Essential/Nonessential vs. Safe/Not safe

[Flight]

Unless what someone else is doing is illegal

Unfortunately, every day we have some government official changing the rules and issuing pronouncements.

Must do this. Can’t do that. Will not be allowed to participate. Will be banned from. Comply.

 

[scrappinginontario]

That actually makes good sense. It's not 100% closed now however. Living in a border area, many Canadians are continuing to travel back and forth to work, many are medical workers in our metro area.

Yes, you're quite right. Much of my family lives in Windsor and my cousin is a nurse practitioner that was looking for a position in Detroit. While she had not secured one yet, i am thankful for all the essential workers who are still going to work each day in both Canada and the US to help defeat this virus and care for those who need their help! Truckers carrying goods across the border are also essential to both countries and much appreciated!

I was more so speaking about opening the borders for non-essential crossings. I feel we are a long ways from that happening.

 

[Kestryl]

I think the problem is that while people are out buying essential items, they're lingering in the stores browsing for everything else, because they want to get out of their house.

I don't necessarily agree with closing off parts of stores, but I can understand some of the logic behind it.

^This.

People are treating trips to Lowe’s, Target, etc. as big family events. A friend who works at a pet store was posting all these stories about how families would come in every day- not to buy food for their pet, or to even buy a pet, but to look at the fish. I have acquaintances back in my hometown in Michigan complaining they can no longer take their kids to the garden center to get them out of the house. A relative took her teenage kids to Lowe’s and spent hours (her words) picking out paint for their rooms. I ordered take out last week and while picking it up, a couple came in to place an order. After being told it was going to take an hour, they said they wanted to wait at one of the empty tables. (They were told to wait in the car, but this shows serious lack of judgement on their part).

 

[Sarah'sMomfrom PA]

Our governor closed all state liquor stores (in Pennsylvania) the beginning of March. Our state liquor stores are run by the state and he said that he did it to protect the workers. There was a run on these stores right before they closed but it has since been reported that lots of Pennsylvanians are driving to New York state (Binghamton) to purchase their liquor. We can however buy beer and wine in several grocery stores (Wegman's) but now people driving to New York state risk getting into traffic accidents going to and fro. Rumor has it that PA will follow New York and Governor Cuomo's recommendation and be closed down until middle of May. I work at a hospital and we are experiencing large numbers of Covid-19 patients so I think that we are now in our surge and hopefully the numbers will start to decrease. We also have several nursing homes that are experiencing a large number of deaths.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

^This.

People are treating trips to Lowe’s, Target, etc. as big family events. A friend who works at a pet store was posting all these stories about how families would come in every day- not to buy food for their pet, or to even buy a pet, but to look at the fish. I have acquaintances back in my hometown in Michigan complaining they can no longer take their kids to the garden center to get them out of the house. A relative took her teenage kids to Lowe’s and spent hours (her words) picking out paint for their rooms. I ordered take out last week and while picking it up, a couple came in to place an order. After being told it was going to take an hour, they said they wanted to wait at one of the empty tables. (They were told to wait in the car, but this shows serious lack of judgement on their part).

Honestly, I think part of that is natural inclination towards people not thinking about things in a critical enough way (when I worked in retail you'd have people who would keep on shopping even in the midst of tornado sirens, even in the midst of a tornado close enough, even when they were told to come to the designated shelter area it was met with "but what about my purchases"), but I also think part of it is so much focus on what people can't do with not a whole lot of focus on what you can do.

When met with all sorts of "can't do this" you might find more people than you'd like grasping at any opportunity to things they "can do" even if certain things are not advisable. It's really easy to tell people to not go anywhere for weeks on end, it's really easy to tell people to not buy anything that might be perceived to someone as not essential because you won't die if you don't get it/use it, it's really easy to tell people to effectively homeschool their children (even if teachers are online and doing video feeds), but the practicality of such things don't always play out like people think.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

Our governor closed all state liquor stores (in Pennsylvania) the beginning of March. Our state liquor stores are run by the state and he said that he did it to protect the workers. There was a run on these stores right before they closed but it has since been reported that lots of Pennsylvanians are driving to New York state (Binghamton) to purchase their liquor. We can however buy beer and wine in several grocery stores (Wegman's) but now people driving to New York state risk getting into traffic accidents going to and fro. Rumor has it that PA will follow New York and Governor Cuomo's recommendation and be closed down until middle of May. I work at a hospital and we are experiencing large numbers of Covid-19 patients so I think that we are now in our surge and hopefully the numbers will start to decrease. We also have several nursing homes that are experiencing a large number of deaths.

They are coming to NJ from Philly. All of the liquor stores near the bridges are overrun with lots of people in line waiting to get in. I go my to local mom and pop liquor store and just pay extra. It’s better than waiting in the massive lines.

 

[kymom99]

They are coming to NJ from Philly. All of the liquor stores near the bridges are overrun with lots of people in line waiting to get in. I go my to local mom and pop liquor store and just pay extra. It’s better than waiting in the massive lines.

Ohio has certain counties that border PA requiring OH ID to purchase from their liquor stores. They were having too many crossing over from PA to buy where the stores are open.

 

[Colleen27]

Its clear social distancing seems to be working.......

Why is there talk of re-opening earlier?????

We are going to be back to square one and never get out of this hole.......

Please be patient, there is light at the end of the tunnel............

What light do you see? I'm honestly curious about this. Because in my state, the unemployment fund will be completely drained in two months, suicide, overdose and domestic violence calls are all rising, and we're being told 1 of every 4 businesses in our state is unlikely to survive. I don't see a lot of light in that, especially as the conversation is shifting from "flatten the curve to allow the healthcare system to keep up and buy time to increase capacity" to "stay home until there is a vaccine".

 

[luvsJack]

Everyone is different. Most people never reach that point. But the doctors are still making that call.

Yes of course people are different. But again it’s really something that should be taken care of before it becomes an emergency in everyone.

Just because a dr is making the call doesn’t always make the best call. Just the best call that can be made “right now”.

Around here, dentists are only seeing patients for emergency. And then they take their temps before seeing them. Makes sense and the way it should be. EXCEPT—dil has a patient at the clinic she works for that was sent away due to having fever. They wouldn’t even look at him (I get why). He was running fever because almost half his mouth was severely infected. He ended up at the ER within 24 hours because the infection and pain was so bad. So the same people that would have treated him in the clinic now had to go to the hospital and treat him in the ER. Which actually put them more in danger of being exposed than seeing him in the controlled clinic. Luckily dil had already left for the day. But again, the dr made the choice and it honestly wasn’t the best choice. It was just the best choice she could make with the info she had and for right now.

 

[siren0119]

What light do you see? I'm honestly curious about this. Because in my state, the unemployment fund will be completely drained in two months, suicide, overdose and domestic violence calls are all rising, and we're being told 1 of every 4 businesses in our state is unlikely to survive. I don't see a lot of light in that, especially as the conversation is shifting from "flatten the curve to allow the healthcare system to keep up and buy time to increase capacity" to "stay home until there is a vaccine".

real talk? if people keep getting impatient and find reasons to go against the stay home orders and distancing guidelines.....there WON'T be a light at the end of the tunnel for a long while. All of the (valid) concern about the economy should be motivating people to follow the distancing and stay home guidelines to the letter, and stop treating them as up to interpretation. The sooner we get past the peaks of the virus in each area, and the hospitals have a manageable flow of patients, the sooner we will be able to start easing back into something resembling normal.

 

[Colleen27]

The point of what we are doing is to spread out the infections so the hospitals can keep up...we have done that in the vast majority of the country, it was a known fact that the majority would still end up getting it but by spreading it out more people will live because hospitals can manage. We are nearing the stage were we need to open up and focus more on protecting the most vulnerable.

Well, that was the idea when we started... I'm not sure it is any more.

The models also assumed people would pay attention to distancing and protective guidelines, and that didn't happen.

Actually, it did. The cell phone data maps have been stunning in the percentage reductions in travel - over 90% in many places. But none of the models have been particularly accurate so far. We just don't know enough about the virus to produce good ones, I don't think.

30% of the confirmed cases in my state have been hospitalized (1,091 hospitalized during the course of their treatment), with 163 of those currently in ICU. If I can avoid that, I certainly will.

But since only the most serious cases are eligible for testing, those rates are extremely inflated by the exclusion of all asymptomatic and mild cases from the count.

Hopefully we won't have to find out. I suspect that number will be very low if we can return to work in June, which is the goal in most states right now.

Where is that the goal? In our state, leaders are deliberately vague about the prospects of anything reopening at any given time, and in California (the only other state I'm following closely because it is where my daughter goes to school), the governor has laid out several standards that are frankly impossible to meet as conditions of reopening before a vaccine. A report out of Harvard is telling people to prepare for this to continue into 2022 with possible flare ups through 2024, and our leaders are saying as long as the virus is out there, they'll do whatever it takes to stop spread.

I haven't seen any signs that we're going to see anything reopen in the next weeks or months unless politics force it (my governor is going to find herself hamstrung by the legislature later this month, I think, and other states with divided government seem to be pointing in the same direction).

Ohio has certain counties that border PA requiring OH ID to purchase from their liquor stores. They were having too many crossing over from PA to buy where the stores are open.

They're going to need to do this in garden centers on the Michigan border by the end of the month! We've already been talking about the possibility of popping across the state line to get plants if (really, when) our governor extends our shutdown again unless she modifies it to allow nurseries and garden centers to offer the same curbside service everyone else is allowed to offer.

 

[ronandannette]

What light do you see? I'm honestly curious about this. Because in my state, the unemployment fund will be completely drained in two months, suicide, overdose and domestic violence calls are all rising, and we're being told 1 of every 4 businesses in our state is unlikely to survive. I don't see a lot of light in that, especially as the conversation is shifting from "flatten the curve to allow the healthcare system to keep up and buy time to increase capacity" to "stay home until there is a vaccine".

I'm not capable of extrapolating all the necessary data to accurately determine deaths-per-state or deaths-per-city/county, but just based on the numbers in the post below, the US has only yet endured 1/8 of the fatalities that are predicted - under full social-distancing restrictions. That's over less than 3 months. If the political will remains in place to maintain the restrictions, it will require many more months. And that will be at the expense of literally all the things you mention and perhaps other widespread social upheaval that we've yet to even contemplate.

Social distancing has one goal: to allow the number of people who need hospital beds to be spread out over time instead of everyone needing a bed at the same time. How is this concept so difficult for so many to understand?? The entire point of flattening the curve was never to prevent everyone from getting COVID-19. That a large number of people will contract it and need hospitalization has always been fully acknowledged.

And yes, it's painful, but we've already lost 30,000 people in the US to this. If we weren't flattening, it would be far worse. And, in fact, is already worse than it could have been if it had been taken seriously in this country immediately. Currently, the worst case scenario with continuing social distancing predicts 240,000 deaths, a horrific number in and of itself. But without distancing, the minimum prediction is that 1.5 million Americans would die. (source) Let that sink in. 1.5 million.

 

[Snowysmom]

I too was under the impression that the lockdown was to flatten the curve. Now that we have done that in many places including NY, they are changing the rules. You cannot lockdown the country until a vaccine is available. And once it is available you cannot vaccinate everyone in a short period of time and some people will not get the vaccine. We will not have a country left at that point. As a previous poster noted, suicides are up as well as domestic violence. People with health issues that are not emergencies but need to be treated or diagnosed are not getting the services they need. We did our part now the bureaucrats need to to their part and get everything moving. Will people still get sick, yes some will. But we cannot shut down everyone forever.

 

[Snowysmom]

Also, the governors and other politicians do need to think about reelection. If they continue to exert their control over the people they will find themselves out of a job. We cannot go into 2022 or further like this. We did our part now they need to do their part and stop the control tactics. We need our economy back.

 

[Colleen27]

real talk? if people keep getting impatient and find reasons to go against the stay home orders and distancing guidelines.....there WON'T be a light at the end of the tunnel for a long while. All of the (valid) concern about the economy should be motivating people to follow the distancing and stay home guidelines to the letter, and stop treating them as up to interpretation. The sooner we get past the peaks of the virus in each area, and the hospitals have a manageable flow of patients, the sooner we will be able to start easing back into something resembling normal.

That doesn't seem to be how it is working, though, which is part of what's fueling the resistance to staying the course. Our state is almost certainly past peak now. They're not easing restrictions - they're tightening and extending them. They're not increasing hospital capacity to prepare for phased reopenings - they're cutting back planned expansions and scaling back or cancelling the construction of temporary facilities. And out-state hospitals, which never saw a COVID19 surge (some never saw even a single patient) are laying off staff and warning of impending closures if they can't resume normal operations. Oh, and we're still not testing. They're running 3500-4000 tests per day for a population of about 9 million, and telling people who live with confirmed positives, who know they've been exposed to confirmed positives, who have all the symptoms, to consider themselves presumptive positive and quarantine at home without seeking testing. In short, the state isn't doing *anything* that was in the original strategy for how lockdown works to help get through this.

My state had excellent buy in at the start, but the combination of tightening restrictions when cases were already in decline and a lack of action on the other pieces laid out as part of a coherent recovery strategy has prompted a lot of resentment and a rise in people and communities ignoring some parts of the order.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The sooner we get past the peaks of the virus in each area, and the hospitals have a manageable flow of patients, the sooner we will be able to start easing back into something resembling normal.

The peaks are only determined at death rates and hospitalization rates. They are not determined by the number of people listed as positive of the virus. You can have a high number of people with the virus but have a manageable rate of hospitalization and utilization of the health care system. You can have a high number of people with the virus but have a lower overall death rate. You can also have the reverse. It's why there was so much focus on the ICU bed shortages, hospital beds in general, PPE, etc

Your statement is the reason a lot of people have pushed back. It's the veered off the path of the thoughtprocess behind what stay at home orders and flatten the curve were originally designed to do.

 

[jlwhitney]

I too was under the impression that the lockdown was to flatten the curve. Now that we have done that in many places including NY, they are changing the rules. You cannot lockdown the country until a vaccine is available. And once it is available you cannot vaccinate everyone in a short period of time and some people will not get the vaccine. We will not have a country left at that point. As a previous poster noted, suicides are up as well as domestic violence. People with health issues that are not emergencies but need to be treated or diagnosed are not getting the services they need. We did our part now the bureaucrats need to to their part and get everything moving. Will people still get sick, yes some will. But we cannot shut down everyone forever.

It’s all become very political and it’s an election year.....one side wants us to become like so many other countries and one side wants to maintain what our country was founded on....gonna leave it at that.

 

[Colleen27]

I'm not capable of extrapolating all the necessary data to accurately determine deaths-per-state or deaths-per-city/county, but just based on the numbers in the post below, the US has only yet endured 1/8 of the fatalities that are predicted - under full social-distancing restrictions. That's over less than 3 months. If the political will remains in place to maintain the restrictions, it will require many more months. And that will be at the expense of literally all the things you mention and perhaps other widespread social upheaval that we've yet to even contemplate.

Fortunately, those models have been revised significantly in the two weeks since that article was written. Rather than 240,000 deaths, it now predicts 68,000. I'm not sure why it changed that significantly, since according to the fine print, social distancing was baked into the model from the start. But if nothing else, it is a good illustration of how the doomsday forecasts stick in people's minds when the more moderate possibilities get overlooked.

And as far as the rest of that social upheaval... I think the next step is genuine product shortages. A friend who works at McDonalds said their supply chain is so disrupted right now that they've had to take many items off the menu entirely and are buying soda in 2 liter bottles because they can't get what they need for their fountain machines. Between hearing that and reading the articles about meat plant closures, I think that's a hint of where we're heading next.

 

[sam_gordon]

The sooner we get past the peaks of the virus in each area, and the hospitals have a manageable flow of patients, the sooner we will be able to start easing back into something resembling normal.

It's been said in the past... you want to get past the peaks quicker? Open everything up. "Flattening the curve" EXTENDS the amount of time you're dealing with this. It does absolutely NOTHING to make anything go quicker.

 

[Colleen27]

It's been said in the past... you want to get past the peaks quicker? Open everything up. "Flattening the curve" EXTENDS the amount of time you're dealing with this. It does absolutely NOTHING to make anything go quicker.

I used to think people didn't understand this, but I've come to the conclusion that it is a mostly willful misunderstanding. Some people just need someone to blame, and people who shop or visit family or go out for walks in the wrong places or whatever are a good scapegoat.