Or is it the clearest example of the cruelty strategy?
Their goal is to stay in power. They know how well the economy does will dictate the election.
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Surely you can find somewhere to go on a job site. Open the truck door for a bit of cover. Or heck, piss off the roof. I’ve done that more than once.
The economy is going to go in the toilet if they continue to pursue the Thelma and Louise strategy, so whatever works for the dullards I guess.
Have they figured out that the stock market isn’t the economy yet? Allowing what will likely be 10k+ a week dead in August, hospitals full to the rafters and then shoveling kids and their teachers and parents into the capitalism furnace at the end of the month doesn’t seem likely to be actually good for the economy but what do I know.
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In a bottle behind the truck door is where some people I’ve worked with have gone. I don’t think I’ve pee’d in a bottle since I had a work van.
When you piss on the roof do you just go down a plumbing vent?
No, never thought to use the vent. That’s a good idea.
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Down the front windscreen is the pro move.
"What do you do if a bird shits on your windscreen?
Never go out with her again".
Sir Les Patterson
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I don’t think your average American realizes how bad this is about to get. They have heard deaths are down and we are almost to a vaccine 10 times a day from every news outlet and so are going on summer vacation and resuming their lives. They have been feasting at Chili’s and haven’t died yet.
I might be very naive but I don’t think people are going to keep that up once deaths predictably get back up to early April peaks again. This time that will happen while we haven’t been shutdown with some light at the end of the tunnel. Which means once people actually realize we are fucked it will get even worse from there for at least a month. I think people are going to freak out. Or maybe I’m wrong and people will mostly just pretend like 10 planes worth of people aren’t falling out of the sky every day with no end in sight.
Unless we are badly misunderstanding something about the virus a long period of very high death tolls is happening starting towards the end of this month. And there is less than no plan to stop it. Many schools are opening, we had a NASCAR race with fans yesterday and all sports leagues are about to restart. Many jobs are having people come back into the office. If you were trying to make it as bad as possible all of these things happening simultaneously is how you would do it.
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I truly think people have just decided the virus is over and are going to keep living as usual until they personally suffer immense consequences.
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MIL got a positive test back after waiting a week for results. FIL tested negative somehow, and he’s been the one opening his business back up and basically doing the rural version of super spreading. Thankfully she’s almost totally asymptomatic, but she’s also a lung cancer survivor with all the obvious risks that entails here. My wife is furious.
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I don’t disagree but a lot of people are going to know someone who died from Covid by the end of this. It’s hard to have perspective on where we are because it feels like this has been going on forever. As such most people think it’s over when the worst part of this both from a health perspective and an economic perspective is almost certainly ahead of us.
When that bubble people have been living in inevitably pops I think that is when things get really bad. Maybe it never happens. Maybe we get bailed out in time by a vaccine. Maybe it goes away on it’s own. But those things seem unlikely and it seems like we are hurtling at 100 MPH towards a brick wall with our seatbelt off not giving a care in the world because we are drunk as fuck.
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A million dead is less than .3% of the population. And at least a third of those deaths will be written off as “they were old/fat/sick anyway/etc.”. I think this will continue raging indefinitely until a vaccine arrives, during which time most Americans will slowly come to think the magnitude of the carnage is overblown because they personally aren’t suffering.
Luckily for the election, I think this is not true for educated suburban types, who are a small percentage of the population but are absolutely crucial voters.
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Someone will have to help with the exact math here but I would guess the average person has what 500 Facebook friends or equivalent between family, friends, coworkers, etc? I realize those are mostly not close relationships but if 1 in 350 people die then the odds of personally knowing a Covid fatality has to be quite high. Maybe everyone does just rationalize it away though, literally nothing would surprise me in this country at this point.
Knowing someone who dies won’t move the needle. People in this country won’t actually care until a member of their nuclear family is facing death.
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I don’t know that many counties in those areas so I’ll just pull from a map. Try Wyoming and Genesee Counties in NY, and Lebanon and Jefferson in PA. Pittsburgh is in Allegheny County, but I’d expect them to be doing reasonably well.
This is supposed to be a reply to @nunnehi, don’t know what happened there.
All they know is poor people can’t work if their kids aren’t in school and poor people can’t be getting handouts. There’s no thought beyond that yet on their end imo.
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Once again the rest of the world follows this thread
Why the COVID-19 debate between aerosols and droplets matters less than you think.
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Pretty much. There’s probably some kind of formula we could come up with. Like a Personal Impact Index, which scales from 1-10. When it’s 1 people are Lake of Ozarking and Doorknob Licking. At 10 they’re hiding under the bed in the fetal position. Maybe 7 is meaningful change in behavior.
Death in Immediate Family/Spouse: 8
Hospitalization in Above Group: 7
Death/Hospitalization of Healthy Young Acquaintance: 7
Contact Traced Exposure to Individual: 5
Positive Case in Immediate Family/Spouse: 5
Positive Case in Extended Family/Friends/Work circles: 3
Local ICU Overflow: 2
National Deaths/Day Over 2,500: 2
Healthy Famous Person Tests Positive: 1
And so on… I would have thought the ICU Overflow and local outbreaks would get people to a 7. That doesn’t seem to be the case in the South. Time will tell what the true numbers are, but it stands to reason that like X people testing positive in your life = one death of a loved one in terms of knocking some sense into you. Whether that’s 5 or 25, I don’t know.
Hopefully people’s threshold isn’t as insanely high as it seems to be.
Yeah my guess is everyone will “know” someone, like am old high school/college friend even. If we’re lucky maybe only like 1 in 5 Americans will lose someone in their extended family/circle of friends.
I’m guessing it’ll be worse than that, but it’s too early to say so I’ll be more optimistic.
My favorite is “They were fat anyway.” Like no shit, this is America, obesity is a big thing here. Like I’ve had a few people ask me my health risks and I tell them (asthma, weight, slightly high cholesterol).
They’re usually like “Oh that’s too bad, yeah, luckily I don’t have any.” So far everyone who has said that to me is either 70+ or has a BMI over 30.
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