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In Oregon our Governor declared an emergency, sets the rules of the emergency, and determines alone how long the emergency lasts. So far there’s no end in sight. No input from the legislature (they’re Democrats too) and the Oregon Supreme Court has endorsed this set up. We are ruled by the whims (oops, I mean science) of Kate Brown.
BTW, the same Kate Brown who has been ok with massive riots in Portland won’t let you eat indoors. The media speaking truth to power ?- nope. The media laps up these undemocratic dictates like kittens do cream.
I feel your pain.
The bag thing is amusing. Last year towns near me started to force everyone to bring their own bags because plastic, which was introduced to “save the trees” and end paper bags is now a danger to the planet. Oddly, many stores then replaced plastic with . . . paper. Anyway, then came THE COVID!!! As a result you were no longer allowed to bring your reusable bag but instead they gave out plastic bags again. Then the Greens and the Covidiots came to a compromise where you can bring your own bags but if you do, you have to bag your own groceries. Of course, if you don’t bring bags from home they will give you free plastic bags again, which may or mat not end the planet the way paper bags ended the planet years ago. Local governments hard at work to protect(?), or at least confuse us lowly citizens.
We have not seen that level of hectoring, but the grocery store situation here in our small town in North Texas is confusing.
The Aldi in town (which has always depended on customers bringing in and loading their own bags) for a couple of months in the early summer would not allow the customer bags into the store, so the cashiers put all groceries back into the cart, and the customer transfers everything individually into the car (or into bags in the car) in the parking lot. That was really fun on the days it was raining when Mrs. Tabby went grocery shopping, since summer rains in north Texas can be rather heavy. <end sarcasm> Aldi now permits customer bags in, and they’re back to the normal system of the cashiers putting the groceries back into the cart, and the customer using counters inside the store to pack the groceries into the reusable bags. The store does have bags for sale at the cashier stand.
The Albertson’s still won’t let reusable customer bags into the store, so the clerk packs everything into single-use bags (for which they do not charge). Mrs. Tabby dislikes this because a single-use bag won’t hold as much as a reusable bag, so she ends up with more bags to schlep from the car into the house.
The Albertson’s also keeps going back and forth on whether it has separate doors for entrance and exit, or whether a single door is both entrance and exit, which difference determines whether you pick up your cart outside the store or inside.
I don’t go out much because communicating with other humans through plexiglass and mask barriers is so difficult that I become frustrated. When I do need to talk to people, one or both of us almost inevitably has to repeat at least some of what we are saying. Non-verbal communication with others about who’s going where in the store aisle, or who is waiting in which line, is near impossible since we can’t see faces. Between seemingly arbitrary rules, muffled voices, and no facial expressions, dealing with other people is much harder now. So, I get frustrated. Not helping my overall wellbeing.
Here’s what I’m still trying to sort out….
I was privileged to know all four of my grandparents intimately. In fact, it’s kind of funny to me, in my earliest memories of them, I’m older today than they were then. My paternal grandfather was born in 1902. And all my grandparents were alive during the Spanish Flu epidemic. They were all raised in industrial cities.
NEVER, ever ever, in all the conversations I had with them about their childhoods, did anyone ever say a word about the Spanish Flu. A world historic event. Maybe because I was just a kid. Or, maybe because they were no strangers to death. Most of them having experienced the loss of siblings as infants or young children. But I tend to think it’s because the most memorable experience in their lives was the Great Depression. And yes there were stories. Lots of stories.
I don’t know if I have a point, other than that it just strikes me as odd.
I had to go into an office building recently where there was a security guard at the front desk behind newly installed plexiglass. Trying to have a conversation with masks and plexiglass he eventually lowered his mask and asked me to walk around to the other side of the plexiglass in order that we could actually hear each other.
I’m not much of a shopper (JY has always done the grocery shopping) and I avoid it like the plague now. That said, I do go to Trader Joe’s regularly and have found it to be a very pleasant experience, with one exception In the early covid days there were two lines, one for seniors and one for everyone else I got in the non-senior line (at 62 I’m not sure if I’m a senior, but I certainly don’t identify as one) and immediately got engaged in conversation with a young man behind me
A customer came up to me and started barking that I was in the wrong line. I replied in confusion, when she pointed to the other line and said “That’s the line for seniors” Whereupon I nearly bit my tongue off not saying one of the cruelest comments that has ever sprung to mind. Let’s just say she had a very obvious comorbidity, and I wanted to say I though the other line was for people like her
I’ve been to our Vons a few times (must have been out of soda water) and used the self checkout. There is a checker standing glowering at all who avail themselves of that service and God help you if you need assistance
This whole experience has been very unpleasant, and there are “real life” friends I have no desire to re-connect with after seeing their behavior online. Everyone thinks that if they were in France during WWII they would have been part of the Resistance. I now know that some I know would have been pointing towards my hiding place. And not for a reward – just the sheer satisfaction of ratting me out
Do any of our minders understand that this phrase is an oxymoron?
In the early days were were told that the pandemic was caused by a “novel” coronavirus. Novel meaning it is a new coronavirus that has not been previously identified. This is a problem. Science is associated with empiricism, coming from experience. How do we have experience with a new intercellular parasite? So how does one claim enough knowledge to make rules, when much of what we thought was true yesterday will turn out to be false tomorrow?
Agree. “We” are way too comfortable and “priviledged” now.
My mother lived to age 103 and lived in the 19th, 20th and 21st (2001) centuries. She remembered the sinking of the Titanic (I took her to see the movie) and writing letters to doughboys in WWI. Somehow the topic of the flu in 1918 never came up.
Democrat Governors and Mayors are showing us what they like to do.
So far, no one anywhere has actually isolated the particular virus that makes up COVID 19.
Then there is the matter that the PCR tests were devised to help diagnose lung cancer, not the flu or pneumonia.
Leaving all that aside, the authorities let us know that among the groups of people who had COVID 19 and survived, the survivors have new and even more horrible health problems descending on them. So even though COVID might not kill an individual, the public is told that the survivor might end up with continual diarrhea, tiredness, arthritic pains, a rash, hives, and worse.
Many of these thing could be more related to the drugs they were put on than the COVID 19 ailment itself. There are also fungal conditions and staph infections afflicting people who wear a mask improperly and for too much of the time. But that narrative does not fit the meme of “COVID is the worst thing to befall humankind,” so it is better left unsaid.
A great article on the folly of banning plastic bags-
https://www.city-journal.org/needless-panic-over-disposable-plastic
The government and news down-played the pandemic, since it was wartime and bad for morale. Although it came in 3 annual waves only the middle one was really bad. The depression and rationing for WWII lasted nearly 2 decades.
I feel the exact same way about many of my fellow citizens now, and that is the most disillusioning, horrible thing ever.
You are a better person than I am because I would have walked out and ordered what I needed on-line or from a different grocery store. Then again… I could not survive now in California, which is a shame because we lived there for three years. I remember that time as a golden time in my life. I would never willingly live there again. After my last trip to San Francisco, I’m not even that hot on future visits.
I have no insight or knowledge about the best ways to limit spread, and I suppose we should be forgiving of low level employees who aren’t the best informed or educated, but the exchange is a bit alarming. Some folks easily and happily join top down mobs.
The death rate for Covid19 diagnosed patients in California is 18.9% a figure you will NEVER see reported anywhere. So how do I get it? Simple math, divide the scary figures we do get, deaths/cases and move the decimal two places to the right for percentage. But they don’t want you to know that because you might begin to think this thing is survivable, especially when you learn that most of the deaths involve other serious health problems.
So then, what can be the reason(s) for all the panic-stricken response? Could it be politics? Could it be clicks and viewers? Hmmm, could be, methinks.
That’s the point. The rules are ridiculous and I was really trying to be empathetic with the poor service industry employees. I have to tell patient families they can’t go be with their dying loved one because of the rules around hospital visitations & COVID. I would never talk down or scold someone like so many of our fellow citizens have begun doing to others. Even if one fully believes in the rules, one need not lose civility with other citizens. We are all in this together.
I bit my tongue and stood in silence. I thought about walking out and doing just that. Then I thought about the video of me doing that showing up on the internet, me getting doxxed/fired and my wife being disappointed in me. Thankfully my mindfulness and meditation practices kept me from blowing up.
I agree. Of all the crap that 2020 has shoveled at us, that has been the most disheartening for me. But as JY says, it was always thus, but now we know. Forewarned is forearmed.
Check your decimal point.
“By analyzing the waste found in the rivers and surrounding landscape, researchers were able to estimate that just 10 river systems carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean.
Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/
They probably don’t give two hoots about disposable plastic bags in Asia and Africa and what we do won’t amount to much but I suppose we should carry on feeling guilty. Plexiglass is also a form of plastic made from oil, so I wonder how that figures into Biden’s plan for transitioning away from fossil fuels?
I can’t help but feel that none of these measures will do anything. The virus will go on until an effective vaccine is found.
If it is ever created.
If it is not created, the virus will go on until it has run out of hosts and if it is true that people can become re-infected after a short period, that means forever. But it seems we have become better at treating it so it will at least become less lethal.
It could go on forever like it’s cousin the Common Cold. Treatment is a good option, if it is allowed us.
Yikes! I was hoping so.
@okiesailor
So if you are into looking at statistics, here is an interesting report done by a Board of Supervisor in Placer County Calif:
A synopsis of the deaths in Placer County, done by Kirk Uhler, Supervisor for Placer County, Calif
1,300 deaths overall for five months – all deaths, of which only a small number are COVID-related.
Average Age of residents who pass away – 77
251 deaths listed as some type of cardio related events – average age 80
61 deaths Communicable diseases, like pneumonia
and 100 deaths then listed as unknown disease, including 16 COVID deaths
COVID death breakdown: 9 deaths are COVID, not including
pneumonia
Another 7 deaths COVID with pneumonia —
Therefore 16 deaths are ascribed to COVID
Pneumonia deaths number in total 13 deaths (Pneumonia without COVID)
The pneumonia deaths were 50% higher than COVID
His take away points: His county is no longer paying attention to any public health matters but COVID!!
Let us repeat that: Placer county, Calif’s health officials, and possibly your county officials too, are not paying attention to anything but COVID.
Meanwhile Uhler goes on to chart how three times the numbers of people took their lives during the COVID shutdowns as actually died of COVID. Forty five people. Their average age was 40.
The population in Placer County is 398,329, and normally 10 suicides would occur.
Please note: the date that this report was made was Aug 24th 2020
https://www.facebook.com/KirkUhlerPCDist4/videos/775917539861028