Four score and seven years ago....?

Actually, I think Honest Abe would say something like this: You new leaders think you are my equal. But you fail to make the hard choices. The choices I had to make caused four years of hardship for the country. Many on both sides gave their lives for something they believed in. Many more had their lives disrupted beyond compare. You do not know hard decisions. None of you are my equal.

That will never happen nor should it. There is no one size fits all solution for this. Even within our own country, what’s appropriate for New York and the surrounding areas does not make sense for many states which are not averaging even one death per day. With much of the country experiencing little to no issues with the virus, it is time those areas get back to normal. The rest of the country will soon follow in the coming weeks and people will have to do their own risk assessment to decide what is best for them. Everyone does this on a daily basis with all aspects of life, those decisions are not made for us nor should they be.

This is how I feel when I see someone without a mask on.

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We will be at 70,000 deaths by tomorrow for sure. Maybe even today.

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Now, the website tracking the numbers is breaking some of the states out by county.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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Here is part of the Texas breakout numbers by county. For those who don't know, Harris county is Houston, Dallas county is Dallas, and Tarrant county is Ft. Worth.

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Meat is starting to be rationed at the retailers. Costco calls them "purchasing limits".

At Costco, you get one beef, one pork, and one chicken product. Or mix and match.

Despite The Prez. ordering the packers to stay open, Tyson is open but at reduced capacity.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/business/costco-meat-purchases/index.html

" Tyson (TSN) Foods warned Monday that it expects more meat plant closures this year. The company also said it will continue producing less meat than usual, as workers refrain from coming to work during the outbreak. The pandemic has halved the amount of pork processing capacity in the country, Tyson said in its earnings call."

Agreed. A small town in Montona/South Dakota/Wyoming with zero confirmed cases is NOT Queens in New York City (with 4,000+ deaths in 2 months).

But what prevents the virus making it's way to and through the population of one of those small towns? There is no herd immunity, no vaccines, no historical antibodies through previous infections.

My neighbor told me a story from a friend who lives in a small town, that serves as a vacation spot. People started flooding in from the big cities to their cabins and brought the infection with them and then passed it on to the grocery store workers. It's just anecdotal, and maybe it didn't even happen exactly as he described it... but it could.

TLDR: Does the season flu / cold viruses usually skip small towns?

Man, this thing keeps getting worse and worse with the newest estimates for fatalities hitting 130,000. I didn't see what the time frame was on this. By the end of the year maybe?

Well if theres supposed to be 3k deaths a day by june 1st I would say by the middle of june we will have 130k deaths.

With all the "idiots" in the US I actually think we will see it getting worse than that. Too many people just are not taking this seriously! I just lost an Aunt on May 1st to Coronavirus and I am sure she will not be the last one we never get a chance to say goodbye to before this is over. THIS ISN'T THE FLU!

21,581 new U.S. cases today.

69,476 total deaths.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

But I saw something on Youtube where 2 doctors sitting at a table say it was exactly like the flu. Then they went on Fox and repeated it.

Who to believe?!

This needs to be made into a pic immediately. Get one with the bluetooth device that monitors air flow and will send a message to your phone when the efficiency is depleted. (I tried these for a couple rotations but the auto connect failure seemed to make it ineffective)

That should be Total Deaths. Scared me even worse for a moment.

Now that the lockdowns are ending, it's obviously going to get much worse. They won't be able to lock it down again. People barely tolerated it the first time and believe the results didn't justify it. Now we just ride it out, try to make the best decisions for our own unique situations, and tally up the losses in a year or two.

Each to their own but he is still an idiot and i still got a great laugh from him it was gold. By the way i should maybe add no cases of the Virus where i am in Australia.

Murder Hornets!! They exist and are badass! ..if you you see a nest don’t pick at it..little bastards can kill

Dont worry i used to laugh at Michael Jackson when he wore them, And his glove, Maybe he was onto something lol.

This is a fear for small towns. Particularly more and more out of state plates come in for tourist season - saw a New York plate today. Minnesota, Oregon. We're all avoiding gas stations. haha. Another thing people are grumbling about is the snowbirds returning from California - technically they may be half-a-year-and-one day residents of the state, but no one is looking forward to them returning. In Colorado and Wyoming some of the worst counties are the snowbird or ski resort areas. And it's true that the current saying for better or worse right now is "We're not New York."

Can't stop people from traveling though. It's going to get spread around this summer through innocent summer vacations for sure.

I'm sorry to hear of your loss Skip. Hope everyone at the house is staying safe. Tod.

Making someone laugh is a good thing. People laugh at me all the time. You really need to lighten up.

Thank you. Corrected.

And the total deaths of 69,476 is now 69,921 for the end of day number.

Any concerns with eating horse meat in these trying times?

What do you guys think, "audio glitch"?

Sadly I have to agree with you. I say "sadly" not because I have to agree with you but it is going to be sad to see how many more people are going to die because of the "need" to go back to "business as usual".

Personally my plans for 2020 - and possibly beyond - are to just hang out at home and avoid people as much as possible. Projections say once 70 to 80% of the population have had it the virus will basically just "fizzle out" and disappear on its own. So if possible it seems like the "smartest" thing to do at this point is to let the "idiots" go out and spread this around until it fizzles out and then life will go back to "normal" again.

I just feel super bad for all the people "on the front lines" that have to be exposed because of their jobs, careers, or need for money. Only time will tell what will happen in the end but the more I read about the virus and the more info that keeps coming out about it the more I really don't want to take chances. Thankfully I am semi retired and have been working from home for years so my life isn't going to change all that much anyway other than not being able to travel for enjoyment. But this whole mess is going to be tough on a hell of a lot of people.

Best of luck to all!

I agree with you 100%. It’s an uphill battle trying to get everyone on the same page in the US. Everyone has a selfish and entitled attitude anymore and I worry that we no longer have a resolve to get anything accomplished. The US may be f’ed.

Speaking of “idiots”...this happened in San Diego yesterday or today.
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Pretty sure our initial lockdown period was to get our hospitals and testing capacities all straightened out, not to make anything go away... Ahh well, at least we sorta tried?

Yeah, among other things. It wasn't going to go away, a vaccine is far off and it's not reasonable to keep people restricted for extended periods of time so our state had a few goals in mind, see the attached pic. With that accomplished now they can start loosening up restrictions.

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It has happened in areas like Park City, UT and Sun Valley, ID. Both areas early on had some of the highest per capital infection rates in the country. As you would expect, it was brought there by ski tourists from NYC and places like Seattle on the west coast.

Currently, there is a large outbreak on the Navajo Nation which cross sects Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. This area is very rural but these cases underscore the fact that you don’t necessarily need to reside in a large city to see widespread infections in communities given the highly infectious nature of this virus

Just thinking about Sigourney before I fall asleep...

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How many of those things have the potential to kill you just by sitting in the same room as someone?

This is a tale of two societies...

those who are employed and working from home with no worries about losing their jobs and health coverage.

Then there are those who are weeks away from losing the roof over their heads, their entire business, and/or their health care coverage.

Those in the first group need to show a little more empathy for the people in the second group.

Absolutely agree and we should all keep this in mind.

I think people are missing the point of wearing gloves. I see people in the grocery store touching their face and their phone etc wearing them

If you're bored at home during lockdown, why not rearrange your bookshelf?

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Your profile says you're in Melbourne . The Melbourne I'm in we've had around 1500 cases . Every state , territory and capital city has cases . Where abouts in Australia are you ?

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One of your best , keep them coming Daditude .

I feel very bad for the "second group" of people you are talking about and truly wish there was more being done for those people. Living "hand to mouth" most of my adult life I fully understand what this is like for them and how badly they need to get back to work. Sadly in many cases "opening up things" is going to be "too little too late" for many of them.

Using someone like a waiter (or waitress) for example. If a restaurant reopens and is set up to only serve 1/2 of "normal capacity" and the majority of people are still afraid to go out to eat that poor waiter (or waitress) is going to be lucky to make 1/2 of what they were making. If things were already tight for them before this hit 1/2 income isn't going to pay their bills.

My sister owned a small boutique type shop for years and she was saying the other day she would rather be closed than to be open with half her normal customers shopping because of this coronavirus. Her logic was if she had 50% of her normal cash flow and had to be open with the extra cost of utilities while being open she would have gone broke anyway so how is working for nothing better than not working at all?

So regardless if we "open things up or not" a good many people are "screwed" because of this mess.

Then you have to consider how many more people are going to die because things opened up again. How much longer this will likely last because of opening things up again. And how bad things are going to get for health care workers & others on the front line once things open up again. And then ask is it really worth it?

Personally I think the "smarter move" is for people who are out of work to take jobs that are opening up as a result of this mess short term until things start returning to normal.

Regardless of how things play out the end result isn't going to be good for a good many people. Please do all you can to help those people. These are tough times like most of us have never seen and will likely never see again!

Why does there always have to be two groups?

You’re completely right, and absolutely wrong. Look at 9/11. It changed global air transportation immediately. Now no one can bring a water bottle on a plane. The new safety measures will be more or less a global response.

That won’t happen in USA too much capitalism. You need to follow a compassionate countries lead. You shouldn’t have second class citizens. Equal opportunity for all (not equal treatment for all). Every person gets the treatment they require.

I think that not the “smarter move” I think that will soon be the only move. Meat plant can’t process food because their workers are sick, find new workers to keep the plant running. Can’t find workers, offer them first choice on meat cuts before it goes to stores. People want to eat, they will work. In order to keep essential services open long term (1-2 years) they will need to cycle through employees at a phenomenal rate. Grave diggers, body bag haulers, delivery drivers there will be work for those that want it. Hospitals will need to hire nurses from closed private practices to stay open. PSW and health support workers will be hiring like mad, I bet their hiring requirements will be less strict Just to keep the places functioning.

Either that or military will need to come in to run these facilities. Here in Canada some of the nursing homes hardest hit have asked for military support to Help run the home.

North vs. South
Red vs. Blue
Home vs. Visitor
Rich vs. Poor
Faithful vs. Infidel
Yin vs. Yang
Us vs. Them

take your pick...

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I went to the local hardware this weekend. It was busy, and I’d say 95% of people had on face coverings, maybe 5% had gloves.

While in there, I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks. A slightly panicked looking woman was shopping while covering her mouth and nose with her hand. She would occasionally switch hands to handle stuff on the shelves.

As a lifelong connoisseur of the absurd, it was a thing of beauty to witness. I will forever regret not filming it.

There is a 3rd group: essential workers. People risking their lives to deliver pizza, stock grocery store shelves, staff hospitals. Right now, my son is doing great with delivery tips. But he doesn’t make enough to pay for health insurance. If he was 27 instead of 21 and on our insurance, he’d be SOL if he caught this.

Regarding the CDC chart, 5% more deaths per year is nothing to scoff at.

Stopped in the grocery store yesterday for one item. I think of all the people I saw, only TWO of us had masks. I kept wondering if they knew something I did not. I'm not a dooms dayer or anything but sheesh, going back to 'normal' maybe a little too quick?

The whole working from home sect will eventually be in the same boat as the lowly non-essential minimum wage worker, if you take out the foundation the penthouse will fall. Then we will see who won't go out except for this or that. It's all good until the cash runs out.

There was a story I read a week or two ago about this. A mother was talking about her daughter. It want something along the lines of

Don’t call my daughter a hero. A hero is someone that rushes into action, a hero is placed on a pedestal like they are better then the average person. My daughter is no hero, she is a slave to the system, she is terrified ever time she has to go into work. She wasn’t trained for or prepared to deal with what’s happening. But she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to move. She needs help not praise.