The News

They have had "Hazel" on in the breakroom at work this week. i think most people have no clue what it is.

I think what bothers me the most is the decision making process that is driven by the possible news coverage... For example: certain businesses won't open, because if something happens, they will be on the news. Everyone has to watch what they say, because of the risk on being on the news. And once those are on the news, social media account holders open their own war.... This is crazy.

Bad new for democrats. Consumer spending up 17.7% overall.

“Clothing and accessories stores, many of which were closed in March and April, reported the biggest percentage gain at 188 percent. Furniture store sales rose 89.7 percent.

Sales at sporting goods stores, hobby shops, musical instruments stores, and book stores jumped 88.2 percent. Sales at restaurant and bars rose 29 percent. Sales at electronics and appliances stores rose 50.5 percent.“

With numbers like that, hiring will go up...which will in turn boost consumer spending even more.

Media is really pushing the “second wave” fears. I’m not buying it. Fooled me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There might be a slight uptick in cases but I even doubt that will happen. No way will there be a second wave. The more people look at the statistics the more they tend to “accept the risks” and go on about their lives. Just driving around I see parking. Lots getting more and more full by the day!

I hope this one isn't true

"Texas has set a new record for hospitalizations for COVID-19 in Texas. The state just reported 2,793 lab-confirmed hospitalizations - that is an 11% increase from yesterday's record and now an 85% increase since Memorial Day."

That being said, apparently they have lots of capacity.

Edited by marcag 2020-06-17 6:21 PM

In Arizona the shutdown was ended last month, active cases went from flattening, even dropping, to skyrocketing. Now we have the fastest growth rate in the US. Our local hospital stopped elective surgeries for a while, but then resumed them when the shutdown seem to be working and new active cases were shrinking. Now that the numbers have been spiking again it looks like those surgeries will be stopped again to make room. Our local city is talking about mandating mask wearing while in public, though I'm not sure how they plan to enforce that.

We were lucky, the pandemic did not become political at all.

At first, our shut down was very similar to yours. Given we didn't really understand what we were up against, most supported it.
I still believe it would have been a mess had we not done it. I think Brazil will be the poster child of how to badly handle it.

We failed miserably to protect the old. This pissed off people because we could have avoided it. This will be political but doesn't take away from people supporting the shutdown. But many believe we shut down more than needed to save the elderly and we failed at that.

We had (are having) a pretty gradual opening and it's pretty regional. Toronto, Canada's biggest city, will be the last to open up based on numbers. Montreal will see pools and gyms open next week. Numbers everywhere are getting better.

As long as ICU beds stay below X% the lock down will be eased. Media is mostly reporting deaths, hospitalizations and ICU usage. They do use testing as a metric of progress but number of cases doesn't mean much.

For me, the % of capacity in the hospitals is the key metric. We know how fast this can spike so don't wait to get to 90% to do something.

Most people are pretty good with the mask thing. In Ottawa it is mandatory on public transit. In stores most people wear them.

I think very few people consider it was a hoax.