Yes and no. If only asymptomatic people are getting it, you can't make the assumption that today's infections are tomorrow's ICU cases. Theoretically, if you confine infections to a certain demographic, very few if any cases go to ICU. However, both the pure numbers and infection rate tell us how many more people are getting it and seems indicative of the overall likelihood of spread to people we do need to worry about.

To the extent people get wrapped up in the first part of that - pure numbers don't really tell us anything about severity - I do get the point, so I think further context around other indicators should be part of the story.

Right. They'd have to report what percentage of positive tests are asymptomatic. Heck, if that number is 1% (obviously it's not,) then we should be celebrating every positive test as a step closer to herd immunity with extremely low likelihood of serious consequences.

But the headlines keep blaring about raw test numbers with no useful context at all.

I'm still much more interested in the death counts. The testing and infection numbers should give us a sign of where the death count is heading, however, if the death count stays in a meaningfully stable number, then we're seeing growth, but also successful treatment along with an overall increase in cases per deaths than we were seeing before. In that case, the case counts from earlier should show that we were vastly undercounting the actual infection rates based on the death numbers.

We can look at the infection rates, and should be able to infer some expected death rates. Where those numbers transition to from there, should give us a better indication of what works and what doesn't, from a social/mask level down to a treatment in the ICU level.

Prior to the first wave, they had built a couple of sets of temporary field hospitals in different parts of town. I'm guessing they can be set up again.

SI

It appears we're about 7-10 days ahead of where I thought we'd be on the second wave. I wonder if there is any more news on the impact of heat than what I've read, but I'm back in 'I thought this would be bad and it's worse than expected' mode.

Can we even really call it a second wave? Seems to me other parts of the country are just getting hit.

For us in Texas, it's all one giant continual wave that keeps getting worse

SI

We have a winner! Yeah, we need to understand as a country there are only a few countries that are larger than us by either population or land mass. We need to factor that in to our expectations of weathering events like this.

Everything is bigger in Texas right? Including covid waves?

I think there's both going on. The projections in Georgia right now very much look like a second wave. A lot of other states aren't there yet but headed in that direction. It's also true that a number of places where they didn't get hit much before the spring shutdowns will really get their first hard taste of it.

I won't say 'winner', but I will say 'partial credit' :p

NJ just announced schools will be open in the fall. Masks mandatory for all faculty and staff. Strongly encouraged for students if social distancing can't be maintained. Staggered cafeteria, social distancing on busses and in classrooms if possible. If not students all facing one direction. Staggered recess. Possible keeping of students in pods where they are with the same group of kids all day.

Where my daughter is planning on going to college, that county has had 5 cases. The town the college is located in has about 21000 people.

Im not sure, but it seems like it is, obviously, a metro area issue. Rural areas are not being hit.

On another note, I was talking to one of our asst supt of our schools in my town and they have been in contact with doctors at a St Louis childrens hospital, they were using Australia as an example, where that were no cases being transmitted in school, if a child turned up positive, it came from home. Take that with a grain of salt of course.

Any information on # of kids per bus. That seems like one place social distancing will be hard. In our district you sometimes get 3 elementary kids per seat.

What they said was it is up to the bus driver to enforce mask wearing on the bus. That leads me to believe there may not be a number but masks would be mandatory on the bus.

I haven't dug down on the bus much because I have already made the decision I am going to drive them everyday. I am a stay at home dad so its not a huge inconvenience. I also have a good friend close by and our girls are the same age and play together so maybe do a carpool deal.

Re: Positivity rate: it is an indicator of how widespread you test relative to the size of the breakout. If it's 15% it indicates a lot of tests are people coming to you because they are sick and have symptoms. In Arizona 1000 people come to the ER every day because they suspect they have Covid19 per their health departmebt Dashboard. Countless more go to the testing stations or their doctor.
At 5% a lot more tests will be of contacts of patients or just on a hunch than 15%.

So unless tracking rapidly improved in 3 weeks, those states having way more cases AND way higher positivity rate indicates a larger percentage of symptomatic patients of all severity (and rising hospitalisations is a 3rd indicator). Asymptomatic carriers are harder to identify, so if it were mostly them because you activels look for them, the 'success rate' should go down, not up.

Upshot

That does not sound like contact tracing accounts for lots of tests.

Remember a large number of daily tests are simply healthcare workers who get tested regularly and (hopefully ...) by now should be having good PPE and low rates.


Age plays a part, too. We know the average age of cases is going down (which makes sense. Given the Option, younger folk will take more risks on average). So if deaths are holding steady you'd have to look at ages of people dying as well. 600 deaths of which 300 are under 70 isn't necessarily better than 900 of which only 100 are under 70, if that makes sense ... And while treatment improved, this might still not mean many more people recovering fully. Apparently a lot of recovered patients actually walk out needing a kidney transplant, had a stroke or heart attack or of course lung damage.

And average age of hospitalisation at least in Arizona has gotten a lot lower it seems looking at the age brackets. There's a much higher percentage of 20-44 years olds (23%) than we had in europe in april for example from what i recall (and not al keep that data)

ADHS - Data Dashboard

What we do already know though is that hospitals are filling up in quite a few states and quite significantly. On average (!) american hospitals apparently operate at roughly 65% capacity throughout the year (and likely more in winter than other months, at least in europe) so if now you have them operating at 80-90 that is a lot. Especially since some folk will still postpone elective procedures by themselves (and TX and Arizona are stopping them by default now if i read it right).
Ari went from 60% to 88% in a pretty short time, Texas almost double the people currently hospitalised for Covid19.

• Hospital occupancy rate U.S. 1975-2017 | Statista

Arizona Doc: Hospital Strains With Staff Shortage as Beds Fill Up | Phoenix New Times

Texas coronavirus positivity rate exceeds “warning flag� | The Texas Tribune

And remember, even in normal beds a covid patient takes up that bed a while potentially, even more so in ICU where you have them taking up beds and ressources (nurses can't just clone themselves and also can't necessarily switch between Covid/non-covid day to day, hour to hour due to fears of them spreading it). And you also can't move one or two patients elsewhere within the hospital like with other stuff when beds get scarce in a ward/station. You can only do it whole, meaning clear a ward/station and then bring in covid. Or use makeshift hospitals (which again hurts ressources you need to divide).

Id deaths go up it might be 3-4 weeks after the cases started to surge (really about 10 days ago). 1) dying from covid on average takes a while and 2) if it is young people now, do they spread it only to other young people or are there enough to 'migrate' into other demograpics ? This is what happened in the early going*. It first spread among younger people (not necessarily only 20 or 30 year olds, but not Seniors) because those were the one bringing it with them from Holiday and then first infecting Peers attenting the same social event (you meet way more people similarly aged than much older). Then eventually it really infiltrated older demografics and 3 weeks later, boom ...

Granted, those are likely more careful now (as are their kids or grandkids) and homes are shielded better. So it will not happen to the same extent.

* Tough to look at data here though because tests did increase rapidly and 4 weeks before deaths were surging there were almost no tests made in any of the hard hit countries.

Does it count if it's a man-made second wave? Because in Georgia we totally opened back up too early, causing this bump back up.

Time to open back up the speakeasies.

So Florida's statewide experiment on whether a bunch of drunk 25 year olds will observe social distancing to avoid a virus that they have been told repeatedly affects only old people is over?

What were the results?

Also, testing still sucks here. Friend of the family had an extreme fever spike and went to the emergency room. They refused to test her because they will only test people who are admitted. WTF?

Heads up fellow Floridians. The panic buying has begun once again.

I don't see it as a second wave. This country is big enough that it's just now migrating to the places where it had been shut out with the previous lockdowns. A second wave implies that there was a first. Seems to me, that the definition needs to be narrowed to more geographically similar areas before we go defining if it's one or two.

Ya, the antibodies test results in my state a month or two back told me that we, and probably other states outside the northeast, had much less prevalence of COVID than I assumed by that point. We're all just later in the game of the progression of this.

I don't think it's so much that NYC has some degree of "herd immunity" yet and these other states don't, but instead, the vulnerable people in states like mine - the bar hoppers, the party goers, the people in big families, the medical providers, etc, didn't get it before because it really wasn't here yet. Now they're starting to get it.

Of course these states being hit now had the advantage of knowing what was coming, and didn't take advantage of that. The quarantines in March might have been pointless in retrospect, and maybe counterproductive since it started that clock of peoples' ability to live like that too early. Countries in Europe locked down just before their COVID peaks, and then started lifting restrictions a couple of months later. Some states in the U.S. started quarantining when the virus hadn't even arrived yet. Either they were going to have to continue that indefinitely, much longer than Europe did, or they were going to get increased infections whenever restrictions were lifted.

My preferred supermarket still has stacks of 'emergency' Toilet Paper (some no-brand stuff) bought to replace all the stuff bought by panic buyers in march. Those stacks have been just sitting there clogging up the way to the frozen foods section since end of April, barely been getting smaller those piles despite price being dropped multiple times :D Plus now they started stacking the regular brands again in their regular aisles, so it might sit there untouched until someone in management blinks and just gives up and gives it away or stores it in back.

Texas, too

SI

That was one of the frustrations a lot of us had with the early US response. I mean we even said things like "we're 2 weeks behind Italy, why aren't we doing anything". We had all the warnings signs but we didn't heed them. At every turn, we're told "that's overreacting" and yet this virus continues to remind us "nope".

SI

This is the chart that I think best captures the extent of the US debacle. It adjusts both for population and for the fact that the US surge started later. And it's damning pic.twitter.com/h1AtMRw3EI

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 25, 2020

A second surge requires the end of a 1st one and I doubt our half assed effort to contain it qualifies.

We were regularly having 2k deaths a day. For an extended period we've been down to a few hundred. That's a big difference, I don't see why you would need to get down to zero or whatever for it to be a second wave when it boosts back up.

That's pretty telling.

You may be right, I think it depends on how you define a second wave, but I think the decline in deaths when compared to the rate of infection is just showing who is getting it now versus early on when everyone was staying home (ie, more young healthy people who are ignoring social distancing guidelines while older, higher risk adults are continuing to stay home).

One of the responses - heh:

As a Canadian, I think we might need a border wall for when the violent caravans start making their way north. 😬
— Loss For Words 🇨🇦 (@speechless_14) June 25, 2020


SI


It also is too early to know what the outcome of this surge is. Looking at the 7-day average (imo a must due to the quirks of reporting) it really only started to significantly rise nationally on June 15th, aber being roughly on a similar level (both cases and positivity rates) the 3 weeks prior and going down before that.
It won't hit 2k again, but i'd wait another 3 weeks to see if it stayed highly concentrated in this younger population or has or will trickle upwards via family gatherings or work/health care contacts.
I mean, just because now you have 40k of which 25k are under 50 this would not be better than 20 of which 10 were under 50. (Totally made up numbers !)

Contact tracing looks to be a shamble btw, the USs opaque and fractured structure and skepticism towards agencies does not help ...


Maricopa County isn't following CDC guidelines for COVID-19 contact tracing


Contact tracing for the coronavirus pandemic isn't working - Axios

Amid coronavirus surge, Texas has a contact tracing problem: reporting cases by fax


UK has similar issues, they would overall be my bet for "first major country in Europe to have a major resurgence".

Watching CNN, and Houston is terrifying right now. Hospital ICUs getting slammed. And Florida's cases, holy shit.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

That might be true, but there's no way it lasts even if it is. Said young healthy people will eventually transmit it in significant numbers to older, high-risk ones and ... there we go again.

Even more fundamentally though, deaths are a lagging indicator. They would be expected to come several weeks after a spike in cases.

Exactly, I don't see a scenario where we are not seeing record deaths on a daily basis in a couple weeks or so based upon case numbers and the continued growth. Hope I'm wrong.

Just depends on demographics. This will happen eventually if the sheer numbers outweigh any younger-skewing demos. I'd be careful if I was on Twitter promising terrible numbers in 2 weeks. It may take more time than that.

I think that's the critical data point that we're missing. We need to know if treatments and care have improved since we started this mess. I think it's a given that deaths will rise, but maybe the rate won't be as high as we saw earlier this year? Pure optimism. Deaths are still coming.

I don't think there is ans doubt it has improved, but there is no way to quantify it, especially given the chaos early on in the hard hit states. That specific datapoint (what happened in march/april in epicenters) is one i don't think you can reconstruct or, if you could, really use for comparison due to special circumstances.
Not to mention that specifically measuring "effectivenes of avoiding death" is just not really feasible with an infectious disease in real time. Too many factors you would have to account for, especially if you want to do it for a wide area and not, say, a single hospital or a small city.


One thing i also feel needs mentioning: it can't be right to put the onus of this entirely on those at risk living like hermits for a year. Or force retirement homes to limit visitation down to nothing.(those working in healthcare likely also on average limiting themselves way more than others, at least the once i know are)

Even if the young people themselves avoid older people like relatives it can work over a go-between.

In Michigan meanwhile at least 85 people are thought to have contracted it at a bar over a period of about a week. This might really have to do with ventilation or some factor like that ... And then likely a couple employees spreading it every night. Anybody know if the employees are required to wear masks specifically ? Articles say venue adhered to guidelines, but no mention of masks.

Patrons are asked to self-quarantine after about 85 people who visited a Michigan bar get Covid-19 - CNN

Also: NOW the bar is installing air purifiers ... Maybe that would be Money well spent for everybody, maybe make it tax exempt or sth ?

A couple of family members have already been told to get their work from at home setups ready once again.

I would say it was unbelievable but that would be a lie.

Worldmeters has global death toll passing 500k today.

Yes, all employees in those establishments are required to wear masks in Michigan. Required with zero enforcement, voluntary compliance, etc. but they are still required.

I live in a low impact area as of now and we were told on Friday we are working from home until at least Labor Day. Just not worth having 2,000 people in the same building.

We’ve been told we are to work at home until informed otherwise. Apparently at the national level, management hasn’t even informed the union of their plan for coming back to work - which is required and comments have to be sent and then some back and forth. And whereas we were informed to work from home by region, we’ll be told to back into the office by national order. We have a regional office in Dallas and a district office in Miami. I doubt we’ll be told we are going back into the office before Labor Day.

We had initially been told people were coming back in waves starting after 4th of July, so this 2 month shift is a big deal.

My office was to open back up July 6th, but that has been postponed till mid August. I'm thinking that is merely the first postponement. Same thing nationwide. I can't see us getting back to the office while the virus is raging. We had between 5 and 10 percent of the staff express a desire to go back in that first wave of openings.

So with this forthcoming second wave during summer, what does this mean for the theory that coronavirus will slow down with the heat?

I'm not convinced that heat significantly slows it.

Good news! COVID in Houston is solved!

Page not found - Texas Medical Center
By, which I mean, they removed the page showing ICU occupancy in the med center:

TMC leaders: COVID-19 surge is not eclipsing Houston hospital capacity - Houston Chronicle
I'm sure this was in response to the national attention it was getting and how they had to have a press conference to basically say "no, no, no: 100% isn't 100%!" Despite the fact that anyone who could read a PowerPoint could see that we have now exceeded 100% ICU beds and are into surge capacity.

But, hey, if we can't see the information, then the problem must be solved. We went from being one of the most open and transparent cities to removing the most critical stats as soon as the crisis reached critical mass.

SI

I was hoping this would be the case but Texas and Arizona have killed that optimism.

The terrifying thought is that most scientists still agree it is slower than it will be in the fall and winter simply due to the high outside/inside contact ratio. South of the US the super high temperatures and more people indoors with shoddy ventilation might be part of the problem.



And even 90% over a long time seems way too much already. Hospitals usually operate at 65/70ish % and the whole system likely is designed for that. Illnesses (same as deaths) are amazingly consistent, so 'surges' generally are rare, regional and short (usually a few weeks in winter or a heat wave crazy weekend etc). Plus, the extra patients from covid often need a lot of care on average from different groups of healthcare workers. Who are also struggling.

This opinion piece from a young doctor (but already high up the chain) in Arizona touches on that as well:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/o...hospitals.html


As of now is on 14 straight shifts without a day off.

Looking at the % change in deaths per 100K over the last week there are a few states over 15%:

Arizona: 19%
Alaska: 17%
Deleware: 17%
New Jersey: 16%
Arkansas: 15%

Update: this caught a lot of attention so they've had to update the website with this message:



We'll see if the metrics are the same as before of it the political pressure causes a significant alteration to the slides.

The raw numbers for all of SE Texas can be seen here:
Microsoft Power BI

After bumping around at 300 COVID ICU patients for about a month, we're up to 701 as of yesterday.

That also doesn't include the "suspected" cases in isolation beds. If you look at slide 7, we've gone from about 200-300 in May to 1400(!) as of yesterday.

SI

Too much testing :redface:

Houstonians Denied And Delayed Testing As Officials Roll Out COVID-19 Test Sites – Houston Public Media

The weird statement about Iceland (yeah,they have a high per capita but had 50 total in the last 9 weeks) aside: Why in the world does a healthcare worker even have to wait in line like that ? Why is it still such a clusterfuck ? Why do people suddenly have to pay for themselves again ? (And apparently cash only)

It also makes clear that testing as a sort of precaution or to prove a negative (no covid) is not viable, this needs to be curtailed asap to concentrate the available testing oportunities for HC workers, symptomatic patients and known contacts of positive tests.
It is a pipedream this sort of 'unprompted' testing is viable while actual spread is increasing.

I think that's an older story, looking at the byline.

That said, it's not that people /can/ have easy access to testing today. There are still videos with long lines from this past week, as well. I can neither confirm nor deny, though, as I haven't gone looking for a test and I am fortunate to have access to testing personally due to profession of a family member.

SI

My bad, shit. Popped up in my news feed just today as a new story for whatever reason :redface:

Anyway, another moment of mask insanity:


Pointedly commented on:

https://twitter.com/TheTattooedProf/...19857080541185


The worst part is her even bringing a mask, just too show how damned edgy she is. Either that, or her next/prior stop was somewhere she did give a fuck about not being able to shop.

Have people really forgotten how many rules they follow in society every day ? Like masks are the first infringement on their 'freedom', ever.

Which building. My bro was curious cause he works at BNY. Assuming Something on grant street?

I work at Dick’s and we have our own building near the airport.

Having spent the past 4 months almost exclusively with my family - who I like - I forgot how much I hate people.

I with you. It's making me even less willing to spend time out in the world.

It's so weird. I have one group of friends who are debating which grocery stores to go to based on how much mask compliance they see.

And I have my cousin saying how glad she is that little league is back and posting all the pictures of her kids playing, and you look at the players and stands, and everyone is packed on top of each other with no masks or anything, and it is like nothing at all is out of the ordinary.

Someone commented something similar earlier in this thread, but it really is like several different realities all happening at the same time right now.

Yeah know that address far too well. Nothing like waiting at the airport queue for an Uber ride and only getting a 4$ uber to the DSG HQ. :(.

I’m really getting exasperated about this now.

My old hometown (Leicester) is having the half-lockdown measures extended by a couple of weeks due to an unexplained spike in cases.

What’s the reaction? Worry? Best play it safe to minimise risk? Nah, it’s multiple statements of ‘fuck it, we’ll just go to the pubs outside the restriction area then’.

I cannot understand how dumb / selfish / inconsiderate / over-entitled / outright twattish a large proportion of society is. It’s just ridiculous :mad: :banghead:

We have a high population of overgrown babies.

I've been trying to articulate my feelings on the righteousness of social media but am unsure on how it will come out so here's my best shot...

I think here on FOFC we seem to be in close to 100% agreement on the idea that masks are useful and mitigate the spread of COVID. We also all laugh (I think even the conservative side) at the morons that we see at the store intentionally not wearing masks as some sort of political statement. However I diverge a little from here...

So a couple of anecdotal observations from friends of mine on facebook. I have one friend who posts non stop about the importance of the mask and how the knuckle draggers won't wear them but she seems to have also created her own little world where she can make exceptions to the rule. For example she took her family on a purely entertainment oriented trip to Florida. I mean sure the masks probably do help quite a bit but you know what else does? Not going on an airplane trip to Florida in the middle of a pandemic.

I have another friend who is involved in back and forth about the protesters and some absurd argument that not only did COVID cases not go up but they declined in places where the protesting occurred. I mean do we not all agree this is patently absurd? I would probably surprise a lot of the liberal brethren on this board that the social protests are a completely different beast than not wearing masks to the Lake of the Ozarks. But any argument that the groups of sometimes tens of thousands of people in which some of the people clearly aren't wearing masks or socially distancing were 100% effective in not spreading the virus is a joke. (And the fact the she is quoting media outlets like buzzfeed making this claim just add to the divide in this country. I mean it's complete political masturbation at the point you cherry pick data to claim the protests had no effect on the spread of COVID)

So I guess my point is that it is kind of hard to get pat yourself on the back too much unless you are a complete hermit. I mean myself I wear a mask at stores but admit I don't wear one when pumping gas or on a hike with my family and actually kind of view those people as a little Chicken Littleish. But what do I know right? They could have serious immune system problems or relatives with serious immune problems.

But isn't that the whole thing? Yes we should wear masks and social distance but unless you are a hermit I don't know how you can really criticize anyone else. You can't just take a trip and say well I'm still better than most people, you can't protest and say but I'm still better than most, I personally can't pump gas but say hey I wear my mask in the grocery. I mean we all have chosen some level of risk and all just think our level is acceptable.

Not really aimed at anyone in particular on here and more at the twitter/facebook world which is a cesspool already. Just something to get off my chest I guess.

I see it in some ways as a testament to the awesomeness of American capitalism. We have a large population of people who have basically managed to live on this planet for somewhere between 20 and 60 years who basically have never had to deal with externally imposed inconvenience. I mean, really. That's kind of amazing and remarkable and something that we should probably be pretty proud of. The great kingdoms of the world throughout history had nothing close to the levels of comfort and prosperity that America achieved.

I'm not saying that our lives were perfect b/c nothing is perfect. But whatever we wanted to eat, we ate. Wherever we wanted to go, we went. Whatever books, music, movies, etc. we wanted to consume, we consumed. Everything was always available at our fingertips for a very affordable price.

And, now, for the first time ever, society is saying "I know you want to do this thing, but you can't. And you won't be able to get to do it for a while." And, it turns out, people just can't handle it. We are being told No for the first time since we were 6 years old, and we are reacting like we did when we were 6.

What's funny is that a lot of these people are the ones who were so quick to label young people as snowflakes. And now you're crying and throwing groceries because you were told you needed a mask.

A couple weeks ago I had to go up to MA (from NC) to help my mom. Mask usage was 95-99%.

Here in NC (before the mandatory mask order) mask usage varied depending on where you were. About 40% here on the SC border and about 75% closer to Charlotte.

I just got back from a trip to Yellowstone via car. Mask usage from Tennessee to the YNP border was less than 5% in most places. There were many times that my family were the only mask wearers in sight. At a hotel in MO, there was a 30-40 person pizza party in the common area with a stack of pizzas to share.

Inside the park was 50-75%, and the park itself is going to *great* lengths to enforce social distancing. It's hard to quantify 'social distancing' so I am using percent of mask usage.

I have not been out in NC since the order so I have no data point for NC right now.

And yes, I am aware that I am complaining about lack of mask usage after I just took a non-essential road trip. So you can put me in the dumb/selfish bucket, too but I do feel like we had minimal contact with other humans.

We're all in agreement that there are a lot, lot, lot of DBs on Twitter/Facebook. Lots of really bad hypocrites, too. And venting about those things can be cathartic. Totally on the same page.

Also, I think we can disagree about the efficacy of public shame, especially in the current political environment, and especially on social media.

But about the core message, isn't this basically "perfect being the enemy of very good", tho. No one is perfect - we all have some exposure to risk and the definition of "essential" is so murky right now. But that doesn't mean it's unfair for someone to call out their neighbor for something significantly worse? Someone going for takeout is not the same as someone going bar hopping, right? Those are orders of magnitude different in risk.

I'd say that someone who does right, say, 99% of the time has the moral high ground over someone who does right 30% of the time (for whatever that is worth). And trying to point out that 1% of the time from the better person is just whataboutism. If the entire population were behaving like the 99% person, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

SI

Fuck 99%, if only ... But yes, this 1/0 thinking annoys me as well. Not all things are the same and not all things are 1/0.

Plus a mask really isn't about doing/not doing anything. It is about how to do sth so it can be done more safely by everybody involved. And while there is no real reason to wear it while hiking (and if it is required it is more a sign of how leadership does not trust people not to go "so there i did not need one, so that means they are not needed anywhere"), being more cautious is a choice. Being more dangerous ?

Because it isn't about "choosing risk", it is about potentially posing a risk. Think smoking in enclosed spaces around non-smokers.

And yes, the one wearing a mask is at a much higher risk from 1 not doing so than if both are wearing one. The reason is that the droplets etc are much easier stopped directly after shedding than once they are in the room in large quantity. (And quite simply also get smaller, so slip past/through another persons mask more easily than the initial mask wearer)

I went to the zoo today and saw the most famous Hippo in the world.

It was nice to be out. We tried to wear masks as much as possible. I'd say it was maybe 50/50 on people with masks.

After picked up some Mellow Mushroom carryout, but sat at a table and had a beer while we waited. All employees were masked, but there was only like 1 other table in there. I have no idea how any of these businesses will manage to stay open if there's another complete shut down. This is about the 3rd restaurant we've been out to since things started to open back up a month ago.

Yeah, I think a second wave of sorts has already hit the business/corporate world. Ironically, I think the rush to re-open for the sake of the economy also forced the collective economy to realize that the new-normal might not be a return to previous form. Like as long as everything was closed up we could maintain the illusion that once we turned on the faucet it would of course immediately flow at 100% again.

We've ordered pickup from maybe 10 restaurants so far (in addition to fast food drive-throughs) in the past 4-6 weeks. Ordered twice from Mellow Mushroom, both times I went to pickup I saw a fair number sitting outside, tables spaced apart more than before.

My guess is many of these are franchises which means there is $ behind the stores. For the others (like mom-and-pop Chinese, Mediterranean) they are sole proprietorship and just won't pay themselves as much and/or not use non-family labor.

One of the few types of businesses that are raking money right now are restaurants with drive-thru's. I have a few that I work with, and none of them have reopened their dining areas yet even though they can (somewhat limited) here. They all say they are actually up on last year.

I'm sure restaurants are not doing well but the few we've been to seem to have decent curbside business. Of course, 3-4 cars does not equal a full restaurant, but I've seen some do a decent job of rolling with the changes.

Picked up dinner on Sunday for our anniversary from an expensive steakhouse and they had it done right - command center outside, 8 spaces for pick-up, ran like a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately, we've also run into several places that have screwed up our orders. Buffalo Wild Wings was the worst -missed an entire dinner and side of fries, had to go back to get it (15 minutes both ways), then they almost missed the fries a second time - no credit, no nothing, barely an apology. Also missed a couple sides from a BBQ place we ordered from for Memorial Day.

We almost exclusively do door dash. As one would imagine things get messed up by they give you a credit. We did a Combe from Manhattan bagel they was a dozen bagels and 2 containers of cream cheese and they didn’t bring the cream cheese. How the dasher missed that is beyond me but they gave us a full credit for that whole thing

Had a similar experience. They have an app that is also stunningly un-customizable, which, for a wing place, is unforgivable. I just avoid them. There are other, better wing places around that are just a little further away.

Not sure how the old Miamisburg BWW was, but the Springboro one was ok (didn’t hurt we knew the trainer). It started going downhill when they lost a lot of staff when they announced the closing of the two and making the new one. The new one is terrible. First time I went there, I had to wait 15 minutes after getting a table for someone to take our drink order, it was not even busy. They have screwed up our carry out orders several times.

Three out of four of us now prefer Rooster’s to BWW, it used to just be me. Between the quality of service and food going downhill at BWW and how solid Rooster’s is, we hardly ever go to BWW. When we first moved here we went at least once a week. I wonder how long it is going to stay open there.

BWW has always had bad service. Food takes impossibly long to come out, at every location. I traveled around the midwest/south for softball tournaments the past 10 years and hit up a number of BWW and they are the same everywhere - if you don't have 60-75 minutes to waste, don't bother.

They used to be solid, but they have really gone downhill the last 5 or so years.

Rooster's just had to close dine in again due to 5 employees testing COVID positive. Probably avoiding that place for a while, sadly.

I'm prepared to accept this statement.

Fulton County's plan for schools this fall is, um, disappointing.

Edit: Its pretty much like all the other Atlanta area plans. Families can opt for online by roughly mid July (date is different per district I think), but if go the online route, they are committed for the entire semester. Families are given no information about how online class will work. Teachers have no idea how online classes will work.

In school, faculty will have masks and students will be encouraged to have them. Lunches will be in the home room.

Oh, Fulton is pushing back the start date for a week to Aug 17th. I don't think the other area schools are pushing back but I could be wrong.

That's about it.

We are in Dekalb county with no guidance yet. My daughter starts at a charter arts school and we have heard nothing. Their version of online learning at our elementary school was one subject per day, which amounted to about 20 minutes of actual work per day. So we will not be doing online in Dekalb no matter what, but even less so with no information.

I almost murdered a cashier at BWW a few weeks ago. Placed online order for 5pm pickup. Lobby packed with pickups. Ok. But surely it’ll go fast. No. Moron is also taking phone orders. Slowly. Restaurant is not open otherwise. Other idiot in dining room is cleaning tables. He could be answering phones. Finally get to the register after about 20 minutes. I don’t like hanging out with a bunch of strangers in an enclosed space when it’s not Covid time. Pay, normally I tip $5 but fuck this guy. Then I sit for another 15 minutes til my order is finally done. Like 40minutes past when I placed it for. And they fucked up one of the wing sauces.

I haven’t messed with the app in months but you weren’t supposed to check the food anymore. But I’m sure that it was probably obvious that the cream cheese was missing and the dasher had poor spatial analysis.

But shit, bagels and no cream cheese would piss me off. Even if that’s totally a first world problem.

We had a GrubHub delivery driver just completely ignore our preference for Contact Free Delivery. She was just standing there knocking on the door. Like, wtf, lady?! I basically opened the door and stretched my hand out as far as it would go to take it from her (I didn't bring my mask to the door because I figured the food would just be sitting on the mat).

Hillsborough came out with their three Models for how school will reopen. The parents will be surveyed on July 1. Once the Model has been determined, parents will then have to choose their option.

Model A

Traditional
E-Learning (similar to MySchool)
Virtual

Model B

Hybrid rotation with students split into two groups. Each group rotates 4 days in the classroom and 6 days eLearning.
E-Learning
Virtual

Model C

E-Learning
Virtual

And yes, masks in school will be going to the State Supreme Court on one side or the other.

Put something like “BABY IN HOUSE DON’T KNOCK” in instructions.

I think I have had 1 out of 10 of any delivery drivers actually observe contactless delivery. I check it in the app, then I have to buzz them into my building, and as part of that process I also say "just drop it in the lobby, thanks", then I hoof it down 3 flights of stairs to find the delivery person standing in the stairwell, my food outstretched in their hands, practically every time.

For every 4 or so people that want contactless there’s one asshole who clicks off that setting by default and then low rates because his food was set on his doorstep. It’s a no win. But like if you’re telling people to leave it and they’re still standing there not exactly best and brightest

Waiting for a (additional) tip?

It has been so consistent & across different services, that I'm assuming it's probably something like overlapping policy/standards for delivering to apartment buildings....or maybe just like a common quirk of human nature that nobody wants to leave unattended food in a public lobby.

My advice is just rate them low or whatever options you have with the available service that you use. If a shopper isn't following your reasonable instructions, that's the best recourse. As stevew mentions there are plenty who aren't fair about their feedback, but there's no reason not to expect them to actually do their job reasonably well.

My experience as a shopper is that about 95% of customers have the 'Drop-Off' instruction, and that's exactly what I and pretty much all the other shoppers I know do. I.e., we leave it where the customer tells us to, or by their front door if they don't specify. People have said in the garage, or set up tables, or opened the trunk of a SUV/truck and had me put it in/on there, or whatever.

This stuff isn't that hard, but I do know that quality of service varies a lot based on metro and how hard it's been for a platform to hire people/what standards they have/etc. Shipt wasn't deactivating any shoppers for a couple months because of the pandemic; they needed every warm body they could get to try to keep up with demand and even then weren't able to. This also led to a lot of crap shoppers which made a lot of customers mad, but if you can't get a delivery window to even order you aren't going to be happy with that either.

This has gone away the last few weeks with what we call 'The Purge'. A lot of the newer shoppers have disappeared.

So went out today to get a pickup at Walmart (almost everything we ordered), then went in to get a few things we couldn't order. Still a lot of people without masks. It could get interesting here next few days though. Our useless governor doesn't think a mandatory mask law for the state would be enforceable, so he's left it up to each town/city to decide. The mayor of Conway and her husband both had the virus (and recovered) so pretty much a no-brainer that Conway would go Mandatory, Myrtle Beach hasn't decided yet, and if they do I can see a lot of angry tourists and locals. To which I say F*!* You. :)

The bonus coming home from Walmart was getting a shake at Cook-Out and finding they had their seasonal Watermelon Shake available a day early-Score! :)

Fauci says that if things continue on this message (IE, Karens and Chads, and kids deciding that masks are EVIL LIBERUL HOAXES AND WE"RE INVINCIBLE), we could have 100,000 Cases. A DAY.

That would require more widespread testing than we have and/or are likely to get.

Just remember that when the MB economy doesn't recover to past levels due to tourists that remember such things in (increasingly hypothetical) normal times.

As long as you don't bitch about that down the road, I got no problem with whatever position you want to take.

Kentucky specifically warned against travelling to Myrtle Beach. Pretty popular destination from here.

No surprise, but we decided not to take our annual beach vacation to St. Augustine. We're only five people, but I wonder how many families are free to go, but choosing not to. Including the condo rental, that's a few thousand dollars not going into the local economy. The economy can't get back to normal until the virus is under control.

I've had 3 vacations cancelled so far this year - including in August to the NH mountains, which would have been great (presumably sparse population and lots of nature), except we can't comply with NH's quarantine requirement.

I've got over $10K tied up in vacations for 2021, I guess.

a few states did-WV too off the top of my head, maybe NJ.

“More testing only reveals more infections and therefore increases the numbers. In a way, by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad”

SI