What if.....

[Ausmumof3]

18 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I know South Korea has been using CCTV and credit cards for this, which would definitely be past people's tolerance for privacy invasion. However, keeping registers would work pretty well, and it seems like a good idea. 

I think it’s less worrying because being all hand written it would be fairly laborious to go through and grab everyone’s details off it.  It’s not like a digital thing you can hack into.  Also if you want you can always give a fake phone number although I think that’s kind of stupid.

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/states-reopened-without-meeting-safety-criteria-coronavirus-case-surge-2020-6/amp?__twitter_impression=true
 

Reporting here says that almost half of states reopened before meeting the Whitehouse safety guidelines.

[TracyP]

5 hours ago, frogger said:

 

Our contact tracers held numbers down for sometime but people refused to cooperate. How can they contact 100-200 people for a single case? This is what you end up with when people go to multiple bars or when people sing in a large church. In my experience people in America won't cooperate at all. 

We also have had travelers test when coming to Alaska then go to multiple social gatherings before their tests came back positive.

We have contact tracers talk to people who refuse to be tested because they are afraid of the government. 

I've seen businesses with banners on websites declaring this is all a hoax. 

The health department can do ok but dang at somepoint people have to cooperate and that isn't what I'm seeing. 

Are these other countries dealing with this mentality because I'm thinking it makes it way harder?

Some of this is specific to America. Florida, in particular, seems to have something special (for lack of a better word) going on. But other countries do deal with similar issues. 

In Victoria 90% of people who tested positive did not isolate between the time they showed symptoms and went for testing. 50% did not isolate between testing and recieving results.

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/07/22/australians-ignore-self-isolation-guidelines-coronavirus-case-numbers-climb/

In South Korea members of the LGBTQ community were scared to be tested because of their government's contact tracing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5836699/south-korea-coronavirus-lgbtq-itaewon/%3famp=true

You can google virtually any country and 'ignores lockdown' to find stories of people ignoring rules the same as here. I'll throw out my first 2 hits.

Spain

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-barcelona-beaches-packed-after-fed-up-locals-ignore-stay-at-home-advice-amid-covid-19-spike-12032433

France

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53138300

 

[Ausmumof3]

20 minutes ago, TracyP said:

Some of this is specific to America. Florida, in particular, seems to have something special (for lack of a better word) going on. But other countries do deal with similar issues. 

In Victoria 90% of people who tested positive did not isolate between the time they showed symptoms and went for testing. 50% did not isolate between testing and recieving results.

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/07/22/australians-ignore-self-isolation-guidelines-coronavirus-case-numbers-climb/

In South Korea members of the LGBTQ community were scared to be tested because of their government's contact tracing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5836699/south-korea-coronavirus-lgbtq-itaewon/%3famp=true

You can google virtually any country and 'ignores lockdown' to find stories of people ignoring rules the same as here. I'll throw out my first 2 hits.

Spain

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-barcelona-beaches-packed-after-fed-up-locals-ignore-stay-at-home-advice-amid-covid-19-spike-12032433

France

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53138300

 

We literally had a police chase involving a helicopter and spikes after someone ran the border last night.  That seems ... maybe slightly excessive.  But I guess they want the message to be clear.

edited to add we also had a car try to squish through between two trucks hoping not to be seen.  And some people came from vic and tried to stow away in a freight train to get to WA.  I’m not sure why people are taking risks like that.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Ausmumof3

[Bootsie]

45 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I know South Korea has been using CCTV and credit cards for this, which would definitely be past people's tolerance for privacy invasion. However, keeping registers would work pretty well, and it seems like a good idea. 

South Korea resorted to CCTV and credit cards when the written registers contained fake identities--those registers did not work well.  

[frogger]

36 minutes ago, TracyP said:

Some of this is specific to America. Florida, in particular, seems to have something special (for lack of a better word) going on. But other countries do deal with similar issues. 

In Victoria 90% of people who tested positive did not isolate between the time they showed symptoms and went for testing. 50% did not isolate between testing and recieving results.

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/07/22/australians-ignore-self-isolation-guidelines-coronavirus-case-numbers-climb/

In South Korea members of the LGBTQ community were scared to be tested because of their government's contact tracing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5836699/south-korea-coronavirus-lgbtq-itaewon/%3famp=true

You can google virtually any country and 'ignores lockdown' to find stories of people ignoring rules the same as here. I'll throw out my first 2 hits.

Spain

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-barcelona-beaches-packed-after-fed-up-locals-ignore-stay-at-home-advice-amid-covid-19-spike-12032433

France

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53138300

 

 

So it's just humans, not Americans. 

Honestly, I might be more worried if I were in a more authoritarian country.

 

I do not want our country to become more authoritarian (that is scary too) but at some point it would be nice if we could work together though. 😒

[frogger]

30 minutes ago, square_25 said:

This is where it would help for people TO GET RESULTS FASTER, sigh. 

Some people don't isolate after they get results.  I don't know if you can fix some people's mindset. 

[TracyP]

1 minute ago, frogger said:

 

So it's just humans, not Americans. 

Honestly, I might be more worried if I were in a more authoritarian country.

 

I do not want our country to become more authoritarian (that is scary too) but at some point it would be nice if we could work together though. 😒

Yeah, they have somehow figured out how to work together in Scandinavian countries and a few others. I also think my state has done pretty well on that front. That type of thinking definitely seems to be the exception, though.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Where's Toto? said:

I've been cutting my own hair for a couple years now and I cut dd's as well.  I decided to grow out my bangs during all this but they are now just long enough to be annoying.

It’s certainly annoying to make it past that hump, but it certainly has helped that I hardly ever have to have my hair looking its  best these past four months or so. So all of the most-annoying time has been fine for me to wear a headband or a little clip to hold the bangs out of the way. I don’t think either of these looks are particularly beautiful but being totally or mostly at home certainly has made it bearable. 

Now that I went to a real stylist, she did a lot of texturizing and thinning of the grown-out bangs, which also greatly improved that part of my hair. Now, it’s not just a big hank of too-long bangs pushed to the side. 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Quill

[Moonhawk]

1 hour ago, frogger said:

Some people don't isolate after they get results.  I don't know if you can fix some people's mindset. 

Okay, in the past 7 stores I've gone to (it was stock week + looking for something that no one had), I saw 3 people arguing with an employee/manager after coming in without a mask. One lady, I kid you not, said, "But *I'M* not sick, my husband is, and that's why he's not the one shopping!" The manager was already standing an appropriate distance from her but he stepped back like she had just slapped him. Seriously these people are not being paid enough.

edit: sorry that's a bit of derailment, just needed to get it off my chest since it's been bothering me since Monday.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Moonhawk

[frogger]

33 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

Okay, in the past 7 stores I've gone to (it was stock week + looking for something that no one had), I saw 3 people arguing with an employee/manager after coming in without a mask. One lady, I kid you not, said, "But *I'M* not sick, my husband is, and that's why he's not the one shopping!" The manager was already standing an appropriate distance from her but he stepped back like she had just slapped him. Seriously these people are not being paid enough.

edit: sorry that's a bit of derailment, just needed to get it off my chest since it's been bothering me since Monday.

 

😳😠  There just really isn't the right emojis on this board for this one.

[frogger]

There are very nice people who will obey the sign and mask and then when they walk up close to an employee to ask a question take their mask off to talk. I know masks aren't a 100% but that is the most important time to be wearing it and I don't want to be hateful because they are often older people who just don't get it but it makes you want to slap your forehead.  

[Shoeless]

9 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re timing / pacing of opening up

 

When did Texas start to ease restrictions?  And how quickly / tied to case numbers were the restrictions eased?  

 

Texas started opening up on May 1. Phase 1 and 2 seemed fine.  I think there were one or two hot spots that flared up in El Paso tied to the meat packing facilities, but everything was basically under control in most of the state until June 3 when we went to phase 3.  Even though on paper we were supposed to be at 50% capacity for restaurants, gyms, amusement parks, etc, everyone basically acted like life was back to normal.  No masks, no distancing in stores, and most stores stopped whatever extra disinfecting protocols they had implemented (what I observed in my area). The vibe I got around here was that everyone wanted to hurry up and reopen by July 4 to "salvage" a bit of summer fun before school started.

A lot of decision-making was left to local governments.  As in, the governor "strongly recommended" this or that, but left the final call on things like parades, gatherings, etc up to local officials. This has not worked out well because these small-town mayors and County Judges don't have any kind of public health experience.  They look at it all in terms of tax revenue and did not consider the public health angle at all.  

My county doesn't even have a health department.  The Fire Marshall has been handling Covid, for Pete's sake.  It's going as well as expected. 😕 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by MissLemon

[Shoeless]

1 minute ago, square_25 said:

Oh gosh. That doesn't sound like a good idea. 

 

We get very sporadic information on Covid from the county.  I still cant' tell you what the county positivity rate is, because the county insists they don't get this information from the state health department and there is no way for them to calculate it. My county is deliberately fudging some numbers to make it look like Covid is no big deal here.  The numbers the county reports do not match the numbers the state reports, and the definitions for "positive" vs "probable" vs. "pending" case shift so that you are never really sure what the numbers mean. 

And people are once again agitating for the mask mandate to be dropped because "case numbers are low!" No, they aren't. The state dashboard says there are over 600 cases here. But according to my county, there are only 22. 😡  They aren't being truthful with us.

[Shoeless]

Just now, square_25 said:

Wow. This state of affairs would make me want to not leave the house, I have to say.

 

We basically don't. I go out to do necessary shopping and that's it. DH and DS have been home since March 13, with only 2 trips out to keep me company, (they stayed in the car while I ran into the post office).  My husband's crumby little home town made the NYT as one of the hot spots for Covid.  And his old friends were trying to get him to visit!  HAHAHA. No.  

[Wheres Toto]

10 hours ago, Quill said:

It’s certainly annoying to make it past that hump, but it certainly has helped that I hardly ever have to have my hair looking its  best these past four months or so. So all of the most-annoying time has been fine for me to wear a headband or a little clip to hold the bangs out of the way. I don’t think either of these looks are particularly beautiful but being totally or mostly at home certainly has made it bearable. 

Now that I went to a real stylist, she did a lot of texturizing and thinning of the grown-out bangs, which also greatly improved that part of my hair. Now, it’s not just a big hank of too-long bangs pushed to the side. 

Headbands get annoying after awhile and I don't have a lot of clips.  May need to buy some soon.   I keep almost giving in and cutting them but I think having bangs long enough to go back or to the sides when I start wearing a face shield in September will be better than bangs being pushed down by the shield.    Feels weird making decisions based on that, but here we are.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, Where's Toto? said:

Headbands get annoying after awhile and I don't have a lot of clips.  May need to buy some soon.   I keep almost giving in and cutting them but I think having bangs long enough to go back or to the sides when I start wearing a face shield in September will be better than bangs being pushed down by the shield.    Feels weird making decisions based on that, but here we are.

I have two headbands that are Buffs. I find those the least annoying and their width makes it possible to fully push back and cover the bang-hair. Thinner headbands don’t stay put as well. But I agree that part of my goal was related to keeping my hair completely away from my face so I could more-easily prevent touching my face. 

My bangs are long enough now that I can get them into a topknot bun, but they are not quite  long enough to stay in a pony-tail without a headband

[BlsdMama]

19 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re thinking of COVID as an irritating interruption of our "real" life vs...

... considering the possibility *  that COVID is a plague that God has sent us.

And if so, to teach us what.

 

 

(  * whether we perceive the possibility as "literal" or "metaphoric" -- I have a full range in my household; and we've had some pretty interesting conversations, and even arrived at a few roughly comparable inferences, coming at the question from quite different perspectives.) 

Pam,

Sent? I don't know.  But allowed? Certainly.  If God is God and God can stop all things, then the fact that we are plagued by a virus, then, yes, certainly allowed.  There are many things He allows that make me raise an eyebrow.  But, at the end of the day, in my faith, death is not the worst thing and perhaps not even a thing to be feared or avoided at all costs.  How did Lewis put it? "Death opens a door out of a little, dark room..."

I worry about things I know I ought.  I attempt to exert control over things I ought not attempt to control.  I'm very human, but I admit wondering how much of those things matter at all? Too deep for a Friday morning with the sun shining......

[Wheres Toto]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

I have two headbands that are Buffs. I find those the least annoying and their width makes it possible to fully push back and cover the bang-hair. Thinner headbands don’t stay put as well. But I agree that part of my goal was related to keeping my hair completely away from my face so I could more-easily prevent touching my face. 

My bangs are long enough now that I can get them into a topknot bun, but they are not quite  long enough to stay in a pony-tail without a headband

I have a couple Buffs. They feel tight unless they are only folded once so they are so wide they look like I'm wearing a babushka.  Which I am okay with most of the time these days.    I can't stand it when they feel like they are sliding back, which also seems like a frequent thing. 

[Pam in CT]

re timing of TX' COVID curve

10 hours ago, MissLemon said:

 

Texas started opening up on May 1. Phase 1 and 2 seemed fine.  I think there were one or two hot spots that flared up in El Paso tied to the meat packing facilities, but everything was basically under control in most of the state until June 3 when we went to phase 3.  Even though on paper we were supposed to be at 50% capacity for restaurants, gyms, amusement parks, etc, everyone basically acted like life was back to normal.  No masks, no distancing in stores, and most stores stopped whatever extra disinfecting protocols they had implemented (what I observed in my area). The vibe I got around here was that everyone wanted to hurry up and reopen by July 4 to "salvage" a bit of summer fun before school started.

A lot of decision-making was left to local governments.  As in, the governor "strongly recommended" this or that, but left the final call on things like parades, gatherings, etc up to local officials. This has not worked out well because these small-town mayors and County Judges don't have any kind of public health experience.  They look at it all in terms of tax revenue and did not consider the public health angle at all.  

My county doesn't even have a health department.  The Fire Marshall has been handling Covid, for Pete's sake.  It's going as well as expected. 😕 

Thanks.

It does appear, then, that for the state as a whole, the rapid-increase part of the curve kicked in AFTER the SIP measures were lifted.  (As opposed to the NY/NJ/CT timing, where our rapid-increase started before the measures, flattened during the most restricted of the measures... and our measures have been eased much more gradually -- we still don't have in-restaurant dining or inside groups > 10, for example.)

 

 

 

re God and COVID

3 hours ago, BlsdMama said:

Pam,

Sent? I don't know.  But allowed? Certainly.  If God is God and God can stop all things, then the fact that we are plagued by a virus, then, yes, certainly allowed.  There are many things He allows that make me raise an eyebrow.  But, at the end of the day, in my faith, death is not the worst thing and perhaps not even a thing to be feared or avoided at all costs.  How did Lewis put it? "Death opens a door out of a little, dark room..."

I worry about things I know I ought.  I attempt to exert control over things I ought not attempt to control.  I'm very human, but I admit wondering how much of those things matter at all? Too deep for a Friday morning with the sun shining......

(perhaps a subject for a thread of its own; there's a lot to noodle over there)

There has been -- unsurprisingly -- a great deal of anguished grappling within Judaism post-Holocaust about the distinction between "God sent" vs "God allowed."  It is a mighty hard question.

And there are deep differences between Jewish teaching vs Christian on concepts of evil, acts of omission v commission, emphasis on this world vs another world to come, and -- perhaps most central of all the differences -- the extent to which God is understood to be in relationship with us (both Jews specifically and humanity universally) as a collective vs in relationship with us as individuals.  How we understand that question definitely informs how we understand any question around "what lesson ought (we) (I) be drawing from this experience/trial/plague before (us) (me)?"

Whether or not we receive the question through a lens of divinity, though, this virus clearly does have stuff to teach us.  We Americans are stiff-necked people, so it may take a while. Here's hoping it doesn't take forty years.

 

(I have long been intrigued by several of Lewis' books -- particularly Great Divorce; also Till We Have Faces -- and periodically pitch a Lewis study series in the Adult Ed programming at my synagogue.  To my mind there is real treasure reading some of his works through a Jewish lens. Thus far I have not yet rounded up a critical mass, LOL.)

 

[frogger]

I think another problem is that people have difficulty comprehending that contact tracing is only feasible with smaller numbers. We had tiny numbers and it was working. When people see those smaller numbers, they think there is no problem because the media has mainly pushed flatten the curve. They question why they should restrict themselves when few people are in the hospital with Covid. 

 

People want to wait until there is a problem and it's everywhere before they are willing to cooperate. That just makes it more painful.