Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Spyutastic
We won't know for about another year or so. If things turn out well all the Lapidators will gloat about how we over reacted. If not, we didn't do enough.
Meh... who's got time to gloat... I'm too busy marveling at the apparent success of the campaign of fear.
Last night, had dinner at one of the (IMO) top 5 best restaurants around... the place was almost empty at 8pm. There were 7 people at the bar, including Lapidatrix and I, and nobody seated elsewhere in the restaurant. Normally the place would have had 100-125ppl at any given time on a Sunday night, with live music in the lounge area.
For context, my state has implemented a 30 day closure of bars and restaurants, announced yesterday afternoon... tonight is the last open day until 17-APR.
The bar staff and waitstaff at the restaurant last night were seriously stressed out... not because they're afraid to catch or spread COVID19... But because, as the majority of their income is tips which are now non-existent for the next 30 days which was given on 36hrs notice, they live week to week, paycheck to paycheck.
I dare say, if someone told me that in 36hrs, >70% of my income for the next month would be gone, I'd be pretty stressed out.
So that was my anecdote from last night... my anecdote from lunch is just plain strange...
I stopped over to the local cafe/bakery/sandwich shop up the street from my office. I'm talking with one of the girls who works there about the coming restaurant shutdown, social distancing and stuff like, "What are you going to do for the next month without getting paid?".
Mind you, there's almost nobody there. Just me and two guys I work with, another guy who works at the Coast Guard base, and this older woman sitting at one of the patio tables eating a bowl of clam chowder.
The older woman, apparently in her late 60s or early 70s, is listening into my conversation, and decides to start telling me that I shouldn't have gone into the office today. She is telling me that I should be working from home so as to minimize the threat of spreading "the virus", and that its not for me but for the elderly.
She goes on to tell me that she just got back from the nursing home where she visited her 96y.o. mother.
I said, "Since its the elderly who are most at risk, perhaps you shouldn't have visited the nursing home, and instead just called your mother to talk on the phone today?"
She said, "Well, they let me in, so it was clearly okay."
Its fair to say I was stunned as I slowly turned and increased my social distance from this woman.
(BTW... the garden burger with lettuce, onion, tomato and 1000-Island dressing on a butter croissant was delicious!)
~~~
As of today, there have been and are 197 confirmed cases of COVID19 in my state. Of these 197, 14 have required hospitalization. There have been no deaths. There have been 1050+ persons tested. (This is according to today's update on the state Board of Public Health website.)
The majority of these cases are confirmed to be traced to a meeting that was held at a large bio-tech company that took place the last week of Feb, where it is reported that, "a number of attendees reported varying degrees of flu-like symptoms (during the meeting)", which have now been shown to be a combination of influenza and COVID19.
So on the fear scale:
1. The tipped employees are afraid...
2. The tone-deaf older woman eating clam chowder is afraid I might do something stupid...
3. The large bio-tech peeps are not afraid...
And if I could add a non-sequitur...
4) Putin is scaring the Russian people into allowing him to remain president for another 16 years... which I'm not sure if it is good news for Bernie (the Castro-loving Socialist), or Tulsi (the "Russian Agent" a'la Black Widow!), or Trump (the CoronavirusKing).