Coronavirus

Northern Virginia here, as far as I can tell everyone just said fuck it and no one wears masks. I'm in the middle of two population centers, the bigger one closer to DC I'd say masks are worn 1/3 the time, the farming area 15%. When I went to DC for work earlier the week I'd say it was 5% with the exception of food service workers.

Also I went to the farming one for shopping today (needed a new chainsaw and coveralls for yard work) and at least I overhead another shopper say that the police should stop using rubber bullets and start using real ones. I just can't.

Gary Sax wrote: I can relate to this feeling as someone who lives in a resort town. Every weekend people from Phoenix pour into our town and behave really irresponsibly wrt Covid and everything else.

Yep, this is ours too (although without the Phoenix bit).
(and also, without massive infection rates. I can't really complain, because of our situation down here really being very good compared to many other places).
But during lockdown living here was wonderful. Quiet, able to get outdoors still etc etc.
Now, because overseas and even interstate travel is out of the question, the highway is permanently at a standstill and town and surrounds is full of dickheads not observing any sort of precautions and in many cases blatantly ignoring requests and directions.

North Carolina made masks mandatory yesterday at 5pm, with fines for business if they don't enforce it and fines for people if they don't comply. Seems like something we should have done when we first reopened a month and a half ago, but I guess better later than never (?). I'm curious to see how many assholes try to start shit at my job. NC's numbers certainly indicate that we should have done it when we first reopened.

66% positive rate today in my county.

Six cases of Cup O' Noodles from Walmart and ride this sucker out Gary.

Gary Sax wrote: 66% positive rate today in my county.

FUCKING HELL.

Is anything changing? Can people be swayed by the carnage? What needs to happen? Do we need to stack bodies like cordwood before people wear a fucking mask? I am angry and sad all the time. I don't get it. I don't know what needs to be done. I can't figure anything out.

In my state, it's lack of the political will and/or resources, both state and federal. Large scale testing and tracing isn't rocket science. It just requires money and personnel. If ever there was a time to fire up the printing press, it's this.

All this talk about personal responsibility is important but I think ultimately a smokescreen for what actually solves this crisis.

jeb wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: 66% positive rate today in my county.

FUCKING HELL.

Is anything changing? Can people be swayed by the carnage? What needs to happen? Do we need to stack bodies like cordwood before people wear a fucking mask? I am angry and sad all the time. I don't get it. I don't know what needs to be done. I can't figure anything out.

Covid-19 is a perfect storm that is going to continue to wreck us. It gave the initial impression that it was strictly a respiratory ailment, and most of the planet assumed that it would stay in Asia like several other serious diseases of the 21st century. Turns out that it attacks a lot more than just the lungs, and with blood clots. It's a sneaky disease because of the lengthy delay before onset of symptoms, and there are so many asymptomatic carriers.

The United States is getting hit really hard for two major reasons: lack of federal leadership, and political polarization. Trump apparently decided early on that this wasn't going to be our problem and that doing anything about it might endanger the economy, which was his best argument for re-election. So no preparation, no leadership, and plenty of denial. And since everything in our country is now politically polarized, too many Republicans followed Trump's lead in pretending that the threat of the virus was non-existent or exaggerated. (In all fairness, Democrats came out strongly against quarantines for Ebola just a few years ago, and that could have easily turned catastrophic.) There is also an unhealthy feedback loop between Trump and right-wing pundits, such that they take direct cues from one another when it comes to spinning the daily news cycle. Beyond all that, the messaging about masks was initially misleading, out of fear that consumers would horde masks that were needed even more by first responders and hospital personnel.

Nobody knows for certain where we are headed, but the likely answers are dark. We are likely to see a lot of bankruptcy filings soon, by both businesses and individuals, as well an unprecented quantity of evictions. The virus is spreading faster than ever, though the death rate seems to be declining possibly due to better treatments. Or maybe just because we stopped trying to treat it with that Hydroxychlroquine bullshit. There is a frantic race to invent a vaccine with some promising front runners, but likely nothing will be available until next year, and there will probably not be enough for everybody. And because some of the usual protocols are being trampled for the sake of speed, it seems likely that the vaccine(s) may be less than completely effective and/or harmful to some. Worst of all, a recent study in China indicates that antibody immunity may be short-lived, just like it is with the more famous sort of coronaviruses that we collectively call the common cold. The New York Times covered this, but I am giving you a non-paywalled link instead:

www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020...atients-fade-quickly

I'm honestly surprised that there haven't been more assaults or killings related to wearing or not wearing a mask.

Shit mate.
Take care over there, all of you.

I got tested yesterday - I don't think it's it, but I couldn't go to work all snotty and sneezing and everything like I was.

Best of luck to all of you.

Minnesota is doing okay handling the virus lately, and our ICU utilization is especially low. But we just sent one of our workers home yesterday for testing and two weeks of quarantine, because her husband tested positive after his boss tested positive. If I were a gambling man, I would have bet serious money two months ago that this employee would be our first local coronavirus case, and she still might be. She was the one who got sent home to self-quarantine back around early April or so, because she took a week-long vacation in Arizona shortly after we established a work policy of mandatory self-quarantine after any air travel. She was also the employee that we needed to constantly nag about wearing her mask.

My Jury Service was due to start this week, although it has stalled out with a comedy of increasingly rushed and decreasingly articulate missives from the court. What started out as very formal instructions coupled with stern admonitions regarding promptness etc. devolved pretty quickly from "we will call you with instructions to attend, here's a contact number if you have questions" into "we're still trying to figure out how to do this thing" and eventually the last minute "please stop calling us, we don't know what's going on, just stay at home".
So I have no idea whether I'm actually going to be called in at any point and in a bit of a twilight zone with working-but-not-working. I've already handed over my work responsibilities and neither my boss or I wants to take anything back as we chose someone to fill in as a development opportunity for them and don't want to take that away. So I'm stuck in front of my work laptop just in case an emergency comes up but with nothing particular to work on to distract me from the crushing sense of ennui. Ultimately I'm grateful not to be forced onto public transport into the city, and hoping to ride out the whole two weeks reserve period without getting called, but still think it was a crackpot idea to issue summons so soon in the first place.

In other news, the imminent re-opening of pubs over here has kicked off discussions at our club with some people wanting to restart game nights. I pointed out that going for a responsibly socially-distanced pint with absent friends is different from hours spent huddling around a boardgame in an enclosed space and received in return a blowhard lecture about 'doing our bit' for the economy and some meaningless and misinterpreted statistics about infection rates. Most members are equally aghast at the idea but there seems to be a contingent who are so desperate to play with their toys that they are willing to throw all caution and common sense to the wind.

Latest news from Kuwait is that I'm still in razor wire lock down but not all of Kuwait is like this. I live in an area popular due to low rent and many people occupying a single residence even hot bunking. Of course, this has caused infection rates to rise hence the quarantine. Government is enacting laws to make this type of renting illegal.

Kuwait say they will begin to open the airport from August 1 at 30% capacity and expect to reach 100% capacity in August 2021. Seems like they are being careful.

Brewed 22L of home made wine which I haven't done for nearly 10 years but needs must. Luckily, brewer's yeast is available and grape juice in litre containers so I'm cool.

School was going to restart on August 1 but I'm guessing that will be delayed due to staff not being able to return. I expect e learning for at least a year. I'm rather sceptical that a vaccine will be found at all, so this may be the new normal.

My wife, Tanya, is getting treatment for a stomach ulcer in the Ukraine which is good and she has been buoyed up by the news about airports from Kuwait.

School have been really concerned about the mental health of their staff and have been passing to us websites that offer Zoom counselling both in Kuwait and from out of Kuwait. The owner of the school reached out to me when he heard I was losing it and was super sympathetic which I am very grateful for.

Curfew is now 7pm to 4am across the whole of Kuwait. I found a Pizza Hut and Burger King within my residential area, who will deliver, so I'm cool. Plus I'm cooking a lot of vegetarian Indian food because all the local stores carry the spices.

Cycling 60km a day on my static bike with serious resistance so it burns about 1000 Kcals which is helping keep my weight down. Today is a rest day (read drinking a shitload of wine day).