Lostin76

Common sense is key, but I don't think many of our dear leaders are particularly blessed with that. I do like how Cuomo has come out supporting areas of upstate NY opening sooner than NYC. As far as liquor stores and marijuana sales being essential - they are if you look at health reasons. Hospitals don't want alcoholics not having access to alcohol and then going through withdrawals and having to see ER care. And medicinal marijuana is important for many cancer patients and people with chronic pain, or related issues. I was about to say, "Mattress stores should def. be non essential." But I bet someone with a bad back that needs a mattress might disagree! I think there's some area in the middle of closed or open that can work for most places. Restaurants, liquor stores, and bodegas here have figured it out. Heck, even our local Petco has a nifty system set up where you order online and then pick up in person. They even put up sheeted plastic to protect the employees.

The non-COVID care issues are definitely a concern. How many people are not seeking care for genuine emergencies or much needed care? Our hospital system is losing approx. $500M each month b/c of no elective surgeries, appts, and obviously increased costs associated with COVID-19 cases. We are trying to move toward providing electives and other outpatient appointments. This isn't easy b/c of how we've had to retrofit physical spaces drastically to keep up with space issues and staff have also been redeployed. We need to make sure that staff and patients are well protected. His last paragraph is both sad and ludicrous - especially for NYC. How do all of these people actually get to work now? The MTA is badly crippled right now and we're not sure when it can get back to hauling all of those millions of riders each day. Getting to work was challenging enough before this virus. Now? It's a freaking minefield.

I'm just now streaming this and definitely dig it. Really good stuff. I like good acoustical music and definitely anything with jazz structure. Oh man, this is perfection! I still remember hearing about Cliff's death while I was at work at a grocery store. Was just a teenager. We had tickets to Metallica in Evansville a couple months later and it just wasn't the same w/o him.

We take cocktail hour pretty seriously here, especially since the lockdown. Our three standard home cocktails are a Manhattan, a Martini, and the Negroni. Our Manhattans are made with Old Overholt rye, Carpano sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. There's no need for fancy rye or bourbon in a cocktail, and I walwyas use Old Overholt. It was good enough for my grandparents, so good enough for me. Our martinis are gin not vodka. I just let the dry vermouth slosh around in the glass for a bit and then toss it out before adding the chilled gin. And always a twist of lemon. The Negroni is just the perfect drink and impossible for bartenders to screw up when you are out and about. One part Campari, one part gin, and one part sweet vermouth. Super easy and tasty. Right now, it's red wine because the missus is making homemade pasta and she requested red wine.

Yep, both of them! Especially the Iron Butterfly. My parents were hippies. 😛

That's crazy! I love her on the show.

Grew up on rock, country, and psychedelic music as a child of the 1970s. As a teenager, I turned to heavy metal and punk. As an adult I listen to everything under the sun, including pop and rap, but spend the most time listening to jazz albums on our turntable. I've come to like classical a great deal, especially string quartets and solo piano. Have recently been obsessed with the newish Tool album. That got me back into a lot of stoner rock.

The only thing I'm having a problem with this study is that it was conducted at big box stores and large grocery stores. I get that the setting is a place where they thought they could get the most people, but there's a huge number of NYC residents that don't shop at either of these places. Younger people use shopping apps and rarely visit places like this. I'm not sure what I think this means though. Maybe the infection rate would be higher if they captured younger people who may have engaged in riskier behavior, i.e., less social distancing? Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. Anyway, it's nice to see a lot more studies coming out about infection rate and antibodies, b/c the medicine silver bullets we had some hope for are not panning out at all.

Impressive! We don't have the space to grow from seed, so I normally buy tomato and pepper seedlings from our local nursery. This year I had to order from Burpee and my Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Madame Marmand beefsteak tomatoes, and three different pepper plants arrived today. They look a little beaten up from shipping, but not too bad. I'll let them recover a few days inside in a sunny window and then harden them off starting this weekend.

I'm not surprised either and I think it's the right call. You have to try if you are able to and have the time to do so. Our 911 calls are have been coming down for the past week and we are hearing much less sirens now. It was really only a week or so where they had call volume higher than 9/11.

When I got out of the Navy, my Mom lived in Boulder, CO and I went to stay with her for about 6 months. I enrolled in Front Range Community College for something to do tat semester and I rode my bike along a network of trails from her place to the college a few days a week. What I never got tired of was the view of the Flatiron range as I biked to class. I was always in awe of those mountains and it seemed like everywhere I looked they were there. In another life, I would have ended up staying in Boulder and enjoying being so close to those gorgeous mountains. I still miss being able to go up to Estes Park when I wanted to. What a beautiful country.

Hey Reacher, sorry I've been busy these last couple of days. There are a ton of nursing home deaths for sure, but I don't think enough to be half - that would be 15K deaths in nursing homes. We just don't do much work with nursing homes - honestly most places don't and nursing homes are all but forgotten. I agree, there should be better testing in nursing homes. I did find this article from April 17th that gives you some data. https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-nursing-homes-battered-dozens-deaths-state-data-shows Looks like 55 resident death from the one nearest us in Cobble Hill. That's like a 20 minute walk from our place. Most seem to be in Queens, the Bronx or Long Island though. Not sure what's happening in Jersey.

100% agree that the dude has impressive credentials and a history of valid scientific output, but he's making the same mistake so many others are doing - extrapolating his experience in a single country with worldwide results. That just doesn't work in the best of times, but definitely not now. What might be true for Bloomington, IN is most likely not the same for Queens, NY or Lombardy, Italy. And yes, I overstated his case b/c it's so poorly presented. He basically said that if you take care of the elderly then all is good. That's just not the case. One of our faculty just published a paper with over 4,000 cases and 54% of the hospitalized cases were under age 54. And shockingly, smoking and vaping was not a factor. We are still looking into this though. You know what was a huge factor though? Being a dude. Guys were 60% of hospitalized and 68% of those who became critically ill. We all need to take care of ourselves!

I do recall hearing that people didn't love the finale. In your opinion when did it start going downhill?

I'm not trying to explain the thousands of asymptomatic infected. I know they exist. I'm just saying the dude quoted was off in his suggestions. You can't just shove the elderly in a room together to die and then let everyone else go about their business. The cases and deaths would still have quickly overwhelmed hospitals. I'm just stating a fact. Young people can and do die from this. And it's also sometimes a very quick death. I'm speaking out of experience that our docs are having in the epicenter of this virus. There is a very wide range of reactions to it and I never said I was describing the "vast majority of infections." I know we all want this to go away and for everyone to be able to go back to work. We'll get there, but we have to be smart about it.

I actually finally started watching The Sopranos last week. I'm almost done with S1 and am really digging it so far. Never really had an interest before, but just needed something to watch after Ozark S3 and this is free on HBO streaming now.

Something we can all agree on. I can't wait to get back to arguing about our team instead.

How about you spend some time in a NYC hospital or anywhere here in NYC right now and get back to me on drama. I did not say young people were a large percentage of deaths. I said young people are dying. It's a fact. It's not just old people. It's very concering for our docs how this disease is working. And it's a devastatingly quick disease at times. There's a lot we don't know. But I'll tell them to cool their jets, b/c some random dude on the internet thinks it's all cool.

Unfortunately, he's not correct in much of this. I know many of us would like this to be the case, but it just isn't. I have five faculty now pulled to work in our large metropolitan hospital system and two things stand out. Young people ARE dying from this. Young, healthy people are dying from this. And it's not a mild disease like the flu at all. It's shockingly swift in many cases how fast people go from being able to talk and use their cellphone to dying alone as they are gasping for breath. This is nothing like we have seen in our lifetimes.

Wait, what?Okay, I just scrolled up and am realizing that you live in GA. So it's back to work for everyone there it looks like according to latest reports. I'm not sure this is going to end well. Especially since Kemp didn't even realize the virus could be spread by asymptomatic people. Do you know for sure that you have to go back and if so, what protections are they taking?

It's so uncomfortable. You have to give them your credit card and everything. There's also the endless chitchat. I'm on a four hour trip from hell from NYC to the Eastern Shore, the last thing I want to do is have a conversation with someone and break my driving flow.

It's bonkers. I hate driving through NJ for many reasons, but this is number one.

We pump our own gas in NYC. I have to drive through NJ (on the Turnpike) to get to our place in Maryland, and I refuse to get gas in NJ. Can't stand letting someone else pump my gas and then have to give them a tip. I'm totally with you there! I just don't think we can know how long and what places can open up earlier. It's obviously different where I grew up in Gibson County, IN where they have only 5 active cases and then here in Brooklyn where we have 37,000 active cases. We can't obviously just do blanket openings. I really don't envy the decision makers in this time.

I think the gist of his talk was in the article from the NYT over the weekend - all about what the next year (or two) will look like. I started listening to it, but was same points. The summary of it (I think), is that it's going to be a slog. Probably a longer slog than any of us will like, but to skip steps or try to rush things just makes it that much worse. There does not seem to be any magic bullets or shortcuts at this point.

Yep, the CDC has not done a very good job with this. I agree about the prices, they will have to raise prices if they allow less people in. Going to be tough for businesses and customers to navigate this and will require a lot of patience.