Coronavirus

I keep getting text messages from the government

Dear residents the full curfew in your area is for the protection of you and your family, all your needed supplies and health care will be provided to you

I see no evidence of this at the moment but we shall see

I'm not generally a paranoid anti-government type, but the idea of enduring a serious quarantine lockdown in a non-democracy is scary. Just going by the reported numbers, Kuwait seems to be handling coronavirus with more success than even South Korea, so maybe this quarantine will pay off by abruptly shutting down the virus there. I hope your situation improves soon.

One of our more right-wing employees just got back from a week-long vacation in Arizona. She didn't think our moderately conservative owners were serious about the our coronavirus policy, but they did in fact send her home to self-quarantine for a week. She also went on a week-long cruise in early March. She can use the rest of her PTO for the year if she wants, but otherwise she won't be getting paid while in self-quarantine.

ThirstyMan wrote: I keep getting text messages from the government

Dear residents the full curfew in your area is for the protection of you and your family, all your needed supplies and health care will be provided to you

I see no evidence of this at the moment but we shall see

Well the UK govt is the opposite - a case of "please don't go away for the holiday weekend as you will be naughty if you do", what a weak bloody attitude. We have 800-900 a day dying and the economy shutting down slowly and they can't even enforce a proper lockdown so the country can get back to normal sooner. Other European countries are (and have been) locking down strictly, and over in Australia they are fining people up to $1500 for breaking lockdown (four guys playing a backyard ball game that infringed into the local park were hit $1500 each) … and the UK govt says please don't be naughty, fucking weak wimps.

Minnesota currently has the lowest per capita rate of coronavirus cases in the U.S.

A couple of grocery store chains have just implemented a new policy that only the person purchasing the groceries will be allowed in the store. Apparently some folks were bringing the whole family to the store. My local grocery store installed plexiglass shields at each checkout lane to protect the cashiers from sneezing or wheezing customers.

In recent weeks, since our state first started warning people to stay home, drunk driving arrests have declined, but fatal car crashes have doubled. From my own recent commuting experiences, a small percentage of drivers have been driving insanely fast and there are nearly zero cops patrolling the highways. Gun and ammo purchases in Minnesota have surged.

There’s really no way of knowing how many actual cases there are without widespread testing.
The publicly stated number is completely untrustworthy and you have to assume everyone you don’t live with has it and you need to stay away from them.

Here in NY we have much better testing than other states and it’s still hard to get a test.
Coroners aren’t able to obtain tests and the number of deaths is believed to be significantly higher than reported.
Heart attacks are killing ten times as many people than average and those people are not being tested, even though it is known that covid attacks the heart and not just the lungs.
People dying in their homes are not being tested.

"Meanwhile, Kuwait Ministry of Interior said Thursday policemen arrested four expatriate workers for cutting the barbed wire fence to break out of Mahboula Area in Al-Ahmadi governorate which is locked down due to coronavirus outbreak.

The four persons confessed to the charges, and therefore legal measures to extradite them from Kuwait got underway."

Better news is that internal supermarkets are being restocked. They open when night curfew ends at 6am. There were 70 people waiting at 6am. By the time I left there were 200 waiting to get in. Reasonably well stocked but never seen an onion riot before, did today, as 20 people dived over counters to get as many onions as they could get as the wholesaler brought them in. Ridiculous.

Damn, that is some scary stuff. Here in Texas there are runs on some stuff (bread, eggs, coffee) but they are only temporary and everything seems to be getting resupplied. But having a month supply of half decent freeze-dried or canned stuff to ride out a prolonged low supply quarantine is sounding like a better and better idea, for NEXT TIME since no one is probably getting that type of stuff now.

From the other thread, regarding furloughs:

I've been wondering if it is coming too....I told my wife we should prepare for it. I don't know what that looks like in practice for our university -- we avoided it in 2008-2010 when a lot of universities had to, but this is brutal.

Weirdly, it isn't projected drop in enrollment but projected loss of state funding due to decreased revenues. Also, we are losing tons of money due to the fact the University Hospital isn't doing elective procedures. So far, we have held to only 78 cases (the majority of which have recovered) in the county -- and very few hospitilazations. But the stadium is being considered for a field hospital.

The uncertainty around prediction is mind-boggling.

Yes, speaking only to my own situation at a university... current numbers are 10% reduction in enrollment next semester, I'm guessing that will get worse going forward. The state passed a "thin" budget with pretty massive cuts for university. If the federal government doesn't do anything, state and local governments are going to melt down. They can't print money and have very limited debt capabitilies. They depend on sales and income tax.

Space Ghost wrote: From the other thread, regarding furloughs:

I've been wondering if it is coming too....I told my wife we should prepare for it. I don't know what that looks like in practice for our university -- we avoided it in 2008-2010 when a lot of universities had to, but this is brutal.

I'm a federal government employee, and I think it would be ridiculous to not expect drastic changes looking forward. My hope is that rather than cut all the more recent hires, they offer severance packages to those eligible to retire and early retirement for those who don't hit the minimum age requirement. I've got enough retirement savings and years of service (18 years since I bought back military time) that I can just live in a rural area. The biggest problem is healthcare being tied to employment is FUCKING STUPID. We don't have any health problems, but it is crazy to navigate the US healthcare system with children without an employer supported healthcare plan.

I'm not trying to go deep down this road and fight about it here, but the federal govt is pretty different since it is currently being given money with negative real interest rates. I wouldn't necessarily expect heavy federal layoffs. If you are a Keynesian, now is the time to spend and keep people in work. States and localities would like to deficit spend now but they cannot.

Gary Sax wrote: ... If you are a Keynesian, now is the time to spend and keep people in work. States and localities would like to deficit spend now but they cannot.

Like Roosevelt during the 1930s. Countries where the govt spent money on projects to keep people working (like the US, USSR, Sweden and even Germany) came out of the Depression in a better state than countries that didn't like the UK.

Gary Sax wrote: I'm not trying to go deep down this road and fight about it here, but the federal govt is pretty different since it is currently being given money with negative real interest rates. I wouldn't necessarily expect heavy federal layoffs. If you are a Keynesian, now is the time to spend and keep people in work. States and localities would like to deficit spend now but they cannot.

I'm not ruling out a Trump re-election. Republicans are known to live in a vastly different reality bubble. I'm actually surprised we didn't get a RIF right after Tillerson took over.

The other thing is my assigned post is Guangzhou, China. We had around 50 consular officers to sell visas to the Chinese, a half dozen Foreign Commercial Service folks, etc. I have a feeling there will be a long period of reduced international travel and we won't need our overseas workforce to be nearly as large as it was at the start of this year. So on a larger note you might be right, however my particular agency might want to downsize a bit.

On a related side note, I've been getting notices that blacks in Guangzhou are being kicked out of their residences and there is now open discrimination of foreigners. The propaganda ministry is starting a campaign blaming Africans for "reintroduction" of COVID-19. So even though the virus in under control there, I have a feeling I might not be going back to post anytime soon, leaving me with a non-zero chance my assignment will be broken at some and I'll end up staying in DC.

Its not all bad news. Thanks to not eating takeout and junk, I've managed to lose 10lbs so far.