost with UPS/FedEx....or the stupendous cost added to hundreds of federal functions by being forced to ship documents to/from them privately), and is somehow seen as indicative of a disfunctional government. Like, our government is disfunctional, but look elsewhere for more poignant examples.

    For most of it's history, the USPS was a vital arm of the federal government, that just so happened to be used by private entities, and this enabled it to turn a profit. Profit was never the goal, servicing the citizenry was. Now that a lot of this shit is done online, or that FedEx/UPS are somewhat viable alternatives, people forget that not everything can go that route.
     
  17. kindalas

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    A quick thought about the postal service in countries.

    If a nation doesn't have a postal service it is not longer considered to be a nation.

    It will got from a failed state to a non-state.

    You don't technically need a military to be a nation, but you need a postal service.
     
  18. Revengeofthenerds

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    don't know how dejoy wasn't removed immediately
     
  19. dixiebandit69

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    Biden doesn't have that kind of power.

    He'd have to appoint people to that board who could then vote him out.

    Now, why he hasn't done THAT is the real question.
     
  20. Juice

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    Moderately Gender Fluid

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    He hasn’t done anything whatsoever, let alone fixing USPS.