Ephraim
4441
We’ve had 2 large bottles of hand sanitizer stolen from waiting rooms in two of our locations. We’re a psychology clinic. So, basically people finished a therapy session, walked out to the waiting room, looked around and saw that no one was looking, and swiped them. sigh. This was last week. We’ve gone to mostly remote sessions now, except for a couple of holdout clients and therapists. sigh again
Hence the quotes. The public didn’t take it seriously anywhere else, it was clear that a much tamer message would have little response, with risks that were slightly more clear at the time. And I did say a day or so later that the UK was likely just waiting a few days to “catch up” on doing the same, although I was never sure of it - and you will be getting your tourists back which were crounding our bars just a few days ago, not not mention yesterday’s concert goers in Manchester.
Social distancing is going to be a big shock, having to skip it will be much worse.
Thrag
4443
Another thing she mentioned was that you’d think as a doctor’s office they wouldn’t be among those whose revenue will dry up in this crisis. However since nobody wanted to come into the office over the last few days, but every parent of a kid with a sniffle was calling in a panic, they were busy as hell with barely any billable visits.
Alstein
4445
If it goes beyond a few weeks, folks are going to give up on this real fast. We don’t have the societal patience for all of this.
God, Washington at 904 cases, 48 deaths. This is when the doubling is going to start getting really scary.
I wonder if that’s true, or if it quickly becomes a new normal. As long as institutions (esp. businesses) are forced to remain closed, I’m not sure what recourse frustrated individuals have. I suppose that some marginal businesses will begin to flout closing/takeout restrictions, and then withou enforcement, people will begin to trickle out to those locations.
But I expect the real anger / desperation is going to come from the un/under-employed, and I don’t know what recourse they will have.
When the hospitals start to buckle and the death toll starts to ramp up, people are going to stay home. Like I said earlier; there’s nothing like the tangible risk of dying to put the fear of god into people. Right now, they’re not feeling it; we’re at the calm before the storm.
No, I believe that when people they actually know start getting sick and dying they’ll suddenly realize they have plenty of patience.
And the ones that don’t? Odds are Darwin will take care of them. I just hope they don’t take a lot of their parents and grandparents with them.
I was reading an article about restaurants closing, or laying off a lot of staff, because of the dine-in rules. Unemployment doesn’t cover the full amount of pay, and they will lose medical, etc. Now, these people will start not making the rent, and already-friendly housing courts will pretty much make it impossible to evict them. So, now landlords can’t make mortgages which lead to foreclosures.
And that’s just the restaurants. Small businesses are going to get hit. Especially if you need product from China.
This is just going to suck. It sucks now. It will suck more when the economic fallout from a large unemployment trickles up. Those of us who can work from home have an amazing privilege to do it, but that is also going to have fallout. Employees who don’t work well on their own could be the first to go for layoffs.
I think this and the “fear of god” comment are spot on. Once everyone is terrified of killing someone, a) they will likely do most of the self containment on their own, and b) the government will have an easy time picking off the stranglers. Police and national guard will start to take containment very seriously once the death tolls mount; they’ll know how bad hospitals are and what it means for themselves (in a perceived dangerous job).
Vesper
4452
This is me. We haven’t seen product shortages yet, but I expect they are coming. I’m also anticipating retail shutdown any day. No way I can keep paying employees while we are shut down.
Not to downplay the human and economic toll Covid-19 will take, but what worries me most is when places like Iran or North Korea start seeing their populations begin to riot. That’s when the sabre rattling starts taking place.
My fear is that if we go more than 12 months with this thing we’ll also start seeing flareups in places like Kashmir, Ukraine and Palestine. When the shit hits the fan everybody starts looking for someone to blame, and that’s usually when deep seated animosity towards your neighbor rears its ugly head.
Every country that starts to destabilize just creates more instability. Add in a little border aggression from China and Russia and you have all the ingredients for WWIII.
Please tell me I’m wrong.
Ex-SWoo
4454
I dunno - even if things look bad I don’t think a lockdown past 1 month is sustainable for anyone. I’d imagine govts putting in testing & mandatory check points just to get the economy moving again at that point
Alstein
4455
Folks might just decide the risk of dying from poverty is greater than the risk of dying from coronavirus. It might even be a rational call on the individual level. You might even have society collectively decide the death toll is worth it if the alternative is them being poor. (not just less wealthy, I can take this on the chin for a few months if I have to, but losing your house/what you eeked all your life for - you’ll kill to stop that if you think you must)
Unless the government is going to make people whole, I think folks will get restless. Republicans know if they do this, a Democratic adminstration, even Biden’s , might not stop doing this once the crisis is over- people will realize how much of the current system is a sham.
The thing we read recently about why people aren’t freaking out more regarding climate change is something we already knew from studying populations during war time — It takes about two weeks for people to adjust to a new context, then they accept it as the new normal.
On the climate front it’s a fatal flaw but in general it’s a good thing. People are very good at adapting. We are a resilient species.
Nesrie
4457
This isn’t going to be done in a month. It is absolutely sustainable. We went to wars for years, and we can certainly weather it out in our homes now. We need competent federal level governments to make that sustainable which we don’t have.
We can pay people to do nothing. We do it all the time like paying people not to farm or throwaway their crops.
Have some faith in medical science, y’all! A hero will rise.
Ex-SWoo
4459
The virus doesn’t need to be over - as long as enough things are in place to give people enough confidence that going out isn’t that much worse that staying locked up in the house, that’s what people will do.
There’s a big difference between paying some people to not do something and asking the entire country to do it - at some point people will rather put food on the table than just starve at home.
Well that escalated quickly.
