Lostin76

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.

Yeah, I think he's trying to strike a balance of presenting information and trying to comfort people. It's difficult, especially when he is losing so mnay citizens to this every day.

I'll refrain from stooping to your level here out of respect to the moderators.

What does make things better is action. If not then, now. Right now. I don't pay my taxes for the government to do nothing while people die. We need more testing to open up safely. We know more now. We know it's dangerous and we know it spreads like crazy. We also know we need more testing. We should have been ramping up testing like maniacs during this time to help with the reopening process.

We should have been using this time to massively increase testing and at least explore contact tracing. We have not really done either one. The pessimist in me feels like the government has largely just wasted time during a very painful period for many people. People are suffering physically, mentally, and financially. We could have at least used this time to vastly increase testing production/availability and ramp up testing on a national scale. Instead, it's a hodgepodge of states stumbling through it - some doing okay and others not so much.

It's tricky. Especially for the workers who may not have a choice. My wife and I were discussing yesterday how restaurants and bars will navigate this reopening process. They tend to pack the tables pretty close together here b/c of high rents. I can't imagine being crammed into these tiny tables that close to another table anymore. I feel like they are going to have to create more space in their floor plan, but then they have less customers to cover rent. And early May seems really early. Hope we don't see a rush to reopening that leads to a second wave of infections/deaths.

100% agree there, my friend. China and Russia both want to see the West crumble. Neither are our friends. They will do everything in their power to bring us to our knees.

I know it's a weird time, but we can do better than stuff like this. Never heard of this guy/network, but just a few clicks told me all I need to know. He's Alex Jones-level of ignorance and lies. I also looked at his Twitter feed and his pinned tweet is about Michelle Obama being transgender.

My wife was just telling me about this. Shows why it's so important to try to stop the spread.

Dang Scott, wishing you continued good health. You will be in my thoughts. Good on you for protecting your parents. Would be a different story for them.

I will give a full report later. I think there is going to be cream cheese icing too, which is making me do a happy dance.

Yeah, this article talks about how so many patients are being sent to Cincinnati. I worry about my old hometown in IN during this and rural communities like you mentioned in CO. I think as it eases up here in NYC a bit in the coming weeks, we may see the hot spots in rural communities. I hope not though. My wife is making a carrot/pistachio loaf right now. She handles the stress and anxiety by baking. And then I eat everything. Should probably try my work pants on sometime soon. 🤣

Masks are mainly to keep from spreading, but they do provide some meausre of protection. Yesterday, they mandated everyone must wear a face covering in public. From Cuomo:

Article in the NYT yesterday about a hospital in Batesville struggling with limited staffing. This one is for you @milehiiu A Tiny Hospital Struggles to Treat a Burst of Coronavirus Patients

These last two posts are kind of something I've been fearing. Nursing homes (and prisons) are kind of forgotten about in this.

Cuomo just extended the NY "Pause" until May 15th. I think that makes sense. My faculty that I'm talking to here just can't see a way out of this w/o MASSIVE increases in testing/tracking of cases. My wife and I have been discussing how we return to work and we just don't think we can hop back on the subway to commute until there is a vaccine. Even though she is a young and healthy 40yo, she has a history of lung collapses and pretty bad scarring after three surgeries, so she's my first priority. It's 6 miles from our home in Brooklyn to our offices in Manhattan. We would just run to work and back, but we don't have showers at work. We have our old Schwinn bikes at our home in Maryland, so we could go get those and bike to work, but NYC drivers and bikers are not on good footing. Walking to work would take us two hours, but it would be preferable to being stuck on a crowded sub. We do have a car that we rarely use, so we could drive in to work and pay the $600 a month to park in a garage. I think we will do a comboof biking/walking/driving depending on the weather.

Yup, easy for us keyboard jockeys to judge leaders. And I agree, I would not want to be in their shoes. Sty safe out there, too.

I appreciate that, my friend. I will still try not to go there though with politics. It's the only way we can still talk about IU basketball, gardening, morel mushrooms, and all the other important stuff in life.

Mile, I know the rules. And as a liberal a**hole living in Brooklyn, I try to be especially aware of them. But, I will admit this topic is tough for me. I shouldn't have went there with the toddler and the diaper.

They should. And I shouldn't use other people's ability to get away with it to get away with it myself. I have to be honest though, this subject is really starting to press in on us here. Too many people we know are testing positive and too many people are dying. Our colleagues are stuck on the front lines and I worry about them every day. We are losing over 700 people a day to this and are just worried about what's next. When people push for reopening b/c their communities haven't been hit yet and asking us to trust investors and the government, I just can't.

You know I thought about that as I was typing, but then I noticed that it was okay for people to call governors idiots further upthread. Is the toddler in the White House sacred and governors are okay to be labeled as idiots? Is only one of those political? And maybe you would be more comfortable in a society where people can't speak their minds?

The number of auto-related fatalities was for a year. If we extrapolate the roughly 1 month US death toll of 25K from COVID-19 to a yearly number then we are looking at 300K deaths per year. Is that acceptable? If we stopped social distancing, then what would the monthly death toll be? What would it be for a year? Probably in the millions. And his "regulatory mechanisms" is equal to social distancing measures. I'm kind of fed up with investors telling us what we should be doing. I don't need someone from Wall Street telling me how to survive a pandemic. They only care about making money off of us. That said, we have some local businesses that are doing an amazing job by staying open AND being safe. It can be done. That takes cooperation from them and from consumers. And finally, he's asking for cooperation from government - that would be awesome, but I'm not hopeful. We have some governors stepping up and some being idiots. And then we have a toddler in the White House who can't even manage his diaper change without throwing a fit about someone else who must have placed the poop in his diaper.