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