COVID-19 in your part of the world

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GaijinPunch
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by GaijinPunch »

And yeah, it was Meddle. I was there today actually! I can go to work twice this week, how hype. :wink: Glad your finding yourself on a better footing. I haven't heard of Standing Passengers but I'll have to check it out. I like going to local cafes and I try to spend large amounts of cash at the ones around my house right now just to help support them. Pretty worried about a lot of businesses around here, even if more are starting to crawl out into the sun.
Yeah, I totally get that. We did takeout from some of our favorite spots even though we shouldn't have. Even though I don't know when (or if -- although I'm not selling my condo) I'll live in Chicago again, I'll die a little bit if Matchbox, Pub Royale, or Queen Mary go under. They're all superb. (All in West Town / WP). Another Dark Matter tidbit: Hash on Western just north of Division has their own blend. Great brunch. Just tiny so you'll have to wait for sure. Handle Bar is another. We got some take out from them. Kinda sucked compared to their dine in experience but had to help out.

On topic: I think we're months away from stepping foot in our office here. It all sounded like they were aiming for about now in the US, but they just opened one of the European ones, and our numbers are nowhere near that. I'd have never put money that Illinois would be in a better spot than California. Probably all those Lori Lightfoot memes.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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EmperorIng wrote:Pretty worried about a lot of businesses around here, even if more are starting to crawl out into the sun.
I'm pretty worried too. Mostly I'm worried about when the subsidies run out and they don't have crutch anymore. I'd like to know what percentage of them are actually reliant on
something like that.
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KAI
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by KAI »

COVID-19 in my part of the world be like
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bottino
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by bottino »

KAI wrote:COVID-19 in my part of the world be like
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Right now, the distance between us is roughly 2.600km and around 60.000 deaths.

Stay safe man.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by vol.2 »

KAI wrote:COVID-19 in my part of the world be like
Crappy. What's the vibe like there? According to Reuter's data, things started off fairly slow in Argentina and then picked up a lot over the past month. https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEAL ... index.html
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by KAI »

The number of victims has been almost the same for the last couple of month (they only look bigger cause they weren't testing shit back then), but the thing is the economy here is going straight to hell. Governmet financial support is slow as fuck, prices are rising, our currency is plummeting, and me and my brother work on fields that apparently wont be back to normal until next year (education and tourism).

To be honest, this fucking virus is the least of my worries right now.
bottino wrote:Stay safe man.
You too pal.
Last edited by KAI on Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by vol.2 »

KAI wrote: To be honest, this fucking virus is the least of my worries right now.
Gotcha. Yeah, It's not great. Sounds like the next year or so is going to be a tough one for you. I hope things pan out ok.
apparently wont be back to normal until next year
Not sure that anything is going to be normal anymore. There's a lot of tension all around the world, and things are going to get worse before they get better, if they get better.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by God »

This is old but it's been bothering me since I read it:
kitten wrote:is this all some game to bait the right-leaning side into admitting something totally crazy ... so you can ban them?
Does left leaning censorship seem like kind of a big deal to anyone else?
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by system11 »

God wrote:This is old but it's been bothering me since I read it:
kitten wrote:is this all some game to bait the right-leaning side into admitting something totally crazy ... so you can ban them?
Does left leaning censorship seem like kind of a big deal to anyone else?
Yes, it's wholly out of control. I can't comprehend a sickness where you're so worried that not everyone agrees with you, that you have to try to take their voice away and more and more, their social media 'life', even their job. And they think they're the "good guys" and have a right to continue unchallenged, it's a powerful toxin. Every spiteful and oppressive group in history has been this way.

Back to Covid news I read a brand new report (not yet peer reviewed but nature.com ran it) suggesting that the average death rate factoring in the true number of infected people (up to 80% are asymptomatic) is probably about 0.6% making it about 6 times more deadly than seasonal flu which nobody gives a fuck about. I don't expect a vaccine to work, I think the real hope is effective rapid treatment that prevents it manifesting the worst symptoms. There's a triple whammy set of drugs being tested at the moment which drops the hospital in-patient level by something like 80%.

In the UK, as of tomorrow masks are mandatory in all shops including large supermarkets, which have been open and in constant use while the pandemic ebbed away, and hardly anyone was wearing masks. This would tend to suggest they're not a huge issue in terms of spread while public transport with 50 people crammed in each tin can obviously is. I'm extremely unhappy about this simplistic 'one size fits all' approach because masks make me initially feel like im drowning, but after that just make me cough and give me a few days followup of sore throat. I sometimes have to wear them for 8 hour stretches at work, wearing them where they are useless is not welcome.

I will be scrawling slogans on my destined-for-landfill disposable mask each time we go grocery shopping. As for other shopping, it's not worth the discomfort, just ebay/amazon/etc it. They think it's going to encourage people back into the shops to browse and buy. It's not. Nothing says "completely abnormal situation" like wheezing under a mask looking at all the other faceless automatons. The ones that really creep me out though are those Silence Of The Lambs shaped ones. I fully expect to see daily Twitter storms shaming people who have been photographed without them, the mob love things to screech at in unison. I expect to see at least one or two cases of them trying to get people fired because they didn't wear one outside of work. Sounds far fetched but at the same time - would anyone bet against it?

People are awful.
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bottino
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by bottino »

Yeah, my biggest concern these days is that I'll get cancelled by a bunch of twitters because I can't be bothered to wear a mask in order to protect other human beings during a pandemic.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by orange808 »

bottino wrote:Yeah, my biggest concern these days is that I'll get cancelled by a bunch of twitters because I can't be bothered to wear a mask in order to protect other human beings during a pandemic.
What if I forget to pack one with me?

----

I watched a woman leave the pharmacy without her meds once. In tears in her husband's arms. The clerk told her the insurance wouldn't cover it. The price was hundreds of dollars. She had a hospital bracelet. She left without the meds. I don't know what happened to her.

Not one person offered to pay for it. Not one person asked to help her. I bet many near by were silently scolding her for not saving extra money for a medical emergency. That's both Clinton and Trump voters. Neoliberals are Republicans that want to believe they are good people..

As a society, we can't be bothered to provide universal health care.

Can I cancel the insensitive rich suburban/uptown Democrats that are really just a hole Republicans? Can I cancel them? No. It's their fault. There's thousands of people that deserve to be thrown out forever. Can I cancel every person that asks "how do we pay for universal health care?" when America already spends more than any nation? Nope.

Funny how we get to pick and choose the sins and punishments.

Cancel culture is BS. It's driven by mostly awful selfish people that should face their own favorite punishment. It's a slippery slope, anyhow. Pretty soon, everyone is a potential target, because every human being eventually makes a mistake.

-----

Also, Hillz said "marriage is between a man and woman" on television. She still isn't cancelled.

Nice. :) Picking and choosing again? Yep.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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bottino wrote:Yeah, my biggest concern these days is that I'll get cancelled by a bunch of twitters because I can't be bothered to wear a mask in order to protect other human beings during a pandemic.
Yeah this is the sort of emotional response you get with any challenge to wearing the fucking things, even after I just said I was going to wear one and deal with it by simply not going to shops much anymore. So self righteous and judgemental all at once.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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orange808 wrote:What if I forget to pack one with me?
I've done that a handful of times; I turned around, went home, got a mask and went back out. It sucked, and I cursed under my breath the whole time, but I did it, and life went on. What I should do is make sure I always keep one in the glove compartment; there are certainly enough of the things floating around that a spare shouldn't be too hard to acquire.
system11 wrote:Yeah this is the sort of emotional response you get with any challenge to wearing the fucking things, even after I just said I was going to wear one and deal with it by simply not going to shops much anymore. So self righteous and judgemental all at once.
The OP can correct me if I'm off base, but methinks the key phrase here is "biggest concern" - I can't speak to how things are in the UK (or Brazil, though from what I glimpse it's not exactly pretty on the pandemic front), but in the States with everything going on at the moment I do find it difficult to comprehend how some folks manage to rank "cancel culture", troublesome as it can be, as the pressing issue above all others (as I mentioned in another thread, federal agents are invading cities and kidnapping people, but finger-wagging tweets are the real threats to freedom? And that's just one recent alarming development).

Again, just my take from a safe distance, but methinks the issue is not one of dismissal, but of priorities; it truly does seem like no matter what happens to be going on, the second someone says something critical about it a whole bunch of people inevitably shout back political correctness is out of control! - at this point it can come across as more of a Pavlovian reaction than any actual assessment of the situation at hand. I'm not going to sit here and defend every call to "cancel" people and/or things (though, just a quick reminder: not all criticism is meant to "cancel"), as some definitely strike me as ill-founded, but at the same time there's only so much of a priority as I'm willing to make it, especially as the "cancel the cancellers" backlash continues to grow unabated in both frequency and intensity.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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system11 wrote:I'm extremely unhappy about this simplistic 'one size fits all' approach because masks make me initially feel like im drowning, but after that just make me cough and give me a few days followup of sore throat. I sometimes have to wear them for 8 hour stretches at work, wearing them where they are useless is not welcome.
Here in Germany you can get medical clearance from your doctor if you can't wear a mask due to breathing issues (like an already reduced lung capacity or allergy). You don't have that in the UK?
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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BulletMagnet wrote:
orange808 wrote:What if I forget to pack one with me?
I've done that a handful of times; I turned around, went home, got a mask and went back out. It sucked, and I cursed under my breath the whole time, but I did it, and life went on. What I should do is make sure I always keep one in the glove compartment; there are certainly enough of the things floating around that a spare shouldn't be too hard to acquire.
system11 wrote:Yeah this is the sort of emotional response you get with any challenge to wearing the fucking things, even after I just said I was going to wear one and deal with it by simply not going to shops much anymore. So self righteous and judgemental all at once.
The OP can correct me if I'm off base, but methinks the key phrase here is "biggest concern" - I can't speak to how things are in the UK (or Brazil, though from what I glimpse it's not exactly pretty on the pandemic front), but in the States with everything going on at the moment I do find it difficult to comprehend how some folks manage to rank "cancel culture", troublesome as it can be, as the pressing issue above all others (as I mentioned in another thread, federal agents are invading cities and kidnapping people, but finger-wagging tweets are the real threats to freedom? And that's just one recent alarming development).

Again, just my take from a safe distance, but methinks the issue is not one of dismissal, but of priorities; it truly does seem like no matter what happens to be going on, the second someone says something critical about it a whole bunch of people inevitably shout back political correctness is out of control! - at this point it can come across as more of a Pavlovian reaction than any actual assessment of the situation at hand. I'm not going to sit here and defend every call to "cancel" people and/or things (though, just a quick reminder: not all criticism is meant to "cancel"), as some definitely strike me as ill-founded, but at the same time there's only so much of a priority as I'm willing to make it, especially as the "cancel the cancellers" backlash continues to grow unabated in both frequency and intensity.
So, AOC just made a huge deal over a word with a gender association attached. Is that a priority? :)

I don't have an issue with disliking words that are tied to gender, but it certainly doesn't meet your criteria for a "priority". That particular word is in the second tier of vulgar insults, anyhow.

Are we picking and choosing again?

It's curious that you chose one low priority to scold and excused another. You may join in questioning her use of time and energy now, but it will only be out of convenience. You didn't question her priorities until I mentioned it, did ya?
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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CIT wrote:
system11 wrote:I'm extremely unhappy about this simplistic 'one size fits all' approach because masks make me initially feel like im drowning, but after that just make me cough and give me a few days followup of sore throat. I sometimes have to wear them for 8 hour stretches at work, wearing them where they are useless is not welcome.
Here in Germany you can get medical clearance from your doctor if you can't wear a mask due to breathing issues (like an already reduced lung capacity or allergy). You don't have that in the UK?
We do have exemptions, I wouldn't say my issues are bad enough to need one. If they were being sensible about the rule and not mandating them in 50,000 square foot open buildings as well as small retail shops and buses, I wouldn't have a problem at all.

For work it's non optional because we'd be exposing the company to liability risk if not using provided equipment. It's rare thankfully but it took 6 days to recover from the last time. That's the extreme end of 8-9 hours with a N95 respirator on, in a hot room with dry air. The initial bit is pretty horrible, it's like breathing over a boiling kettle or in a sauna, felt slightly faint for those initial minutes.

Photographs all over now of people in masks, god they're so creepy - I instantly mistrust anyone I can't read the facial expression of. Apparently dogs are quite traumatised by them too so maybe I'm part canine.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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BulletMagnet wrote:What I should do is make sure I always keep one in the glove compartment;
I'm definitely gonna do that : my cat-like attention span and memory has me forgetting about the mask too often. That's a very good mechanism to cope with that
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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FinalBaton wrote:
BulletMagnet wrote:What I should do is make sure I always keep one in the glove compartment;
I'm definitely gonna do that : my cat-like attention span and memory has me forgetting about the mask too often. That's a very good mechanism to cope with that
The trunk of my car is basically full of work PPE gear so yeah, that makes it easier.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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I'm more on the right but I'm for the mask wearing.

I guess that makes me a freak XD
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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system11 wrote:masks make me initially feel like im drowning, but after that just make me cough and give me a few days followup of sore throat. I sometimes have to wear them for 8 hour stretches at work, wearing them where they are useless is not welcome.
That sucks. I actually haven't been leaving the apartment more often because I don't want to wear a mask in the heat. It's pushing 38 degrees here with high humidity everyday and that won't end until late September. Wearing a mask in that (even on a bike) is like cooking your face in your own sweat.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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BulletMagnet wrote: The OP can correct me if I'm off base, but methinks the key phrase here is "biggest concern" - I can't speak to how things are in the UK (or Brazil, though from what I glimpse it's not exactly pretty on the pandemic front), but in the States with everything going on at the moment I do find it difficult to comprehend how some folks manage to rank "cancel culture", troublesome as it can be, as the pressing issue above all others (as I mentioned in another thread, federal agents are invading cities and kidnapping people, but finger-wagging tweets are the real threats to freedom? And that's just one recent alarming development).
Yeah. I mean, we're more than two months without even a health minister and every measure to fight this thing properly has been sabotaged by the federal government; it's like a Boeing is crashing here every single day. It's the worse case scenario in the world and lot's of people home don't give a shit about that or any safety measures for that matter.

I want to apologize to system11 for sounding like a dick, but it's tough.

The thing about the masks (beyond the scientific reasons for it's usage, as described in the articles that I've previously linked) is that it's usage is based on solidarity, caring for others, people that you don't even know: I wear one to avoid getting you sick; you wear one to avoid getting me sick.

Here's a tiktok by Bill Nye.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by system11 »

Let's say I told you that you had to tie a ribbon around your waist, because it would "save lives", and you knew that was complete rubbish, would you still go along with it when compelled to by the government after months of proof that the ribbon would do nothing?

That's where we're at with masks in very large premesis. Despite more and more figures actually lowering the death rate (best recent estimate so far is 0.6% who catch it die), despite some impact reduction remedies having proven to work while yet more even more promising ones are being tested, despite the death rate now being lower than it was this time last year the UK government are ramping restrictions .. up? What? Inconsistently too, pubs and restaurants can be open and masks are not needed, yet takeaway needs a mask. Even socially distanced these venues are often quite small places but they're deemed safe enough for people to eat and loudly talk (loud talking being a good way to emit viruses). 50,000 square foot supermarkets with 30 foot high ceilings which were open all the way through the pandemic, without masks, are now deemed to require them? Really?

It's bullshit. They think it's going to encourage people back into shops, but it's more likely to drive the final nail into the coffin. They've admitted they have no idea when masks will no longer be "required". Seriously, they've just reacted to screeching and not considered this part at all.

Two closing thoughts on this post:

1) If I see anyone at the supermarket reprimanding someone else over not wearing a mask (and you know they're going to be shouting), I'm going to ask if they are a member of the Stasi, and if not could they mind their own business and stop bullying people. And I'm going to do it in a mask.

2) The correct response to the use of the phrase "the new normal" is "shut the fuck up". I hate that phrase more than anything else right now. A whole generation could potentially grow up not knowing what normal actually is, certainly the disasterous (and as more evidence rolls in, ineffective) lockdowns have fucked up their prospects already.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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It's bloody hilarious that now, of all times, when the danger has long since peaked, the UK govt is asking people to wear masks.
After spending the entire time saying they're unnecessary.
(Korea's like bro what)

I get it, they're more effective for stopping it spread outwards than inwards. but just.. how assbackwards to do it now.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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yeah for sure it's missed opportunity to not have made them obligatory earlier. I wish they had made them as such back then when hard confinment started. Better late than never I guess.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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I respectfully disagree, they should have been mandated only in high risk areas right from the start, they should not be blanket applied like this.

Even then everything points to the single most effective solution being to social distance.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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For sure social distancing is best. But wearing it in more confined spaces where social distancing is not possible (on the bus. in shops) is additional protection.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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Didn't you guys get the memo? Thanks to the ongoing research, they've determined that it's an airborne disease. "Social distancing" won't work, unless you consider it from an astrophysicist's point of view and add in 3 hours into those 2 meters—the amount of time needed for microscopic droplets in a cough or sneeze (or a breath, or even just talking—that's how small these droplets are. Just moisture.) to settle down to the ground. They're so small, they're not called droplets, but aerosols, like a micro-mist.

It might be feasible to control your distance from another person, but not the time. What happened just 10 minutes into the past? Unknown. A mask is best, for now.

I mean, the UK is doing radically better than the fuck-up the US is ever was, but, don't blow it. Like Victoria in Australia seems to be doing now.

We still don't know just how many of the virions you need to get in you to start an infection. 50? 550? Not very much, apparently.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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ZacharyB wrote:Didn't you guys get the memo? Thanks to the ongoing research, they've determined that it's an airborne disease. "Social distancing" won't work, unless you consider it from an astrophysicist's point of view and add in 3 hours into those 2 meters—the amount of time needed for microscopic droplets in a cough or sneeze (or a breath, or even just talking—that's how small these droplets are. Just moisture.) to settle down to the ground. They're so small, they're not called droplets, but aerosols, like a micro-mist.

It might be feasible to control your distance from another person, but not the time. What happened just 10 minutes into the past? Unknown. A mask is best, for now.

I mean, the UK is doing radically better than the fuck-up the US is ever was, but, don't blow it. Like Victoria in Australia seems to be doing now.

We still don't know just how many of the virions you need to get in you to start an infection. 50? 550? Not very much, apparently.
For a while here I was saying at least our city is doing all right, but now apparently youngins are out partying again and the infections are beginning to rise. Doesn't bode well for NY.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

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I made a trip downtown tonight. Curious to see what was open on a Friday night and what sorts of crowds would be out. Also needed dinner and called in some sushi for take out.

This sushi restaurant was one of the few establishments that has stayed open throughout. It was a horror scene during the "lockdown" when people weren't supposed to go out: just inside the font door; forming a 4'x10' area, they'd set up a barricade of tables with a curtain of thin plastic hanging from the ceiling. You call-in and pay by phone then just go in and pick up your order off the tables (by which strangers can just steal other's orders.) Despite the "No more than 2 persons" sign on the door, the pick-up area would be jammed all night with people inside, a few people pressing in the doorway and a few like myself pondering the insanity from a spaced-out distance on the sidewalk. I felt like I was playing Russian roulette going inside feeling the humid body heat and breath of everyone pressed in there and having to literally slide by people to check the table and find your order. And that was before anyone was wearing masks.

Tonight the sushi restaurant was mellower, but the bars are out of hand. There is supposed to be some kind of reduced capacity limit for inside drinking, in turn they've increased outside seating onto the sidewalks and closed side streets with tables and chairs on the roads. Great. Except no one is wearing masks and people are packed together. Out of 100 people I glanced across I think I saw 3 masks and 2 were down below their chin. The one person wearing a mask in this particular block was a young woman standing by a curb clearly waiting for a car with her friend who was not wearing a mask. Thinking of it now, I admire that woman. She and I were the only ones on the whole block wearing masks.

Across the street I watched a crowd of unmasked couples press in the doorway of a bar, some unmasked drinkers pushed though them on their way out - the place looked packed - so much for capacity restrictions.

Inside the sushi restaurant the staff all wore masks, but the typically chipper guys looked beaten down like they'd had enough, at first I thought probably just a long busy day, but upon leaving and going back outside onto the sidewalk crowded with people not giving a flying fuck about any pandemic, I considered what disrespect the guys at the sushi place have had to put up with.
Back at home eating, reading some local news, another restaurant downtown; one of the first to reopen, had closed last week from employees becoming infected, tonight they announced they are not planning to re-opening any time soon.
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Re: COVID-19 in your part of the world

Post by BulletMagnet »

Koa Zo wrote:Great. Except no one is wearing masks and people are packed together. Out of 100 people I glanced across I think I saw 3 masks and 2 were down below their chin.
That's the thing with bars and restaurants: people are there to eat and drink, not to mention talk above everyone else around them, so no matter what the masks are going to come off. If you're going to reopen those for "dining in" there's just no way around it; hopefully the overall situation has improved enough to warrant it in places that have taken that step.
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