No Time to Die... from COVID-19

[LynnInDenver]

Again, if we reopen too soon, and have to close back down? The long term economic damage of that will be much greater than waiting a little too long to open stuff back up. Because then none of us who have our heads on will feel safe venturing out for anything nonessential until weeks or months after the media reports that the last fucking case has left the hospital. And it will be clear that we might as well tighten our spending anyway if we're not going out, so far down it'll basically be at station keeping levels, just in case we need to be ready to quarantine at any time, for any reason. No restaurants (even for takeout or delivery), no hobbies except what we already have on hand, pretty much no discretionary spending, so that we can be ready for the next incident.

[Norgarth]

Currently watching Stronger Together, the Canadian version of the fundraising show Lady Gaga organized recently

[robkelk]

Which just finished. It was on all the broadcast networks.

You just call on me, brother,
when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on...

[Norgarth]

Well, all the Canadian ones at least ?

[Labster]

I hope you're all sharing pictures of Amabie, the three legged fish/bird yokai, to stave off the coronavirus.

They're threating to extend the lockdown if people start getting lax with it. 

But the tone they struck was like a fucking parent scalding a child and it just rubbed me up completely the wrong way.

You know, maybe leaders wouldn't have to be so paternalistic if people didn't act like children all the time.  Or maybe people wouldn't act like children if leaders stopped being so paternalistic.

[classicdrogn]

I thought: "Amabie? Sounds like a Pokemon." Then I checked the link, and it is a Pokemon... from nearly two centuries ago.

JAPAAAAAAN!?

I can see why people would rather catch an Amabie than a Covid, though. It's a cute little critter, even if some of the more recent fanart is going in Gardevoir-like directions. Please folks, stay safe, stay well, and don't lewd the Amabie.

[Dartz]

Granny has the Covid now. Got into her nursing home when a patient came back from hospital and it's taken off She's been gone for years anyway with the dementia

[Matrix Dragon]

Well shit. I'm sorry Dartz.

[Dartz]

Well shit. I'm sorry Dartz.

People expect her to survive. She's showing no symptoms and was only tested in a sweep to try and route the virus out. Consensus is that she's pickled and preserved herself alive with whiskey over the decades and will outlast us all as a Jameson zombie.

[robkelk]

DeviantArt doesn't (or didn't) like hotlinking images, so have a link.

[robkelk]

Folks on the local radio just mentioned that somebody couldn't resist the wide-open roads right now and ended up getting a speeding ticket... 225 km/h in a 100 km/h zone.

(140 mph in a 60 mph zone, for folks who still think in Imperial. Yes, it was a Mustang.)

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, I encountered a couple of people this morning going at least 25% over the posted speed limit because they finally can.

[hazard]

In the Netherlands that's an automatic 'we are yanking your driver's licence and hauling you in front of a judge' offense.

EDIT: I mean going 225 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. Speeding by 25% over the speed limit is merely rather expensive.

[Labster]

Huh, that's funny, I had to go 40% above the posted limit just to keep up with the traffic flow today. So funny thing is that people, in general, entirely ignore posted speed limits. Instead they drive at the speed that is safe for the design of the road and width of the lanes, traffic allowing. So 50 in a 35 zone? Sounds too fast except that section of road was built to six-lane highway standards before the freeway was routed around the city.

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, Labster, those two drivers I saw yesterday? Four lanes (two each way), one center lane for turns, houses on one side, no raised center divider. Traffic lights every quarter mile. Speed limit is 40. I don't think 55 is a safe speed in that area even if there's no traffic at all, unless you've got lights and siren running.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and hilly enough there's spots that are effectively blind at those speeds, and once you get to the area where there's houses on BOTH sides it's all downhill in the direction they were headed.

(Most of the houses on that street have been there since 1945-1955, so the street wasn't nearly as busy normally when the houses were new. Even 30 years ago they stopped building houses on the thoroughfares like that because it was becoming clear that houses on thoroughfares had become a really bad idea.)

[robkelk]

In the Netherlands that's an automatic 'we are yanking your driver's licence and hauling you in front of a judge' offense.

EDIT: I mean going 225 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. Speeding by 25% over the speed limit is merely rather expensive.

Ontario does that, too - and impounds the car for a week. (Better hope it wasn't a rental...)

[Labster]

After reading how Papa Hemingway handled it, I get the feeling I'm doing this whole stay at home thing wrong.

Hemingway Was Once Quarantined with his Wife... and Mistress

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's house, no less.

[robkelk]

Just noticed something in the mirror: My hair hasn't looked like this since the 1980s.

[LynnInDenver]

Yep, as I expected, the Pinball Showdown for Memorial Day Weekend has been cancelled as of, I think, today. The current Safer At Home order banning gatherings over 10 people goes a little past that weekend, and it's clear that it's not being revised to allow the show to happen.

We weren't planning on going anyway. We very firmly don't want at least one of this year's flavors of Con Crud. I know one or two people that got the H1N1 variant and are still feeling the longer-term aftereffects. I'll probably spend that weekend downstairs beating on our virtual machine's flipper buttons.

Pretty much the only convention on our list at this point is Mile Hi Con in October... and honestly? I'm wondering if that's going to be forced to go virtual anyway. We'll have to see. I'm pretty much proceeding as if the entire year's convention block is just Not Happening.

[robkelk]

I just posted this one in the current video thread, but I think it belongs here, too.

[LynnInDenver]

Definitely getting an indication of what we're in for when Colorado finally starts letting restaurants do even limited seating. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/10/us/ic...index.html

Granted, it gets better at the end there, but still. When customer behavior makes a three-year employee quit outright...

At least she's got the start of her college now: https://www.boston25news.com/news/health...G3WMSQIEI/

I still fully expect that just this sort of thing means we'll lose more restaurants because additional ones will decide they can't reopen until all the restrictions are lifted.

[Norgarth]

[Labster]

Just need to let you all know, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has been compromised, forced to stop collecting information, and forced to hide or change information presented to the public.  If you want to stay healthy, you should avoid any CDC guidance in the future, and instead trust your local health officials.

An editorial in The Lancet: Reviving the US CDC

[robkelk]

I knew you folks were going down the same path Canada went down a decade ago with an anti-science administration, but I didn't know that it was that far along.

I've posted this before in Politics, but I think it needs a wider audience: How to immigrate to Canada

[robkelk]

Canada-U.S. border to remain closed for another month