Went for a walk around the block. It seems that, while itâs not like 2:00 AM during a snowfall, itâs still noticeably quieter than normal. No cars passed by, though I could see activity on the main road a couple of blocks to the west.
I may have to make the trek to find TP tomorrow⌠wish me luck
Thread:
Inconceivable.
You might want to get some perspective, then. Look up how things are in the more heavily affected areas, never mind the quarantine in Italy. (I have relatives living there, and itâs absolutely no joking matter.) Also, I appreciate your FYI, but I do happen to know what a bidet is. What you donât seem to realize is that not only not everyone has a bidet, not everyone has an option to use an âindoor hoseâ on the toilet either.
Sorry for the tone but I donât think this is a time for mocking people for being anxious or afraid. Just generally - empathy is a nice thing to have.
Be prepared: while most people will behave decently, youâre also going to see a greater than normal occurence of opportunistic, irresponsible and generally crappy behaviour like this over the coming weeks. As if the situation isnât lousy enough as it is.
We need to call out and slap down this behaviour wherever we are.
Libertarians will disagree to an extent, and at its extremes Ayn Rand built a whole ideological cult based on the premise that a lack of empathy for our fellow humans is a good thing.
Donât apologise for your tone. Itâs letting sociopaths and bullies and their admirers set the tone for discourse during a crisis that will make things worse, so itâs important we push back when confronted with rhetoric that supports their view.
Have they been doing anything? As far as I can tell from the Norwegian papers, Finland has been in a state of denial. (Of course, so was Norway until a week ago.) I found this at thl.fi (via google translate, despite years in the Finnish-speaking part of Minnesota I speak none):
- Hospitals in Finland are well prepared to research and treat coronavirus infections under isolation conditions.
- No direct conclusions can be drawn from epidemic situations in other countries to the situation in Finland or its development.
That seems bizarrely optimistic.
This is a very very good start, but way late.
Have I mentioned that my lovely wife is a baker, specializing in wedding cakes? Especially big, beautiful, over the top wedding cakes? (Seriously, her work has graced the cover of magazines like American Cake Decorator. Sheâs good. I married rather better than she did!)
We have a thread for that:
Google apologizes for not knowing what the hell Trump was babbling about.
Anyone else wonder how long Trump is going to put up with Dr. Anthony Fauci? He keeps undercutting the âdont worry, be happyâ storyline by actually telling the truth. Trump tends to not tolerate that well.
I think weâre already at the point where most people are looking at sources outside of the federal government for guidance. Certainly out here on the West Coast, we know weâre on our own.
True. The schools and theme parks and sports and entertainment venues should have been closed at least a week ago, and ideally longer.
I hope the weddings will end up being postponed, and that sheâll bounce back. But a 2-month hit on a small businessâs cash flow is definitely something to worry about. In my own life, thereâs now a good chance that a close relativeâs business is going to go under because of COVID-19 after heâs spent nearly 20 years keeping it afloat, and another relative told me that clients are backing out of deals that so far amount to 1/5 of his annual income.
The sense I get is that adults in the room, such as they are, told him that he either lets experts like Fauci talk without contradicting them or theyâre going to quit en masse. Theyâre also probably pulling some sort of reverse psychology working with his narcissistic behaviours to make him think that the experts are following his lead. But that only gets them so far as things get more stressful. So, yeah, the clock is ticking.
From the numbers I have, it looks like the epidemic in Hungary is a week or more behind Austria (assuming you donât use American-style testing methodsâŚ), so while your government probably should have acted earlier, youâre not worse off than other European countries.
In Austria we went from âgovernment tells us all to wash our handsâ to âno public gatherings beyond 100 people indoors and 500 people outdoors, university lectures canceledâ on Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, a friend and I canceled our vacation plans (âmoney back if you decide todayâ). It was a hard decision, we would have preferred to have more time.
On Wednesday, the government announced that âschools will close next Wednesdayâ.
On Thursday they made clear that students who staid home earlier would not get into trouble for it, and on Friday they announced that all non-essential shops (except for food, pharmacies, pet shops, banks and post offices, basically) would have to close next week, and that restaurants and bars would have to close by 3PM.
My company had us take our work PCs home on Friday, and on Saturday, the government announced that all restaurants would close, all schools closed on Monday, and went on to announce a general curfew, which passed through both chambers of parliament and got the presidentâs signature today.
Once things start moving, they can move very quickly, but itâs easier for people accept if itâs spread out across a few days.
