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Post by kds on Mar 25, 2020 12:16:05 GMT
Same here in MD, liquor stores are still open. FYI, we're not the only ones thinking about this!
When Gov Hogan vaguely announced that non essential businesses would shut down at 5pm EDT this past Monday, I think a lot of people assumed liquor stores would be shut down. I drove past one on my way home (I'm essential), at 4:45pm and saw a large line of people with charts trying to get in.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 25, 2020 18:43:46 GMT
Speculation is that the governor's (now daily) 2 pm press conference will include a shelter-in-place order for Minnesota. So I'll be joining those of you already in that boat shortly (though frankly I've been operating more or less along those lines anyway for almost two weeks).
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Post by kds on Mar 25, 2020 19:12:29 GMT
Speculation is that the governor's (now daily) 2 pm press conference will include a shelter-in-place order for Minnesota. So I'll be joining those of you already in that boat shortly (though frankly I've been operating more or less along those lines anyway for almost two weeks). Our governor has another address today, still no shelter in place order yet, which is a little baffling to me.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Mar 27, 2020 3:49:59 GMT
The Bishop just announced that there is no Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday Mass in the Diocese Of Harrisburg (PA).
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 27, 2020 11:32:38 GMT
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly has tested positive.
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bellbottoms
Pacific Coast Highway
Posts: 727
Likes: 201
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Post by bellbottoms on Mar 27, 2020 15:21:57 GMT
Prime Minister Trudeau has just announced a 75% wage subsidy for small and medium sized businesses, backdated to March 15. Wow.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 27, 2020 15:28:35 GMT
Prime Minister Trudeau has just announced a 75% wage subsidy for small and medium sized businesses, backdated to March 15. Wow. I've been thinking about whether something like that would be better than stronger unemployment support, which by definition in the U.S. means you've been let go from your job (and lose healthcare, if you had it, unless you continue to pay a higher premium through what is known as COBRA). It seems to me that if the government is paying either way, it makes more sense to try to keep people "on the job" even if they're not literally on the job, and it makes reopening a lot easier once that becomes possible.
EDIT - it's not a long-term solution, obviously. Some businesses will fail regardless of pandemic, economic downturn, or even in good times just because they were going to fail: e.g. the average restaurant fails in less than two years, so even without any crisis, a good number of restaurants would have closed this spring. So at some point they just have to let go. But I do think that in the short term, this is a good idea.
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bellbottoms
Pacific Coast Highway
Posts: 727
Likes: 201
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Post by bellbottoms on Mar 27, 2020 15:41:46 GMT
To be honest, I'm kind of in shock. When the subsidy was just 10%, obviously the sentiment was "every little bit counts," but it was also clear that it wouldn't help some businesses very much. But what more could the government do? Offer 75%? Apparently, yes. Holy crap. But how long that will be sustainable is a very good question. We've heard every estimate possible for how long this crisis could last - anywhere from 2 to 18 months. The situation here hasn't reached it's peak yet. It's coming.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 27, 2020 16:11:12 GMT
The situation here hasn't reached it's peak yet. It's coming. Ditto here. The strange or scary thing is that we're seeing a lot of 2-week, 3-week orders to shelter in place and take precautions, yet a lot of the projections I see are that the peak here will likely be June. Seems like there's a disconnect there... I think we need more people (ideally with leadership from the top, which is currently strongly contradicting the above in the US) clarifying that the precautions we're taking may well need to remain in place for quite a while, not just 2-3 weeks.
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bellbottoms
Pacific Coast Highway
Posts: 727
Likes: 201
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Post by bellbottoms on Mar 27, 2020 16:29:36 GMT
The situation here hasn't reached it's peak yet. It's coming. Ditto here. The strange or scary thing is that we're seeing a lot of 2-week, 3-week orders to shelter in place and take precautions, yet a lot of the projections I see are that the peak here will likely be June. Seems like there's a disconnect there... I think we need more people (ideally with leadership from the top, which is currently strongly contradicting the above in the US) clarifying that the precautions we're taking may well need to remain in place for quite a while, not just 2-3 weeks. There seems to be a lag in what we know due to the difficulties with testing that we're having in North America. Ontario is only testing symptomatic people who've traveled. Then they report that there is no evidence of community transmission. Right, no proof of it, because you're not testing those people. Madness. So of course all the numbers are skewed, and it's taking days to weeks to get test results, so we only know now what was true 2-3 weeks ago. The numbers aren't telling the true story.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 27, 2020 16:45:04 GMT
Similar situation in Minnesota. When my company made the move to send everyone who could work from home, home (two weeks ago only? Feels like two years...), Minnesota had four cases confirmed and zero deaths. As of today it's 398 and 4, with dramatic leaps each of the past few days. The change isn't in spread so much as in testing, it seems, and I think everyone understands we're going to be in (or more realistically are now in but don't know it) the thousands. Possibly tens of thousands. The estimate here is that 40-80% of Minnesotans will contract it.
But it also means we're never going to know how many people had it unless a new kind of testing, yet to be created, is both created and used broadly. The current test only demonstrates if you have it, but not if you've had it and gotten better. If we're going to understand the virus fully, we need to know who among us thought we had the flu or a bad cold, but had this.
I'm seeing more stories of speculation that it might have been around the US (and other parts of the world) earlier than initially thought, which then begs questions among people who had particularly rough flu/colds prior to COVID-19. I know I'm one of those, as are what seems anecdotally to be a lot of people. So did we have COVID-19 and get better? Are we immune? Or was it just (as initially thought) just a bad cold and flu season that happened to then be followed by an even worse coronavirus season?
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 28, 2020 14:25:56 GMT
Do the shelter-in-place orders where you all are have any enforcement, or do they rely on voluntary compliance?
I ask because while I assumed resources wouldn't be wasted on asking people why they're outside, the mayor of Minneapolis has said they actually will enforce it, though with an emphasis on education over punishment. (That said, there are punishments up to 90 days in jail or $1000 fine, I believe it is.)
I'm trying to even visualize this. Despite our order being termed a "stay at home" order, staying at home is by no means universally required: people are allowed outside to shop for groceries, to visit hardware and general stores, to go to the post office; to provide care for others; they are in dozens of cases going to work (the "critical industry" list is extremely broad); and the order even encourages people to go outside for exercise, including to walk, run, hike, hunt, and fish.
So what will an officer see that immediately identifies someone as being in violation of the order? The only things I can imagine as remotely reasonable are to spot-check businesses that are ordered closed (e.g. restaurants still seating people) or maybe busting large parties that are so obvious that they've drawn attention.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Mar 30, 2020 15:09:42 GMT
After being closed for two weeks, our office/agency is supposed to re-open tomorrow, but I highly doubt it will. Most of the people we serve aren't working either. I'm just waiting for a phone call or a statement from the company director as to how much longer - for now - we'll be down.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 30, 2020 15:12:08 GMT
After being closed for two weeks, our office/agency is supposed to re-open tomorrow, but I highly doubt it will. Most of the people we serve aren't working either. I'm just waiting for a phone call or a statement from the company director as to how much longer - for now - we'll be down. I'd think especially with the president coming on board that more of this social distancing / isolation / quarantine is necessary through at least the end of the month, the messaging is more uniform than ever against people returning to normal sooner than later.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 30, 2020 15:16:46 GMT
Yesterday I learned my sister "likely has a relatively mild case of COVID-19." However, she got her "diagnosis" via telemedicine conerence, and was instructed not to come in for a formal test and she will not receive treatment of any kind unless her symptoms worsen. (Her symptoms are a horrible cough, mostly; not unprecedented in her life, but bad enough to qualify as really nasty.)
What's interesting is, she has for a few weeks had what her husband had a few weeks before, and their son had a few weeks before that, which pushes the time frame back before there was widespread belief that the U.S. had it.
That's what's so interesting to me: so many people had complained about it being a bad flu and cold season already by January and February; in hindsight you have to wonder whether these were mild cases of COVID-19, not bad cases of typical colds and flus.
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