laid off?

I will say this, We went to Publix yesterday and the store was packed. Parking lot packed, tons of people in the store. I'm looking at it and thinking, how come this is okay, and everybody working is not? Why can't quarantine be optional and voluntary? Why can't people who want to sequester, sequester, and the people who want/need to get out, get out? If you want no contact with anyone, fine, make your arrangements, and everyone else can carry on.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

I will say this, We went to Publix yesterday and the store was packed. Parking lot packed, tons of people in the store. I'm looking at it and thinking, how come this is okay, and everybody working is not? Why can't quarantine be optional and voluntary? Why can't people who want to sequester, sequester, and the people who want/need to get out, get out? If you want no contact with anyone, fine, make your arrangements, and everyone else can carry on.

It's similar here. We're technically on lockdown but people are free to move about and do their thing as they see fit. I made a 40 mile run into the nearest city yesterday. The only sign of a law enforcement officer that i saw was the fish & game warden. My guess would be that the rest are keeping a pretty low profile these days.

We do have social distancing orders from the Governor on how many people we can allow into our grocery store at one time. The limit for our larger store is fifteen. The limit on our smaller store is five. It doesn't seem to be a problem. The system is working just fine. We're still doing a banner business every week.

I was of the opinion that we should close our bottle redemption center down as being non-essential and an unnecessary risk to myself & the community. The higher ups in the company wanted to keep it open because it provides money to poor folks during the bad times. In all fairness ... you could argue the legalities of it both ways. There's nobody coming in from the state and forcing us to shut down. The company is free to do as it sees fit.

Maybe i'm talking through my hat on this one. ( If so ... please call me out for being an idiot. ) There are a couple of ideas i would throw out there as food for thought.

1: Don't be a pain in the a$$. Don't make problems. This isn't the time. Be a good citizen and govern yourself accordingly. That's what a free people do. Along with the freedom comes the personal responsibility to do the right thing when times are tough.

2: The imposition of order = the escalation of dis-order. The more you lock things down ... the more inherently un-stable your society becomes. It's like a pressure cooker with a broken pressure relief valve. The heat builds. The pressure builds. Eventually .... the whole thing goes KABOOM and you end up with a state of anarchy.

That's where guys like Steve come in. It's law of the jungle. The biggest, meanest, SOB in the valley moves in and takes over. That lasts until another Steve that's just a little bit younger and a little bit faster moves in and takes him out. It's like playing king of the hill back when we were kids. Who would know that a child's game would teach you so much of what you need to understand as an adult ?

Anyway .... i tend to rattle on sometimes.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

I will say this, We went to Publix yesterday and the store was packed. Parking lot packed, tons of people in the store. I'm looking at it and thinking, how come this is okay, and everybody working is not? Why can't quarantine be optional and voluntary? Why can't people who want to sequester, sequester, and the people who want/need to get out, get out? If you want no contact with anyone, fine, make your arrangements, and everyone else can carry on.

More to your point though. This sounds like what Sweden is doing. Personally, i don't have an opinion on the right or wrong of it. It's just a different way of doing things.

Here's a link to a news story about it:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/europ...ntl/index.html

Originally Posted by kss

Everyone needs food, to live. Not everyone needs new video games from Gamestop (at least not this second)


"if you want no contact with anyone, fine, make your arrangements, and everyone else can carry on." - The problem with this is when Jeff who works at the grocery store goes to a phish concert and contracts the corona, then goes back to work. Jeff didnt have to go to a phish concert, but would if he were able to.... he didnt have to do that, but the old frail lady that needs groceries HAS to come into the grocery store to interact with Jeff. This is a crappy example but you get the point. Yes perhaps the old lady could get groceries delivered or have family drop them off etc, but there are plenty of old people with no family and who would have to just go to the store.

I think the lockdown was a good idea, and don't think it went far enough, quick enough. If we would have really enforced the lockdown we could have been through this whole thing in like a month, but now because of the delay and half assed effort of a lot of places and people, it is going to drag on for many months instead.

China was welding infected peoples front doors shut.... THAT is excessive, but our response could have been stronger.


Also I am 90% sure I already had and recovered from the corona, wont know until the antibody tests are available. it wasn't that bad (for me), but there are plenty of people that it is a death sentence for. There is no way to know who will be able to get over it and who wont. There have been healthy young people that got it and died, and fat old people with the 'beetus that got it and lived. So its not even like we can just say "all the old people stay home, everyone else carry on" because it can effect everyone, and you wont know til you get it if youll be one of the ones who will be fine or die from it.



HOWEVER..... I am ready for this to all be over so we can all get back out there and make some money and get back to work.... it funny though, a lot of people are going to be making way more on unemployment now, than they were at their actual job, so going back to work in low-moderate paying jobs is going to drag even after the quarantine is lifted, until the CARES act unemployment addition runs out.

The frail little old lady can stay in her house quarantined and have her groceries delivered.

Originally Posted by kss

Can she? Does she have money to pay for delivery? Did the delivery guy go to the phish concert, since it wasn't shut down, and contract corona that he's now delivering to these old folk?


Everything will probably open up soon, hearing talks about it already

< sigh > Enter politics stage left .... and right.

Just an opinion, but this thing started out as a pandemic that everybody all along the political spectrum could see was a problem. There were probably any one of a dozen different approaches that they could have taken to address it. I doubt there's any wrong direction or particular time to spring into action.

When i watch the news now ... it's heavy with politics. Everyone's got their eye on the upcoming elections in November. This one points the finger at that one and so on. Our dear POTUS seems to be more concerned about his precious little economy than anything else. He did a pretty good job with it but the covid thing came along and ruined it all. Now he's thinking his chances for re-election are diminished because it really is all "about the economy stupid."

Just my viewpoint but i don't think we're keeping it real here. The strategy so far has been to slow the spread. It's a delaying tactic.

We're going to have to come up with a vaccine to finally put this thing down and be done with it.

They're saying 12 - 18 months to develop the vaccine. That seems like a more realistic timeframe for things to return back to some semblance of normal.

Originally Posted by kss

Can she? Does she have money to pay for delivery? Did the delivery guy go to the phish concert, since it wasn't shut down, and contract corona that he's now delivering to these old folk?


Everything will probably open up soon, hearing talks about it already

The little old lady has the right to run her life as she sees fit, she does not have the right to run my life. If quarantining was that important to her, she would have made arrangements ahead of time, just like I have. She does not have the right to tell everyone to stay inside their homes because she doesn't want you freely associating.

Originally Posted by kss

She doesn't have the right, but the government does have the right, when it is in the publics best interests. Which is what government at federal,state and local levels have determined is the case here.

You and the lady can both live as you like for sure, but the government can also use it's rights to restrict your rights. Like stay at home orders, curfews, etc.

It is an interesting debate though on how much they can restrict our rights and in which ways. I don't know that I know where the line is, but it definitely interesting to think about. Like.... If they started tracking all people's cell phones to make maps of where they've been to track Corona, I'd say that crosses a line for privacy and rights.... If they make us stay home does that cross a line? If they just ask us to stay home if we can does that cross a line? Who knows....

I was going to cede just because I didn't want the convo to get and more heated, but it would seem that our thought isn't that far apart, we are just attacking opposite sides of the argument. I would sit and drink a beer with you and we could beat the particulars out of this and argue over whether hoppy or sweet beer is more fit to drink.