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Ingenuity to Beat the Ban
If any young reporters wish to prove their mettle, opportunities abound to explain the challenges businesses face in general quarantine. Even large corporations are already discussing layoffs and cancellation of projects that would otherwise enable more hiring.
Restaurants are struggling with the ban. But one local eatery has found a way to attract customers who cannot dine inside. As reported by Jacob Rascon at KPRC Channel 2 Houston:
When the owners of Butler House in Spring transformed the parking lot next door into a drive-in movie theater, they had “no idea” if anyone would show up. [….]
The movies are free, and the Butler House delivers food orders to your windows. Two movies — Sherlock Gnomes and Ferris Bueller’s Day — were shown Wednesday night.
How are businesses in your area adapting to endure this disruption?
Published in Economics
Restaurants have been hardest hit, no thanks to our governor. However, most are adapting by shifting to take-out only. Still, people have lost jobs for what I believe is an over-reaction. The numbers will tell the story once this thing is over.
Overreaction? Why on March 10 the press reported that “we are ten days from our hospitals getting creamed.” The hospitals were going to be overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. Filled to bursting.
That’s today. March 20. And oh my the hospitals today are just . . . what’s that you say? . . . The hospitals are not overwhelmed? Ah [In best Emily Litella voice] nevermind.
By the way, if you can think of other ways to assist local businesses during the bans, suggestions are welcome. Taking advantage of to-go ordering at restaurants is perhaps the most obvious.
Meals On Wheels needs drivers in my area. Other charity services need money more than volunteers.
To be fair, it’s impossible to tell how much the restrictions affected that prediction. That’s the nature of the beast. A prediction that death is imminent is made. Things are done to curb the coming death rate, and the prediction doesn’t come true. Did the precautions keep the death rate from climbing as high as predicted, or was the prediction hogwash to begin with? We can’t go back in time and do things differently, so we’ll never know. Do I think there’s a lot of over-reaction and unnecessary panicking going on right now? Yeah, I do – a lot. But precautions and restrictions have been taken, so there’s no way anyone can know for certain if I’m right or the (in my view) Chicken Littles are.
Several of us from the office went out to eat yesterday to a Texas Roadhouse. It was almost empty. I left a big tip.
This is the most outrageous part of this event. Credentialed experts leveraged their reputational authority in a moment when they knew the media/political environment would make the president powerless to say no or even seriously question their thread-bare theories. The professional association/academic conference cocktail napkin sketch became imbued with “truth,” juiced by false claims about the allegedly very advanced Italian medical system, a system that in point of fact was so fragile that Italy scored behind Mexico in preparedness for a pandemic.
Never mind that the total reported deaths worldwide do not yet match just the National Strategic Stockpile plus the portion of DOD war stocks already offered up. That is, the United States, at the national strategic level, had, on Day 1, the resources to provide respiratory support to every single patient globally requiring respiratory support. And the experts knew this. And they have been hiding the ball with an undefined red line each and every day, until they are forced to come clean next week by the president’s promise to give the American people the real number of respirators across the US including national stocks.
On 20 March 2020, a grand total of 64 Americans are so ill, “serious/critical,” as to likely require ventilator support.
Just out of curiosity, where have you heard this?
Our local Meals on Wheels just cancelled all volunteer deliveries. Somehow they propose to deliver ten days’ of meals at a time to shut-ins instead.
Another opportunity to assist: helping elders learn to do stuff online.
A teacher friend asked me to assist her make the transition to online courses. I don’t think she even owns a webcam, and she’s a lecturer, so this should be interesting.
If you’re handy with computers, an older neighbor might appreciate some lessons. Maybe you can even teach someone to use a search engine with more precision, to track news and resources.
Also, give a thought to the elder relatives of friends and coworkers. If you live closer, perhaps offer your contact information in case they need help.
I don’t think that figure from (Worldometers?) is accurate. The CDC report from earlier this week suggested 12% of cases required hospitalization, and a quarter of those needed the ICU. However, as more testing becomes available, those figures should fall.
The NIH, CDC, and HHS have been involved in pandemic and other mass casualty planning for decades. So, let me modify: either the experts, with clearances, knew our nation’s capabilities, data essential to planning responses and to driving the size of the National Security Stockpile, and knew the size of the stockpiles built in response to their estimates of surge support needs, or they have been making millions, over their careers in salary and benefits while completely failing to actually do strategic planning.
The cynic in me says “Why not? They’re government employees, aren’t they?”
I heard another story out of Texas on the Mark Davis Show Podcast. A community theater is putting on a show in drive in form. They have an overhang at their entrance and parking close to the entrance, so they will broadcast on a low power FM channel and have a 1950s cabaret song review, which people can come watch from their cars.