2020... is it hard for you too?

[22-rimfire]

The testing and reported infections (numbers) are misleading other than to demonstrate that the virus has spread pretty much everywhere person to person. Would I try to maintain some social distancing from school age kids?..... yep, even at home. Would I attend a college or NFL football game? Nope.

Was it worth it to shut the country down? The only thing that this was effective in doing was to spread out the infection rate and potentially allow the hospitals the time and space to deal with the crisis. At this point.... let it "roll" but take precautions please.....

 

[PirateSeulb]

For me 2020 has been bizarre as from where I stand and the people I frequently talk with they have maintained their job most taking no or few breaks from work even a pilot though he has stated a drop in air traffic but it hasn't seemed to impact his work too much. I also hear restaurants are struggling but I still see so many people walking out of places with take out orders and lines at fast food drive through. I would say I actually have noticed more people eating from restaurants than before in my region. I do hear about servers in that business suffering and I can see how that might be as I know for myself I don't tip on take-out like I do on dine-in and the current pay structure for waitresses who receive tips is horrible as tips are their real income and the minimum wage for them is less than $3 iirc which is like saying "here is your gas money for coming in I hope you got paid today". That is really another rant for another time. I see so many now hiring signs too that it is just tough to understand the depth that people are being effected by what is going on. I know that there is much I am not seeing but it does make it tough to understand and make sense of when you have little to no connection to those effected.

 

[joeldworkin307]

The testing and reported infections (numbers) are misleading other than to demonstrate that the virus has spread pretty much everywhere person to person. Would I try to maintain some social distancing from school age kids?..... yep, even at home.

Was it worth it to shut the country down? The only thing that this was effective in doing was to spread out the infection rate and potentially allow the hospitals the time and space to deal with the crisis. At this point.... let it "roll" but take precautions please.....

The whole point of shutting down was control the spread so hospitals weren't overwhelmed. At the beginning of this, back in Chicago, I had a friend who was scheduled for a lumpectomy after chemotherapy. Hospitals got slammed and she was told to wait. She ended up having her surgery and is on the road to remission, because the hospital had the resources to treat non-COVID patients.

A lot of people will get this and plenty more will die as a result. I agree that a metered opening is due AND people need to take precautions. I now live in Georgia and I see a lot of people who think "personal liberty" means any minor inconvenience to them is worth risking the health and well being of others. It's funny to argue about who fucked up what in the past six months when it seems like we both have a similar opinion of what to do next, just with different viewpoints. Why I love Bladeforums. I'll wear a mask and go about my life if you will.

 

[jlauffer]

For me 2020 has been bizarre as from where I stand and the people I frequently talk with they have maintained their job most taking no or few breaks from work even a pilot though he has stated a drop in air traffic but it hasn't seemed to impact his work too much. I also hear restaurants are struggling but I still see so many people walking out of places with take out orders and lines at fast food drive through. I would say I actually have noticed more people eating from restaurants than before in my region. I do hear about servers in that business suffering and I can see how that might be as I know for myself I don't tip on take-out like I do on dine-in and the current pay structure for waitresses who receive tips is horrible as tips are their real income and the minimum wage for them is less than $3 iirc which is like saying "here is your gas money for coming in I hope you got paid today". That is really another rant for another time. I see so many now hiring signs too that it is just tough to understand the depth that people are being effected by what is going on. I know that there is much I am not seeing but it does make it tough to understand and make sense of when you have little to no connection to those effected.

I normally don't tip on takeout either, but have been during this time to try to help out.

 

[22-rimfire]

The problem with tipping with take out service is determining who you are tipping. I pretty much stopped going to restaurants unless it's take out. The only company that seemed to excel with their take out service (drive thru's) is Chick-fil-a. Their takeout mechanism with stores with window service has been amazing and very efficient. Normal fast food places are poorly equipped for large increases in take out service. Slow slow slow.....

 

[Insipid Moniker]

I don't think so in terms of your analogy. What it means is that if you have pre-existing conditions and especially if you are over 60 years of age, you should pay very serious attention to Covid-19. The rest, are not likely to die directly from the virus. Very few die directly from Covid-19, but it contributes with serious pre-existing medical conditions. We have known this for months. There are reports of re-infections now which relates to the anti-body thing and likely any vaccine that is developed. So, if you are healthy and under say 50 years old, the virus is not likely to kill you. It is not a death sentence.

The problem is the co-morbidities are things as minor as slightly high blood pressure or asthma in many cases. Take Covid seriously no matter what your age or health level because many of the complicating factors are so minor that you may very well have them without knowing it.

 

[22-rimfire]

The problem is the co-morbidities are things as minor as slightly high blood pressure or asthma in many cases. Take Covid seriously no matter what your age or health level because many of the complicating factors are so minor that you may very well have them without knowing it.

I do take it seriously personally. But in terms of city-wide, state-wide, or national declarations... many are way overboard (or were). Again, I take precautions but you have to look at the whole picture as best you can. joeldworkin307 and I pretty much agree, but I don't know if it is correct to count deaths as covid-19 deaths when a patient has so many other complicating conditions.... I guess it's the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

I do take it seriously personally. But in terms of city-wide, state-wide, or national declarations... many are way overboard (or were). Again, I take precautions but you have to look at the whole picture as best you can. joeldworkin307 and I pretty much agree, but I don't know if it is correct to count deaths as covid-19 deaths when a patient has so many other complicating conditions.... I guess it's the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.

We have a model for what works to contain the disease, pretending otherwise is counterfactual. A hard lock down for 2-3 times the incubation period along with aggressive testing and contact tracing is what has consistently worked.

 

[22-rimfire]

We have a model for what works to contain the disease, pretending otherwise is counterfactual. A hard lock down for 2-3 times the incubation period along with aggressive testing and contact tracing is what has consistently worked.

I don't disagree with you much. The models were all wrong at the beginning. You remember that they were predicting 2.2 million deaths in the US with no action? I think the aggressive testing at this point is a waste of resources unless you are showing symptoms. In which case, self quarantine should be done past the normal incubation period. There is enough information available now (and has been for months) for an individual to decide to self quarantine with symptoms. If you get worse (health-wise), seek medical attention.

You would not believe the numbers of people seeking to talk to their doctor (or often any doctor) at all hours of the night and then feel they are being ripped off if there is a fee.

 

[Smiling]

My opinion is that this is largley futile, more resorces should be pointed to helping ill people than to test random people, enforce measures that don't really work and waste resources further on counting and statistics.

 

[joeldworkin307]

I'm in the opposite camp. Let's aggressively test, especially once rapid at home testing is available. If I could test myself and others could test themselves daily, we could return to a nearly normal existence. People who test positive can retest and, if they prove positive, they quarantine. Everyone else gets to go about their lives. The whole issue with this illness is the long, asymptomatic incubation period during which people can transmit it unknowingly. If not for that, it would just be a really bad cold.

Also, the initial models were not wrong. They were based on the actions taken (none) and information available (little) at a time. Shut a country down, models change. Ignore the lockdown, models change. Open schools, models change. Study a virus, more widespread mask wearing, etc. If we had done nothing, allowed for rapid community spread, and hospitals filled to capacity far more people would have died. Models aren't fixed or certain. They are predictions based on available information.

 

[22-rimfire]

I'm in the opposite camp. Let's aggressively test, especially once rapid at home testing is available. If I could test myself and others could test themselves daily, we could return to a nearly normal existence. People who test positive can retest and, if they prove positive, they quarantine. Everyone else gets to go about their lives. The whole issue with this illness is the long, asymptomatic incubation period during which people can transmit it unknowingly. If not for that, it would just be a really bad cold.

Also, the initial models were not wrong. They were based on the actions taken (none) and information available (little) at a time. Shut a country down, models change. Ignore the lockdown, models change. Open schools, models change. Study a virus, more widespread mask wearing, etc. If we had done nothing, allowed for rapid community spread, and hospitals filled to capacity far more people would have died. Models aren't fixed or certain. They are predictions based on available information.

The only people going about their normal life are the protesters. It is not because of lack of testing. For most (90%+) it is just a bad cold. So if the predicted 2.2 million covid deaths was correct..... and shutting the country down only spread out the infection period..... where are the 2.2 million deaths? The models were wrong. Re-running the same models is a waste of time as the information is wrong.

This covid thing has killed my business.... I haven't even made enough money since February to pay for the insurance. There is no help from the government for the small business owner. What good is borrowing a bunch of money that you can't pay back?

 

[joeldworkin307]

Spreading out the infection period is what prevents those deaths, which would have been caused by the inability to get to a hospital. And by people interacting the same way we did. And not wearing masks. We changed the spread and likely saved a lot of people. I'm sorry it came at such a high price for you. Sincerely. Whether it was right or wrong doesn't mean it doesn't suck. Shutting down was painful. Whatever happens next, I hope you get what you need.

 

[22-rimfire]

Just when you think this year couldn’t suck anymore, Hurricane Laura hit us right up the ass, no really it came up the Sabine which I’m about 15 minutes to the East of the Sabine River. My area was devastated, the wind and tornadoes destroyed a lot here. Hopefully, we’ll have power back in about a month.
I’m not even going to hit on COVID-19, so, yeah it’s been a hard year.

I feel for you and the destruction you experienced. We only just got about a half inch of rain out of the remnants of Hurricane Laura. I hope they get the electricity fixed very soon as electricity is life in our world. Glad you are safe.

 

[22-rimfire]

Spreading out the infection period is what prevents those deaths, which would have been caused by the inability to get to a hospital. And by people interacting the same way we did. And not wearing masks. We changed the spread and likely saved a lot of people.

Keep believing that.

 

[Piso Mojado]

Keeping this personal, the one neighbor I talked to daily is dead from Covid-19. No funeral, no memorial service: if the cemetery is open to the public in September, I plan to visit her grave. She had throat cancer and Parkinson's, but she died on a ventilator breathing pink foam, so there is no rational doubt as to what killed her.

For myself and my family, I can't complain. No deaths, no crippling infections, and most of us are retired so only one has lost his job. Instead of substitute teaching in Chicago, he will be driving a school bus if the suburban schools reopen (and that's a big if).

My stepson and his family had quite an adventure. They left Guangzhou two days early for their Lunar New Year "golden week" vacation in February. Ironically, those were the two days in which five million vacationers left Hubei before the Chinese government locked down the province. So they (stepson & family) spent five months living in a hut on a beach after the Philippine government locked down their island. Fortunately Negros is the cheapest place in Southeast Asia and the Pacific for a long vacation, and its beaches are among the nicest. Now they are in Ho Chi Minh City and just out of quarantine this week.

If you don't have a special job that overrides everything else, Vietnam is a better place than China for an American to live and work, especially Ho Chi Minh City which is — how shall I say it? — somewhat Americanized. Of course everyone is upset about the pandemic there, because they've just had their big second wave. After closing borders and handling the first outbreak very well, most people agree that they reopened too soon. The Vietnamese went on holiday in August and there was an outbreak in Da Nang. Their government locked down the city, rounded up 80,000 vacationers, tested them and shipped them home if they tested negative. Now it has spread to Hanoi and the Central Highlands: they have 1,044 infected, 707 recovered, and 34 dead.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/viet-nam/

Vietnam is a small country with a big population, 97 million in the UN's estimate for 2020. The USA has 331 million in our estimate, so to translate Vietnamese statistics into their American equivalents, you multiply by 3.412. The US equivalent statistics would be 3,562 infected, 2,412 recovered, and 116 dead. They had taken extreme measures to prevent this outcome. At one point in March they had 80,000 quarantined in Army camps in Vietnam's historic battlefields i.e. the boonies. They curtailed civil liberties which were already curtailed. Their government's rationale is if they let the virus burn through their population uncontrolled, they wouldn't have a country left. Looking around today, I'd say they got that right.

 

[jaseman]

Yeah, 2020 is just a dumpster fire all around. For both the individual, as well as the world at large.

Me personally? Yeah, I’m out of work, and will be till at least mid-spring (providing I stay in the same industry). My poor daughter is spending her first year in middle school at a computer, at a desk in her room. Vacations have been canceled, as well as special events, or just doing all those things in daily life we used to do. And to top it all off, my dog of 13 years passed in June.

But guess what, I ain’t complaining one bit. My wife is still working (from home) and makes enough to support us, even once my unemployment runs out. We paid off one vehicle just before all this, and the other one will be paid off in another month or two. I quit smoking. I’m in the best shape of my life because I get to work out daily, and now cook almost every meal. Being home full time has allowed me to focus on training a new puppy, as well as spend a ton more time with my daughter and wife. And no one I know personally has gotten sick or died from this damn virus.

I may not be in an ideal situation, but damn if I’m not fairing better than a lot of people are right now. So I’ll thank my lucky stars and wish nothing but the best for everyone else.

 

[EatingSarma]

I had hard time handling the lockdown and now I might lose my job over this.
I experienced an earthquake luckily without much damage, but my city saw significant damage though.
Even public transportation is also pretty shitty ever since earthquake.

My friend, forum member on here E EatingSarma has it much worse.
I'd like him to see this despite the fact he's not here much.
He has some cracks on his house as consequence of earthquake.
He lost another family member due to cancer recently.
He himself lost around 8kg by now within around 3-4 months period, and it's confirmed that he has issues with pancreas and he now has to go to do more tests to get real diagnosis.
He also has trouble at work latley and that stress makes it a lot worse, especially if you add that he's about to start the university he paid himself.
He's not been on here for days and he barley replies texts. I'll have a beer with him tommorrow or this monday hopefully.

Everyone I know is having really difficult time these days. I can at least wish better days to come to everyone in need.

Thank you my friend. This year kinda sucks for all of us, but we gotta keep pushing.

 

[Rykjeklut]

My 2020 has, thankfully, been pretty uneventful.

There were rumours of my workplace shutting down for a while, but that didn't happen. Construction has been booming all year, so my income has been safe, my brother and his family have kept their jobs, and my parents are retired.
And there hasn't been more than two cases of the Covid in my general area since the whole thing started, so there hasn't even been that mental stress.

I broke my toe in June, which pretty much meant my entire hiking season was a bust. Still a bit of pain in it.

I've been luckier than most. All the best to people who are going trough a rough time.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

The only people going about their normal life are the protesters. It is not because of lack of testing. For most (90%+) it is just a bad cold. So if the predicted 2.2 million covid deaths was correct..... and shutting the country down only spread out the infection period..... where are the 2.2 million deaths? The models were wrong. Re-running the same models is a waste of time as the information is wrong.

This covid thing has killed my business.... I haven't even made enough money since February to pay for the insurance. There is no help from the government for the small business owner. What good is borrowing a bunch of money that you can't pay back?

Given the mortality rate of the disease if the majority of Americans contract it there absolutely will be 2.2 million deaths, it's very simple math. The mortality rate for Covid seems to be between 3-4%, there are around 350 million people in the U.S. If we do nothing to stop the spread it's fairly likely that most people will, eventually, catch it. That would very much result in a death toll in the millions barring a vaccine or some major revelation in the way we can treat the disease.