He's just looking for an angle that fits his "perspective" and "facts" lol

A sad food chain casualty .... Sweet Tomatoes / Souplantation. Our favourite healthy eating option when visiting the US. Seems the buffet style isn't going to cut it post covid

Was always surprised how busy they were with families and retirees etc all wanting to eat cheap healthy food .... wish we had had a chain food place like that in Australia, it was always the first place we would look for when we would arrive in the US

The staff always seemed genuinely happy too, and didn't seem to have a high turnover of staff ..... whether in cali, florida, texas, Denver or our fav in Vegas ..... even though we only get to the US a few times a year, many of the staff would remember us and take the time for a chat ...... feel so sorry for them losing their jobs....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/sweet-tomatoes-to-close-permanently-due-to-coronavirus/ar-BB13NKMM

I was being polite. I used the pronoun "we" to correspond to "sentient beings."

The science-denying constituency is not an audience likely to digest, let alone read, the article I posted about an Israeli antibody research result.

Incidentally, don't discount the Israeli virology scientists. Some of the most influential medical innovations of the last 2 decades have derived from that country's medical research community. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised one iota if some Israeli research or technology leads to effective covid19 treatment. Fingers crossed.

That’s my conundrum. My mom is 76 and she lives with us in the main floor bedroom (stairs started to become too much for her last year). If I die, well I guess it was my time. But if I get my mom sick and she dies, it’s going to haunt me forever.

yeah I’m kind of over the death charts. We all know where to find them if we need to. Noting all of the 10k milestones is morbid too.

I give a little more weight to journalists, medical professionals, or even the director of the national institute of infectious diseases (who has served under something like 5 presidents) than I do some guy on a pinball forum's friend from kindergarten.

You can believe whomever or whatever you'd like. But when you then spread potential misinformation as fact, it can have very serious consequences.

Alan Parsons of the group with the same name, could be on that roof. He assisted on the Beatles Abbey Road album. He is now 71.

I'm wondering if there will be increased birth rates in about 9 months with all of this lock-down. And after Elon Musk announcing an unusual baby name, what new names might parents come up with?
Covid as a first name sounds likely for a boy or a girl.

.

You respond to emails weird.

Level 2 in 5 hours, BBQ and Beers with mates this weekend after 7 weeks of lockdown.

bbq (resized).png

Lucky you ! You probably live in the only country in the world where you can forget about social distancing without endangering anyone.

Yep , NZ has done a great job .
Meanwhile , China is blocking a lot of our meat exports because we want an enquiry to how the virus started .

IMG_20200513_170918 (resized).jpg

Yep, the country did a great job and almost everyone did what they were told to do.

Almost 0 cases every day for the last week.

I started back at my building site 2 weeks ago. Still some restrictions but they will hopefully be phased out over the next few weeks.

Nice one!

rd

I'm gonna miss Soup plantation too. I would usually hit one up in San Diego.

I heard you got rid of your last few cases of Corona by throwing them into the fires of Mordor .

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I would be interested in hearing opinions on how people think COVID-19 plays out.

In my opinion this will become endemic and we'll just have to learn to live with it. Flattening the curve has worked in most places, but the intent of that was only to DELAY infections while hospitals prepare and accumulate equipment. We've shown that access to medical care greatly improves survival rate, so that's good.

I have no doubt that if we continue lock downs the number of infections will be minimized. Stated another way, lifting lock downs will cause increased infections and, unfortunately, more deaths. We may get additional therapeutics over the next several months but vaccine best case is February 2021. However, the logistics of administering 300M vaccinations are staggering and will take months. Plus now scientists are implying that two doses may be required. This easily pushes us out to one year from now.

So, when officials discuss extending business shut downs I have to ask, "What's going to be different in two or three months?" How long can we fund this shutdown? Our U.S. legislature throws around relief dollar amount in the trillions. Most people can't comprehend a million, let alone a million million. I find it more helpful to break that down per capita. Every $1T spent is $3000 per person in the U.S. That's a bill that's going have to be repaid.

"almost everyone did what they were told to do"

That's the difference maker. Americans don't like being told what to do! The acts of stupidity and disrespect are on full display here thanks to years of many Americans living with a growing "no one will tell me what to do" attitude. How many people were shot and killed in New Zealand for being asked to wear a mask, or employees at stores having customers purposely cough / wipe their nose on them, teens coughing on groceries, park rangers pushed into ponds because they asked others to social distance, or a retail store employee (Target, recent story) having their arm broken after a fight broke out over customers not wearing masks? None.

These acts only represent a small part of the US but the amount and frequency of them isn't occuring anywhere else in the world. The sad part is many of these deaths could have been avoided if there was a strict one month national lockdown in the US. Instead individual states are allowed to do whatever they want however strict or loose they want, and this thing is now lasting much longer. Why? Americans don't like to be inconvenienced in the slightest.

End rant lol.

I forgive anyone that follows ken Copeland.

That’s the second best video I saw today. Look for jimmy kimmel’s monologue from last night. The final minute or two is hilarious. Unfortunately it might not pass the political sensor. Even though it’s clearly made in humor.

In the next few months we find out that science was right. The amount of infected rise. Deaths rise. Denials rise. Until testing and tracking become operational and successful we tread water until we reach world wide herd immunity or working vaccine which can be distributed world wide. Alot of businesses will be forced to adjust or fail. Tweak your business model to make it thru this or slowly fail. Our economy returns to previous levels when consumers adjust to the new normal we see and are confident everything is under control. I'm thinking 5 to 7 years.

That’s all well and good, but I bet you’d trade all of that for just a little FREEDOM!

You know what they say...do as we say, not as we do:
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-closed-while-on-air-talent-push-reopen-2020-5

What’s really interesting is looking at some of the opinions in this thread from 2 months ago. Oh, how wrong they were.

I think the “re-opening” is happening for 2 reasons. Before that we must realize that “flattening the curve” Was meant to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded. Also this won’t begin to go away until globally we reach some level of heard immunity. (By that I mean a vaccine/treatment or minimal seasonal death.) there’s a possibility this won’t go away and will become another seasonal flu type virus.

I believe that the lockdown was a good measure, a best case effort to get ahead of the disease and limit initial impact on healthcare systems. Now that the curve is reportedly being flattened we must reopen because.

1. People are getting tired of being cooped up at home. Without significant infection numbers in their area people want to enjoy the nice weather as it approaches. America has a couple hundred years of don’t tread on me attitude and that might be one of the reasons that the lockdown wasn’t as effective in 5e US as it was in other countries.

2. The lockdown has to be lifted to keep infection rolling through the population. In order to reach heard immunity virtually everyone will need to have some level of exposure to the virus. The razors edge will be in controlling the spread at a rate where it won’t overload the hospitals. If people have access to proper healthcare then their ability to survive this is greatly improved.

TLDR: this will be here for a while, eventually everyone will get it. Hopefully there’s a well equipped affordable hospital bed waiting for you if you need it.

A church that has been selling bleach as a "miracle cure" for cronavirus (and autism, cancer, and a few other things) has been fined $151,200 in Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-13/church-in-australia-selling-bleach-coronavirus-treatment-fined/12242150
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/13/healing-church-fined-150000-in-australia-over-selling-bleach-as-coronavirus-cure

In the US, the church is currently under an injunction order to prevent the sale of the "miracle cure" while under an FDA investigation.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-federal-judge-enters-temporary-injunction-against-genesis-ii-church
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-church-coronavirus-bleaching-agent-cure-covid-19/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/church-of-bleach-ordered-to-stop-selling-bleach-as-covid-19-cure/

Video covering the injunction order:

However, it appears that the church is continuing to sell it in a roundabout way:

Additional background info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement

Dave- Do you think there will be an America's Cup in March 2021? And financially by then, I wonder if all the teams will make it, especially Prada?

The Twitter ceo says employees can work from home “forever.”

That is NOT the difference maker or the primary reason why our numbers are higher.

I’ve discussed this before, you cannot compare either of two island countries with the US. If you want to compare numbers with Australia or New Zealand use our state of Hawaii for something at least comparable, but with a lesser but still significant population...

Hawaii has had a total of 17 covid deaths.

New York’s Governor Cuomo announced last week that 66% of the their state’s new coronavirus patients WERE sheltering in place at home. So the majority of New Yorkers that needed hospitalized because of the virus WERE doing what they were being told and still ended up in the hospital!

MANY areas within the continental US are doing as good a job as countries like Australia. These areas in our country that are doing good are more isolated and have lesser population densities than places like New York City.

Yes, many people are not following orders here in the US, but that is far down on the list as to why our numbers are higher than an island country, such as New Zealand, which by nature is self isolated. Other factors such as total population, population density, general living conditions, heavy use of public transportation, race and ethnicity, weather?, etc. have a much bigger impact on why our numbers are higher than your theory. Your rant is trying to place primary blame on the people where the bigger problem is we are a victim of the physical makeup of our very vast and unique country. Just compare the numbers from state to state and it is clear why some areas of our country are doing better than others. Some of our states are bigger in size than many smaller countries, but with lower population densities. These are the primary states that are doing VERY well. Make sure when you analyze data you are comparing apples to apples...just my 2 cents.

Bummer. Sweet Tomatoes is my daughter's favorite restaurant. The one by us closed about five years ago, but we would always look forward to going there when we visit my parents in Florida. I agree that the future for buffets is not looking bright. I'm guessing other chains like Golden Corral won't be far behind. Who in their right mind would let their kid eat from a chocolate fountain these days?

And what's going to happen to Vegas, where buffets are an integral part of the culture? I would think the only way buffets survive is if they change their model and no longer allow the patrons to serve themselves.

i was never a buffet guy but many of my family loved them..i dont see them surviving this...on the plus side i read drive in movie theaters are making a come back as this does make for a cheap,safe way to take the kids for a movie..i always enjoyed them and hope they return big time

I thumbs upped both of these posts. I do think Americans being so resistant to being told what to do is a big factor in why we've had such a big outbreak here, but I also agree that there are many other factors involved such as population density, climate, etc ...

Cuomo's statement wasn't exactly some kind of get out of jail free card for the "reopen or die!" set.

I'm "Sheltering in place" too. And yet I probably interact with at least half a dozen people a day. At the stores, neighbors, more if you count the people I walk by on the streets. There's two guys in my apartment right now fixing the drain (thanks honey!). I'm sanitizng, wearing mask, trying to be careful...that being said I wouldn't exactly be surprised if I got it. I'm living with my girlfriend also, so I'm also "interacting" with everybody she interacts with every day. Just like the "66 percent" may have large families, and live in crowded apartments etc.

I didn't feel like pointing this out last week because I didn't want to upset the many people here were just so damn GLEEFULLY EXCITED about what Cuomo said as if it renders everything doctors and scientists have said about COVID moot, but I took that with a big grain of salt and so would anybody else who cared to think about it. Just because I'm not going to work, eating lunch at Appelbee's, or spending my whole day at a hospital doesn't truly mean I'm "sheltering in place" or "locked down." I would assume the same is true for that 66 percent Cuomo mentioned.

NY case numbers are also way down, which should be proof in and of itself that "sheltering in place" works even if it obviously isn't foolproof and isn't exactly ending human interaction. As far "lockdowns go" the one in the US - even at the epicenter - is pretty tame. All the more reason the lunatic fringe and their armed screaming protests seems so weird to me.

There's nothing more American than a buffet.

They will be back, I'm sure of it.

I didn’t look at the 66% as good or bad, just interesting. This may have been discussed, do you think central HVAC in some areas of urban living may account for a portion of this high number?

Any company that has the ability to allow employees to work from home (productively), should. If nothing else, this whole thing should highlight how much time and energy is wasted on commutes, pointless meetings, etc. I can do 100% of my job from home. I'm more productive here because I don't have people asking questions just because they see me. They might try and figure it out first before sending an email or scheduling a meeting. I'm also more responsive in a larger window of my day since I have my computer setup and accessible most of the time. The traditional office setting now feels archaic to me.

When we do open, it seems logical to me to keep your contact exposure to a minimum. That means getting together with close friends and family that you also trust to be keeping their distance from the general public. I like a lot of my coworkers, but we can interact via virtual meetings and the like. I'd rather not take up my 'circle' with fellow employees, especially when you consider that you probably don't know how everyone in your office (or their household/friends) is behaving outside of work.

Lol very true. There's nothing like going into one thinking "I'm starving and will eat 10 plates of food" and then leaving thinking "what in the hell was I thinking".

I have never eaten at Sweet Tomatos, but Many a time at Golden Coral and another buffet that unfortunately closed years ago. Really hope they don't all go away.

I love buffets! Always have and always will. I just hope they don't go the way of the dodo bird. I also love cruising, another industry that is getting pummeled.

True, but I also saw the emergence of pointless Zoom meetings and increased bureaucratic communication.

I like buffets occasionally, but I have always avoided them during flu season.

Just think about how many people touch those serving tongs and spoons

I was just thinking about this. In homes Would some of the particles lodge in the filters, and some be pushed through. Maybe have to change the filters more often.? Not sure about hotels, motels or big apartment complexes .

Folks, we just had a Moderator Hat Trick!