And let’s just be honest. Most of the country is by a thread economically right now and there is no stimulus coming until at least January. So a lot of people will oppose a shutdown of anything related to their own income.
You need some form of stimulus/UBI to do it.
Most of the country does not know what is coming. If states do partial lockdowns or significant restrictions I think we will see an even greater degree of rebellion from the first time. If they don’t we are looking at thousands dead a day probably by some point in December.
Tough situation to be in.
I honestly don’t know if most of the country is hanging on by a thread. Everyone I know is doing fine and life is mostly normal aside from WFH. People are shopping and going out to eat and running errands. I absolutely do not suggest my experiences are representative of the entire country, but I can safely say that nobody here in Western NY is remotely considering a shutdown. The graph of “back to normalness” continues to trend upward here.
This jibes with what I hear from family and friends in MA and NV - I’m the only one in any of my circles that is really sweating this.
That leads me to conclude that nobody is shutting down anything unless things get orders of magnitude worse. Everyone I know has the perspective that things are getting better. People are getting less seriously ill. People are dying less. Treatments are better. Wear a mask and keep on truckin’.
Agreed. I think the move is to try to sell a two-week lockdown pre Thanksgiving and urge immediate family only on Thanksgiving, but enforce nothing at all. Then try to do a 3 week lockdown pre-Christmas, same thing.
But I think we’ll see lockdowns thrown on shortly after the election in blue states, nothing in red, a huge rebellion and not much following of lockdowns, and a huge death toll.
We’re too collectively stupid/ignorant/apathetic to beat this. We haven’t felt nearly enough pain yet, as shameful as that is.
The thing that really has me freaked out is hospital capacity. Many cities and states were struggling with that at 50k cases/day. They were able to make do by shuffling patients around amongst hospitals or even to other cities nearby. They were able to bring in travel nurses from less hard hit areas.
Now we are in a situation where almost every state is on the brink. 33 states had more than 1,000 cases today and 20 had at least 1,900. The pandemic is accelerating across the board not just in a few cities or states. Add in the fact there is literally zero federal response and zero hope for any federal response for almost 3 months and I don’t see how we avoid absolute disaster. Both from a human life/health perspective and economically.
I hope I’m wrong but I can’t really think of a scenerio supported by the facts that tells me we will be in a better place in a month. Everything points to everything being drastically worse in a month.
I know one person with all her credit cards maxed and one guy driving Uber 80 hours a week who I’ve given three short term (2-4 week) loans to of increasing amounts. Everyone else is ok but tightening our belts and uncomfortably looking forward with our savings and projecting it out.
Feels like most of the working class and young people are in the grinder right now.
This is the part that’s not getting nearly enough attention imo…
Yah I fear that what I wrote comes off as insensitive - not my intention. I’m certain people are suffering, but I’m not certain that very many people are feeling that we are on the brink of catastrophe.
I agree with that. People are suffering economically and mostly feel safe from COVID, which means they won’t want to shut down.
That’s the weird thing - when there were 40k cases a day, I thought it was bad and I was locked down. Nobody else cared. At 100k, things are exactly the same as far as I can tell.
We are saying that most of the country is about to lose the ability to receive medical care with bodies piling up in the streets, but I suspect if you asked most people they’d say that things are better now than they were in the spring and things are a bit overblown tbh.
Just hard to comprehend the different realities that exist right now.
Yep but there’s pretty broad consensus I’m afraid. Or our side is sick of arguing with idiots and just keeping our mouths shut.
Hopefully we’ll get the good news that we’ll be free of this shamefully incompetent and evil administration on January 20th.
I completely feel your last sentence. My best explanation is it’s a boy who cried wolf situation. Back in March we were told the whole country was going to turn into Italy. It didn’t outside of NYC. Then we saw cases rise and subside this summer without doing a whole lot besides mask wearing in some locations.
There is a sense that it has been overblown because the worst has not come to pass. Will it? Who knows. But the northern hemisphere has never gone through a Covid winter and the early returns are extremely startling. We aren’t just seeing increasing cases, the RATE of increase is accelerating. None of us know where it tops out but there is a very real point where there literally aren’t enough nurses and doctors in the country to take care of everyone. If we ever breach that point the loss of life will be insanely high.
I think part of it is because by now many more people know someone who has had the virus and recovered, so it reinforces the narrative that the reaction is overblown. But we’ve known all along that the range of outcomes is huge.
Sadly this seems to be the catch-22. Do a good job and “prove” that it’s overblown and you overreacted. Do a bad job and tons of people die.
Wow. 100k. Even though we predicted it it’s hard to understand that we let it go this far. And will let it go further.
No worries @amead. I think we all know what you meant as far as the country being blind to what is coming in terms of both health and economics.
Just like job gains have a multiplier in the blocs economy, job losses and income losses from lack of support-stimulus will be a negative multiplier. In rural areas, People that can’t pay rent will hit small landlords. Discretionary spending will disappear.
Ugh
What could go wrong
See, maybe it is getting better. Who the hell knows anymore.
Ok now it may be hitting close to home.
My brother in Michigan called to say that Dads gf reports that he is really fatigued and brain fogged. He is 91 and in very good physical and mental health. They did travel to Wisconsin to visit family but they’ve been back for 11 days with no known exposure from anyone there. He did visit his sister in a nursing home thru a window since her facility is on quarantine. And apparently he does have a coffee at the “hotel” with the old guys once a week.
No fever or cough so far.
So my brother suspects Covid. My wife’s sister says a lot of her memory care facility patients presented this way. He does NOT want to go to the hospital. He basically doesn’t want treatment if he has it. The gf is 89 herself and we don’t think she has told her family what’s possibly up yet.
The plan is to contact his doctor or another local health professional (my brother knows everyone, Dad was on the hospital board for years).
Obviously he needs a pulse ox reading. I wouldn’t trust the antigen test, only pcr.
Is there any option of at home palliative/compassionate care? Rules in Michigan if he goes in to the hospital is no visitors until the very end.
And of course it could be completely something else and we could be jumping the gun.
Top it off my plan to vote is in person Tuesday ¶ and it’s really really important for me to vote.