Here is the WV Roadmap to re-opening:
Of course, all of this goes will go to shit if and when there is resurgence in infections and fatalities.
WV RoadMap
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JPL
Simon Property is reopening their malls. Wahoo and a good time was had by all.
Georgia will be among the first states to reopen on May 1, with Lenox Square, Mall of Georgia, Phipps Plaza, Sugarloaf Mills, Town Center at Cobb, Calhoun Outlet Marketplace and North Georgia PO.
Matt
What about schools? Seems weird to omit that from the list…
MuckJagger
I think I’m missing something here.
Are the casinos going to allow only 25 people in at a time? That seems a bit unlikely.
trollhattan
Bullet 2 of week 2 seems moronic. There is no separation possible and PPE will not stop cross-contamination from an infected person. Are your nails that fucking important?!?
Let’s say you see ten people per day in your […] shop. How many clients before an infected one shows up? You cannot know which one it is. And if you catch it, the ten clients/day risk catching it from you until your symptoms present (presuming they do) and you stop exposing them.
I do not get this, not one bit.
Roger Moore
This actually seems like a reasonable approach, provided they keep up good surveillance and stop the opening up process if the number of positive tests starts to increase again. The order of things opening seems plausible, though I’m not sure how and why they separate casinos from entertainment venues and gatherings larger than 25 people.
J. Squid
Opening Nail & Hair salons, barbers and tatoo parlors, etc. is the best way to spread the pandemic. Small, enclosed spaces, tens of customers in close contact daily…
This will kill a bunch of folks.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Matt: They have schools in WV?
There’s a MAGAt out there someplace, let’s call him Billy Jim Blob, which is what his friends call him behind his back. Seems his height to waistband ratio would alarm his doctor, if he had one. But he doesn’t, because science is evil. BJB decides he needs a tattoo no matter what the guvmint says. He gets the one of the eagle with the AR-15 and the special ” I survuved the Corvad -19 Hoax” motto. Too bad only a few friends will see it, as there won’t be a proper funeral when he dies Memorial Day weekend.
Now does he live in Texas, or Georgia?
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt: No one is going to switch schools back to in person for the remainder of this school year.
Amir Khalid
Much, much too soon. Malaysia is doing a good job against Covid-19, and I don’t sense that we’ll be out of lockdown anytime soon. In fact, the rolling two-week lockdown here has just been extended again, and I expect it to continue for many months.
CaseyL
@Matt: I think all schools have gone to all-online courses, countrywide. I could be wrong, though.
I see the notice states that businesses will be allowed to re-open, not required to. That’s very good, in that conscientious employers won’t do so – and their employees will still be able to collect unemployment. Now, how many employers will be “conscientious” is another issue….
John Cole
@Matt: Schools are closed for the year.
trollhattan
Get out the foam fingers and celebrate the US hitting a millyun cases. Go, us.
trollhattan
@John Cole:
School year or calendar year?
Cheryl Rofer
In any reopening plan, I would insist on criteria for closing things down again. How much of an uptick in cases and deaths? Go back to the previous status or back further?
Otherwise there will be fights and arguments that will slow things down and make them worse.
Quicksand
Graphic design is my passion.
West of the Cascades
Wouldn’t it make more sense to space these out by two-three weeks, to see whether infection rates increased after each stage? Do the week one reopening (if the fairly lenient opening criteria are met), then wait three weeks, and do the “week two” reopening only if there hasn’t been a renewed increase in the spread? And, of course, does WV, or any state, have anything remotely close to the necessary testing capacity to make any reopening reasonable?
JMG
Massachusetts shutdown extended until May 18. Doubt it’ll even start to be eased up until Memorial Day. One thing I saw. Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania, is shutting down streets in the city center to let restaurants open outdoor dining that’ll allow for both social distancing and their need for more than 10 customers a night. Seems like a good idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan:
“Historic”, as in, “Even as the re-opening process that would cause a second wave of infections in many states began, the trump administration spent millions of dollars on jet fuel to provide an airshow to populations largely confined to apartments…”
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read it costs $8,000 an hour to put one of those planes in the air. The $$ might’ve gone to PPEs or masks? But this is ‘murica, where big dumb stupid gestures are more important than deeds.
MAGA //
Zzyzx
WA is very slowly reopening. So far construction has been the one thing to return. Next week golf courses, trails, and boating/fishing will be allowed assuming that people keep their distances.
I think Inslee is doing a great job following the science and going from there.
Scout211
In our rural county here in NorCal, we have a total of 13 cases and no deaths. The public health director just announced that certain recreational activities are now open.
https://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/1050774/calaveras-county-loosening-some-covid-19-restrictions.html
hueyplong
It looks like most places will go into opening mode earlier than they should based on current knowledge. So to the extent you can, keep staying at home. The Trumpers will prove whatever point gets proven.
Trump’s ego requires magical thinking and the corresponding human sacrifice.
We’re nearing the point at which the science-based attendees at the TV rallies can no longer hide behind equivocation. They will either say something or they won’t.
Wouldn’t bet a dime on Dr Scarf. Don’t know what Dr Brad Pitt will do.
We absolutely, positively know what Pence will do. I’m mildly surprised he hasn’t consumed a small amount of disinfectant on TV to show his devotion to the Fuehrerprinzip.
wvng
I live in Hardy County, the poultry capital of WV. Millions of chickens and turkeys grown in hundreds of independently operated poultry houses spread out over thousands of square miles for the big integrator companies, centrally located in Moorefield,WV, Timberville and Harrisonburg, VA. I have been terrified for months that corona virus gets into the worker population, a mix of locals and international workers here on work visas. The internationals live in crowded housing. The setup is just like all those plants that have been forced to close. If that happens here our economy collapses. Governor Justice has done a good proactive job here in WV, but every bit of opening up increases the risk that it gets into the worker population. It is quite unsettling.
chopper
this is not a good plan, but it’s miles better than i was expecting out of the gov’t of WV.
Amir Khalid
I keep thinking that these proposals to phase out lockdown are driven not by any sense that its end is near, but by fear of the public getting tired of lockdown. Which is of course no reason to do it. Instead the public should be educated that lockdown will last for months, likely a year or more.
Searcher
So the reopening criteria seems to be “less than 3% of tests taken in a 3 day window come back positive” which doesn’t scream batshit insane to me, but is also something I can’t reason about as good or bad so *shrug*.
I agree on the need for a rollback procedure, and probably more than just time between the tiers.
I think if I were the governor of a state, I would be looking at something like this:
kindness
@Scout211: Well Bear Ski area is closed so I won’t be visiting that till snow next fall. I’m glad I didn’t buy the Tahoe ski pass this year. I did last year and then didn’t go enough times to pay for the pass.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Fast low-flying jets are always a treat in NYC.
wvng
@chopper: Governor Justice has been surprisingly good in this crisis. Proactive.
Gin & Tonic
You suckers can go on trying to schedule your Instacart deliveries, I just got notice from a lawyer in Ghana that he wants to compensate me with Twenty Million United States Of American Dollars, so I can just hire somebody to go get milk and eggs whenever I want.
Gonna be livin’ large soon.
Exregis
@trollhattan: No school system in the country AFAIK has determined what to do next fall. I have grave doubts that dorm-heavy universities will open for in-class students in the fall.
Nicole
During Cuomo’s briefing today he outlined some specifics- must see 14 days of decline in hospitalizations/infections before reopening, hospitals in areas that reopen cannot exceed 70% capacity, and if they do, things have to close down again. NYS will start with construction and manufacturing (after companies outline how they will maintain social distancing) and it’ll vary area to area, with NYC probably being last to open (as we’re still seeing lots of cases and deaths, though certainly down from the high). My favorite new legal phrase is “attractive nuisance,” which is what he’s calling businesses that might attract downstaters into areas (like the State Fair, or a car show, etc) and are not likely to be permitted to open.
It seems pretty reasonable, although, as an NYC’er, I’m not anticipating my current circumstance changing much before June at the very earliest.
Starfish
Strangely, we (not in your state) pushed leaving public bathrooms in parks open because homeless people had nowhere else to wash their hands. Even with the small number of public bathrooms open, people would have to walk miles to wash their hands. When fast-food restaurants were open, people could wash their hands there. However, those are not open.
Dan B
@Amir Khalid: I saw that Malaysia was doing an excellent job. WA state is doing okay but not as good a job as you. We’ve achieved a plateau in Seattle. It could go on for years because the meat packing plants and fruit packing in central WA are heading towards increasing the community infection rate to double Seattle area. It’s migrant multi-lingual people in a hard right region. Their instructions on safe practices are in English. Might as well be in Mandarin.
FlyingToaster
This “roadmap” seems really foolish. There are no benchmarks to measure whether you go from one step to the next, just a calendar date.
Charlie Baker (Governor-MA) just ordered the non-essential-business closure extended by two weeks, based upon our testing, hospitalization and death data. We’ve successfully flattened our curve, but we’ve also stretched it out. Our infections are overwhelmingly being found in 3 venues: residential facilities (nursing homes, rehab centers, assisted living, group homes, prisons, etc.); essential retail employees (grocery, pharmacy, hardware stores), and transit workers (MBTA, The Ride, Senior Vans).
We are now producing our own testing materiel (swabs, reagents) within the Commonwealth, so we have started a full-bore press to complete testing at all residential facilities this week. With the contact tracing, 2-week quarantine for confirmed exposures and then testing for anyone who is not symptomatic at that point, we ought to be able to start opening non face-to-face businesses on the extension date (May 18). Then it’s wait 3 weeks (to see if we get infection spikes, and plug those holes), and then the next opening up will happen.
geg6
Here is the one from our governor:
https://www.governor.pa.gov/process-to-reopen-pennsylvania/
As far as the regional part goes, I expect my part of the state to open up more quickly than the east. Pittsburgh has not been hit nearly as hard as Philly and the suburbs there.
hueyplong
Not sure how NYC doctors hook people up to a fly-by so they can breathe.
But I’ll definitely leave it to medical workers to say for themselves how much inspiration they take from it.
Dan B
@Zzyzx: I hope Inslee is paying attention to Yakima and the Tri Cities. King County and Snohomish County have a 2.7% + reported infection rate. They’ve plateaued. Yakima has a 4% rate and they are doubling the rate (reported) every 2 weeks. Their death rate, a trailing indicator, is much lower. Yakima and the Tri Cities are likely to fight Inslee, as you are aware.
WereBear
Every briefing on opening, Governor Cuomo illustrates he has “his hands on the valve.” Any metrics going up means the flow gets shut off.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@FlyingToaster:
The info about where your new cases are is interesting. It’s people who are in contact with a lot of other people or sustained contact with fewer. So exposure or dosage. That makes sense.
Zzyzx
@Dan B:
I find it very hard to believe that Inslee isn’t getting briefed on how the state as a whole is doing. This isn’t like Trump where he has a history of ignoring data.
satby
Well, the Indiana governor had a news conference and said basically nothing. Decisions pending the end date of the current order Friday and will be announced on that day. In the meantime yesterday was the biggest single day increase in active cases in the state with a meatpacking plant in Cass country a new hotspot. 75% increase (edit: in that country) over the day before.
I hate living in a red state.
scav
@Zzyzx: Plus, the whole meat-packing link is known and even covered in the media. It’s on the radar.
FlyingToaster
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That was specifically cited at the end of last week as a reason to plan on an extension. This gives us a chance to isolate and test.
The two-week extension was announced at noon.
The Lt.Gov. is heading the Mass re-opening commission, which will be using the results from the next two weeks data and advice from the hospitals and med schools to choose which industries to open first, where to target testing next, etc.
Last week, Baker had the heads of local hospital groups up on stage with him: Partners (MassGeneral, Brigham & Womens), Tufts (NE Medical Ctr), BIDL (Beth Israel Deaconess, Lahey), BU (Boston Medical Center), Steward (Catholic hospitals), BayState (Connecticut Valley hospitals). They all came armed with statistics. A distinct contrast to the Malevalent Mango.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The West Virginia staged opening reads like a modified version of the West Coast state’s plan.
jl
@Scout211: CA seems to be having an under the table slow reopen, mainly lead by counties. SF Bay announced extension of the shut down through end of May, but said there will be announcements of modifications through the week. CA also seems obsessed with maintaining population health that is showing signs of damage even with a short shut down, so efforts focusing on getting primary care going again. People don’t want to go to doctor, so regular news items to get people to go back to the doctor if they need to. Right now a regulatory fight prompted by dentists to get their reopen speeded up.
I don’t understand the doom brigade who insist very lengthy extreme shut downs are always required. Several countries showing the bug can be controlled without them. Of course, that assumes a country that can function well enough to sustain its own existence, a test that US seems to be failing.
This country can’t manage to produce G-damned swabs? Are those swabs as high tech and hard to produce as ventilators? I know the needed swabs are not Q-tips, but they are not particle beam satellites shot up into space either.
Evil_Paul
I’m surprised Dentists are so high on the list. Got a co-worker who had a filling come out last week. Even though it qualified as an emergency it took some wrangling to schedule an appointment.
He said that the Dentist had to do his work without mechanical tools, since the tools (along with the continuous rinsing) can have the effect of aerosolizing his saliva. So all the scraping and filing and shaping for the temporary filling had to be done by hand tools.
They froze his face up, so he didn’t feel any pain, but he said it took forever.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: There’s not a lot of evidence that Mass. has even turned the corner in terms of new cases/day. I expect to be in here for a long, long time, unless the thing gets me first, which it well may.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: That’s just it. There’s this weird tendency to look at the course of the pandemic in countries that handled it competently, assume the US will follow the same course and then use that as an excuse to NOT handle it competently. I can understand the doomy takes on the subject, given that. Anything less carries the danger of enabling the most foolish American plans.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amir Khalid: The issue in the US complex; there is NYC one end were social distancing is almost impossible and the US West were were social distancing is natural – counties with maybe 20,000 people in an are size of mid size European country.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Abscessed tooth is far more deadly than the virus.
JMG
I wonder if nursing homes and assisted living facilities will be one of the casualties of the virus. Even if unable to care for themselves, older folks are likely to be reluctant to enter places that have been deathtraps. There could be a surge in home care services.
Jackie
@Dan B: We have Tyson’s meat plant outside of the Tri-Cities – closed due to Covid outbreak. I just read on Mother Jones, Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to force ALL meat processing plants to remain open. This is NOT GOOD!?
Another Scott
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Of course, it may cost $7,500 an hour to have the plane and pilot sitting on the tarmac. :-/
I wouldn’t get too upset about the cost of them, myself. It’s a rounding error. And a distraction.
“Mr. President, what are the specific plans and metrics to increase testing?”
“Mr. President, what are the specific plans and metrics to increase PPE and get it to people who need it?”
Etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: But the virus is more likely to kill the dentist.
scav
@Matt McIrvin: If the US as a whole had handled the lockdown more effectively, there might be greater confidence in its competently managing a controlled intermediate staged opening. Nuanced, data-driven, long-term, coordinated, communal action doesn’t seem to be a core strength of whatever national chapter exists.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well, damn….
https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/ive-worked-the-coronavirus-front-line-and-i-say-its-time-to-start-opening-up/
ER doctor at a hospital in the Bronx is saying that 43% of the population in the Bronx has had the virus.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: So let the patient die from septic infection instead? I worked with a guy who tried toughing it out and by the time they got him to the emergency room that had to pull most of the teeth on his right side and said the infection was hours away from reaching his brain and killing him.
Raoul
Speaking of all of this going to shit if and when there is resurgence in infections, VP Mike Dense flew all the way to Rochester MN today in a big ass 757 on the taxpayer dime, so that he could look important, get some nice free media, and steal some of MN’s limelight over testing (which is driven by Mayo and the U of M, not D.C. asswipes like Mike).
And then the fucker was the only person in the room of a Covid patient to flout Mayo Clinic policy and not wear a mask.
I mean, I get that Pence will never, ever be photographed with a mask on. It would destroy the GOP branding exercise that ‘its all going back to normal!’, but Mayo should have told him: VP or not, no one goes on the ward without a mask. Stay in the hall if you are such a political hack.
As a Minnesotan and a person who cares about transmission and messaging, I’m fucking livid. I was pretty unhappy that Gov. Walz was going to be along for this shameless credit-grab by VP. At least Walz looks like a decent human for wearing a damn mask!
Zzyzx
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I would love to know their source for that. It would be great if true, but that seems way too good to be possible.
Bob7094
@Gin & Tonic:
Repeating from the UFO thread, the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds
justabout an hour ago flew by my backyard in Central New Jersey in a steep turn on their way to buzz Philadelphia. Impressive & loud.Peale
Not to quibble, but nail salons, barbers, dog grooming, masseurs, etc. are “Personal” services and “Consumer Services”, not “Professional Services.”
Geoduck
@wvng: If the Shiatgibbon finally keels over, what Pence would do now that he didn’t have to kiss ass anymore.. that’s very much an open question. Who knows what he really thinks, if anything.
tam1MI
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks to the AIDS epidemic, dentist’s already wear gloves and masks, and take other precautions. I would think they would be fairly safe.
patrick II
Most of them should be taking the temperature of anyone who walks in the door. Particularly “Professional Services” hair and nail salons, barbershops. And massage parlors. There should be guidelines for how to do that safely or the dispersion of remote or touch only temperature meters.
Another Scott
OT: Hillary is on a webcast with UncleJoe right now (3 PM ET).
Maybe she’s going to be his VP!!11ONE
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: This makes no sense to me. Why not space out steps for 3-4 weeks – to allow time to assess the impact of each previous Phase
edit: I see that West of the Cascades at #16 got there first.
Personally, whenever Illinois opens whatever it opens, I am waiting a month to see results before I venture out.
PenAndKey
Meanwhile, I just saw on the vine that Trump is signing an executive order declaring meat processing plants as critical infrastructure and ordering them to stay open. Included? Liability waivers so they can’t be sued/prosecuted for not protecting their workers.
Because of course he’d do that. Just out of curiosity, can the executive branch seriously grant immunity from judicial review like that? That seems like a massive separation of powers issue.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The money spent on fuel would have been far better spent on PPE and hazard pay for those first responders.
Evil_Paul
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m not trying to imply that Dentists aren’t vital. That’s why my colleague and I were so stunned that we had to argue for an appointment.
The point was how much of a risk vector Dentistry can be. The guy was saying the Dentist had to work twice as long with sub-optimal tools to handle a simple temporary filling.
That’s why I’m so surprised to hear they’d be opening first.
Zzyzx
@Another Scott:
God, listening to Clinton pains me seeing what we could have had.
rikyrah
I went to work.
Only 4 people on my car.
The bus had 2 people. I know that’s because I leave so early.
Am in a Lyft on my way to the train station to go home. The last time during the afternoon, I got on a bus and nearly had a panic attack. This was before they put in place the 10 person limit, but I can’t handle 10 people on a bus.
I am just trying to get home. Got enough work done so that I should not have to go back until the end of May.
Go out?
Are you kidding me?
They can open whatever they want…
It won’t be me ??
Leto
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
The money is already allocated for flying. Since their season is basically done, they can either return the money to big Blue (which will just shift it back into regular ops) or they could do extra training. Either way, it’s not going to things like PPE, testing, etc… it’s not how the funding was allocated.
This is still dumb though.
pamelabrown53
@PenAndKey:
I could see ordering meat processing plants to remain open IF everyone is tested and cleared, IF workers are checked daily, IF they re provided with PPE and distancing measures and IF they have an OSHA agent on premises to enforce.
What is unconscionable, is waiving liability. The republican disdain for workers is boundless.
geg6
@Peale:
Pretty sure they are classified that way due to licensing requirements. In some places, requiring a license to perform a service makes one a professional.
Leto
@Another Scott:
It does. The money has already been allocated. They might be able to pull more of the money back since their travel schedule has effectively been canceled, but it’ll go back to big Blue for other purposes. Funding pots have always been wonky.
Gin & Tonic
Boy, this is fascinating (if really OT.) the investigative site Bellingcat, which has been doing remarkable work on the MH17 shootdown, has identified one of the key people involved. They started with audio recordings, which had a partial name (as is common in Russian and Ukrainian, the guy was addressed by first name and patronymic, no surname.) One thing led to another and they got a name, which got them a photo of a likely candidate. But they needed to run a voice match. So they ran a reverse image search on Yandex (a major Russian ISP) and found a photo of the guy on a TV that somebody was offering for sale. From the date the TV was offered for sale they narrowed it down to the TV program that was airing when the seller shot his photo, got the TV program, and lo and behold there’s a known audio sample long enough to forensically match. Impressive.
Here’s the story.
Jeffro
Australia and New Zealand locked down so early and so thoroughly for the past five weeks that they are, today, looking at ‘flattening the curve’ right into the fucking ground. Not zero cases now or ever, just so few and such effective testing/tracing that they can test/trace/isolate any individual cases that have popped up.
NZ has had 19 deaths. 19! We lose that many people in the time it took me to type this sentence. If the U.S. had the same # of deaths per thousand, we’d be well under 2k dead.
THAT’s the difference that strong, dedicated, science-based leadership and government looks like, America. We’re going to hit 60k dead and a million infected today.
Miss Bianca
This road map looks somewhat sensible to me. Now to compare it to Colorado’s…
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“fantastic! who needs masks and PPE when i can look up and see a plane flying overhead instead? not me!”
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: In CO we are going with “only one customer in the store at a time” when it comes to things like hair salons.
And I’ve heard from my hairdresser that even at that, she isn’t planning to open any time soon.
ETA: Our Phase 1, 2, 3, openings at the state level are going in monthly increments. SO, Phase 1 re-open to start this week, Phase 2 not till around Memorial Day.
Leto
@Gin & Tonic:
Wow, that is impressive.
Barbara
@pamelabrown53: And I can see not eating any red meat or pork for the duration of the emergency. It’s unconscionable.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Geoduck:
Well, going by actions, not thoughts, he was one of the most useless dumb-fucks in Congress, and he did a shit job as governor of Indiana, so I think that indicates a trend. Trumpian incompetence without the Trumpian madness, but more Christianist fervor. A zesty blend. But hopefully one we need to worry about only for the next nine months.
Fair Economist
@West of the Cascades:
Yes, it’s nuts to do it faster than that. It’s unlikely WV can go through the entire list without setting off a catastrophe, but the slow process of the disease means it’s a month after things go too far that it all blows up again and they have to shut down again. And then they don’t know what measures they *could* relax. I would think WV could manage week one and part of week two. After that it would get very iffy.
pamelabrown53
@chopper:
Shouldn’t have to be either/or: it would be wonderful if every state had all the PPE and other assistance it needs, plus a national show that actually denotes “we care for all in this UNITED States of America.
If the “election” of tRump doesn’t drive this home then we’re hopeless.
Wapiti
@Searcher: Regarding the 3 days of <3% positives as a requirement to reopen: WA State hasn’t had one day at <3% since the beginning of March.
Otoh, the denominator matters – I think we’re testing people who are either likely sick, or health care workers. More testing will cause the % to go down, but might not prove that the population is really healthier since we’re currently not testing the general population.
Hoodie
At least in some states, it looks like these plans are being driven by pressure from particular interests bitching about their businesses being kept closed while others are allowed to remain open. A lot of these opening plans, particularly in states that have no real ability to test, contact trace and isolate, effectively amount to giving up and rolling the dice. The risk of transmission is cumulative of human interaction, and different types of businesses have different (1) abilities to social distance and (2) relative importance in the economy. Ideally, you would have some sort of risk thresholds that are based on both factors, but these don’t appear to be that. For example, nail salons and barbershops present a relatively high probability of transmission and are not all that critical to the economy (if they are, our economy really is a house of cards), so why not delay opening them until the latter stages, since the risk/reward for opening is pretty unfavorable? Probably would be cheaper just to pay them to stay closed, because a flare up due to transmission in one of these businesses could cost millions (e.g., barbershop customer picks up covid, transfers it to dozens of his coworkers at the factory). Same, to varying degrees, for dine-in restaurants, gyms, etc. I guess these proposed schedules may be tacitly based on an assumption that, even if these types of businesses are allowed to open, very few people will frequent them, so you get the “open up” crowd off your back without significantly increasing the danger of spread.
The thing that concerns me is that, once these open up schemes are executed, the infection rate will not increase immediately, particularly because of the role of asymptomatic carriers, extended incubation and the lack of testing. Trump and other idiots will declare victory and vindication (ignoring the 75-100k bodies), following by gradually becoming more and more lax about social distancing and hygiene and an accompanying fall off in testing performance. Then, sometime this fall, large numbers of folks get infected in some superspreader scenarios under the radar and the whole thing blows up again. We still won’t have sufficient resources to trace and isolate in a big outbreak and, this time, our medical workers will already be burned out and still lack equipment because Trump will still have done nothing about it because his lizard brain can’t think past the next news cycle and because he’s a lazy fat-ass who hopes for vaccines and miracle cures that mean he doesn’t have to do any work. In that scenario, I wouldn’t blame a health care worker for saying fuck it, I’m done, we made all those sacrifices for nothing but a shitty airshow, all undone because some yahoos needed to get their nails done, play slots in a casino, or publicly masturbate in some big box church, all topped off by a yahoo president who doesn’t give a shit if we die of Covid-19 or blow our brains out due to PTSD.
David Anderson
That is not a bad list with clear guidance (I don’t think 3 days is going to be right as we know there is seasonality at the day of the week level on testing frequency) for snap-backs.
pamelabrown53
@Barbara:
What about poultry, eggs or fish processing plants.?! What is particularly “unconscionable” is you’re prioritizing your political, personal ethics beliefs over a stable food supply chain.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Um, that’s the NY Post. It’s a right-wing rag
Zzyzx
Biden right now is talking about how to deal with the issue with abused women trapped at home with an abuser. Does anyone think that this is even vaguely on Trump’s radar?
patrick II
@PenAndKey:
What is seriously frustrating is, that from the pictures I have seen, they haven’t done nearly enough to protect the workers. Take a week or two off, install screens, slow down the conveyer belt so you can put workers (at least for some tasks) further apart, testing, masks, measure the tempurature each day. According to a lady on Rachel last night, Pense said the workers at that South Dakota plant would be tested, but only management was, as if they were standing shoulder to shoulder on the line. The workers have not been.
Somewhere earlier today I read that there is over a billion pounds of chicken in cold storage. We could take a break, even if it hurts Tyson’s profits for a short while, and do a better job of protecting the workers. Let’s not look at the workers as just more meat for profit.
Barbara
@pamelabrown53: The objection is to waiving liability and not requiring safer working conditions. The starkest issues are in beef and pork processing plants. As if you couldn’t get by eating less of all of those things. God we’re spoiled.
Betty
@patrick II: No fever is no guarantee of no infection.
Fair Economist
@FlyingToaster:
IOW, everybody dealing with the public is getting sick. This does not bode well for any kind of broad re-opening.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: An Australian friend who visited Boston right when we were starting to shut things down had to self-isolate for two weeks after returning to Australia, and started calling COVID “Boston cooties”.
(I missed him on that trip, hadn’t really wanted to make the trip downtown given the circumstances, but had coincidentally been able to meet him in Singapore riiiight at the end of January. For a while I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t have gone home from Singapore but they seem to be in actual trouble now.)
patrick II
@Betty:
I am aware. But a fever is nearly a guarantee of some sort of infection — whether Covid 19 or not — and they should not be on the line. You will notice I also said test, but you can’t test every day. So you test, and take temperatures in between and catch at least some before the interval to the next test is up. Nothing is perfect right now.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Is the world around you got much movement at all? I live in Los Angeles county and we are supposed to be pretty tightly shut down, but I’m not buying it. Yesterday I had to go to downtown LA, to the VA, and there was still traffic. Nothing like normal, but nothing like we see in pictures from a lot of cities outside the US.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty: It’s defense in depth. You stack up a whole bunch of things that are individually only 60, 70, 80% effective, like masks and temperature checks and handwashing and social distancing where applicable, and after a while it starts seriously cutting down the reproduction rate.
J R in WV
My wife is exceptionally vulnerable to this virus, so I’m the designated shopper for the household.
Every time I go to town, I feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette with a big revolver, and no idea how many rounds are in that bad boy. I wear a mask, and WV has far fewer cases than most other states, so far.
But the dopes and MAGAts wandering around Kroger’s as if they’ve never seen a grocery store before, wearing a mask on their throat, not their face, make it clear that being around them is dangerous. They couldn’t tell you how far six feet is with a tape measure! Don’t know, don’t care!
Wapiti
@Barbara: Yup.
A modest proposal: ration beef and pork as long as the producers have the liability waiver. 8 oz. per person per week.
pamelabrown53
@Another Scott: Thanks for the current link; I was motivated to make another donation.
hitchhiker
@JMG:
Home care, though, is one of the most poorly paid and difficult jobs. My friends in the disabled world tell me that having their usual aides come in has been impossible, except when those aides happen to live alone and so are definitely not being exposed by others in their households who might be less vigilant about social distancing.
A normal day for a person trying to live independently with quadriplegia involves help with dressing, bathing, using the bathroom, and eating. Finding someone reliable to do that work for minimum wage is … always tough. Right now it’s almost impossible.
Patricia Kayden
These is always something.
pamelabrown53
@Barbara:
Yes, we are spoiled! But did you even read my comment?! I addressed what pissed you off because it pisses me off, too.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The citizens in general are not the target audience. These are intended for shit for brains moneybag supporters, to show them that it’s OK to support him because he’ll use force to steal money for them if necessary.
Patricia Kayden
japa21
So I see we’ve reached the one Vietnam total.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: I was wondering what she would do.
Jay
If you can’t take a public tour of the White House, the Senate, the House, or your States buildings, or visit your Rep or Senator’s offices in person, ( Federal or State), then it’s not “safe” to go back out there.
Fair Economist
The epidemiologist Maia Majumder has published predictions of the Georgia reopening. based on academic models she’s published comparing the Lombardy and Hubei epidemics. Takeaway points:
If there’s 25% as much contact as normal the epidemic will halt, with about 1000 more deaths than you’d get with a lockdown approach.
At 50% contact the epidemic never halts, but continues linearly, killing about 1000 per month.
At 75% contact, exponential growth, health system collapse, you know the drill.
She doesn’t evaluate the economic tradeoffs, but I’ll give it a crude try. Georgia’s economy is about 40 billion per month. If you suppose 25% is at risk from contact restrictions that’s a cost of 10 billion per month for restrictions. Each step produces an economic benefit of 2.5 billion per month. Given the three possible strategies:
Lockdown another month, then 25%
25% now.
50% now.
Shifts between them assign a value to lost life of 2.5 million each, which is in the range of what’s usually used for policy decisions. However, 50% contact is too risky because it’s very close to exponential growth and disaster.
Looking at the opening plan, I think it’s going to produce more than 25% contact so I think the there is a possibility of excess deaths but at a manageable rate, but also a possibility of a catastrophe in a few months.
pamelabrown53
@Patricia Kayden:
Thank you for the reality check. I get the impression that Flake is trying to rehabilitate himself on the basis of mild rebukes of tRump.
Ksmiami
@JPL: Simon is at least adding temp scanners, free sanitizer etc/ but who wants to go to the mall?
mad citizen
Re: Pence at Mayo–recall last September when he and/or his team decided he really needed to drive around car-less Mackinac Island. He has an ass. Responding to Satby, I have an indication that my state agency will continue working from home through May, but it’s because we can do our work from home. Other agencies might have to the in-person thing. I have no idea what the Gov. will do Friday, but guessing he will announce some kind of re-opening. I read through a summary of his comments today and he said his northstar is not having the medical system overwhelmed.
Indiana also doing the National Guard flyover thing this week–over Fort Wayne, Muncie and Indy, from planes out of Fort Wayne. My dad was telling me about it last night and I was thinking, how exactly does this help? If I were a medical worker, would this make me feel better, seeing a military plane fly over my hospital? Just the usual crack ideas coming out of this administration, I’m sure.
Sab
Is it just me, or do 1 week increments seem ornamental rather than useful. I thought medical people have been saying that it’s 14 days from exposure to out of the woods or not, and 2 to 5 days from exposure to symptoms.
OT: I wish Microsoft had picked some other time than mid-pandemic to stop supporting Windows 7. I know they planned it years in advance and the warned us years in advance, but still, circumstances change.I need a new computer and I don’t know what I am doing and the stores are closed so I can’t ask.
Fortunately my baby sister does tech support for research scientists and knows computers. She is extremely busy. Fortunately, as a talented tech support person she can read minds, so she looked into computers available, called me with a list of questions, and then is ordering me a windows 10 thing that I might not hate.
I wish I was as useful to her in the insanely changing world of US taxes under these nitwits.
There should be a special place in Hell for Steve Mnuchin and his creepy bleached blonde Scottish wife. Not a threat. Just wishful thinking.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see the governor of Iowa has warned people that if their employer reopens, they must answer a summons to go back to work or risk losing their unemployment.
Baud
@Zzyzx: I feel the same. What a waste, for nothing.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
How many of our “elites,” educated at schools like Harvard, are lunatics? And of course they can’t seem to figure it out. Someone with a high school education and or the IQ of a houseplant is never going to get it. So I expect donnie to fail far worse than that.
PenAndKey
I really should just stay away from the news today. Apparently Barr and Trump are now threatening to sue states that don’t obey his idiotic “you have to open now!” plan. The hilarious part? They’re doing so by claiming that states exercising their plenary internal policing authority is an unconstitution infringement. Barr is quoted as stating that, “the idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest” but, so? Last I checked as much as it might tick people off being put under house arrest, during a pandemic, squares pretty well with the whole idea of having authority to enforce quarantines. That authority doesn’t have a time limit, after all.
pamelabrown53
@Jay:
Exactly!!! It’s akin to the same bullshit where the gun nuts can carry everywhere but statehouses, and D.C. Capitol buildings.
The hypocrisy is deathly blatant.
BobS
@japa21: We’re also nearing twenty 9/11’s, not that RedState America gives a shit about NYC anymore.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: that’s how to do it, all right…just came in from abroad? Here’s your 14-day ‘chill pass’.
I swear Mexico is going to end up building the wall after all (and paying for it) just to keep gazillions of infected Americans out.
joel hanes
@jl:
Several countries showing the bug can be controlled without [lengthy shutdowns]
Until it isn’t.
Sweden was feeling pretty confident for a while.
So were the Iowa and Dakota towns that have pork-processing plants.
Anyplace that has a packing plant, a prison, or a nursing home is very likely to blow up … eventually, after a chance infection of one of the staff carries it into the facility.
IMHO, people living in low-density populations are misperceiving the pattern of low rates of infection, followed eventually by burst contagion, for a durable state of low contagion.
Ksmiami
@J R in WV: The thing I don’t get is if doing something as simple as a grocery run feels like entering a war zone, how will people feel good about socializing etc in public? Furthermore if it’s only morons and Magats going out, isn’t the risk higher since these are the people who’ve been more reckless anyway?
joel hanes
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Fuck Kim Reynolds. That is all.
Ruckus
@Zzyzx:
On his radar in a positive way?
Absolutely not.
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden: ‘spare me’ is exactly right.
Flake was at a football game I attended last fall, and people were falling all over themselves to come up and say hi, thank him (ugh – for what I have no idea), and so on. Hard pass.
Ironically, disgust with Flake is one of the few things my TCNJ dad and I have agreed on in the past several years. =)
joel hanes
@Hoodie:
Given the way that people and politicians are behaving, I’m back to expecting over 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US in calendar year 2020.
Sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Damn. My stepkids are essential workers. One has a good employer, other not so much.
My husband is really upset about his hair. He is old but he went to parochial schools and then into military service so he missed the sixties. So he has never had long hair. When I graduated from high school I could sit on my hair. I hated that. Mine is shorter now but I will live if it grows. I just gave him his first scrunchy. We are all laughing. It’s like putting a costume on the cat at Christmas. We mean well but the cat is furious. That is my husband in a scrunchy.
Jeffro
@Ksmiami: I just want to know how you’re supposed to enjoy a nice restaurant meal with a mask on…
…or wondering which way the air is circulating in the restaurant…
…or how the waiter will take your order from 6 feet away…
…or how the waitress will set the food down in front of you…
…and I guess it’s a given that the chocolate fountain is OUT!
Fair Economist
@Ruckus:
Same here in OC, and I also think there is substantially more traffic than 2-3 weeks ago, if still less than usual
Edit: and today OC had its highest ever hospital usage. Hmmm.
MisterForkbeard
@Patricia Kayden: I’m okay with them asking her about it. Gillibrand’s big thing has been supporting women regardless of who their attacker is IF they credible.
The item here should be “even Gillibrand doesn’t believe this happened.”
Matt McIrvin
@mad citizen: Remember the time Pence visited Kennedy Space Center and touched a piece of a space probe right next to the giant “DO NOT TOUCH” sign on it? (Apparently wasn’t a big deal, but Pence didn’t know that; the rules didn’t apply to him.)
narya
One of my favorite events was cancelled today (a yearly beer festival), and I found myself being glad that it was. I was not going to go no matter what, but I know I would still have been missing it if it was going on w/o me. Now if only the other three events for which I have tickets would do the same thing . . . because no way am I going to sit in the stands with thousands of other people, in a red state, and no way am I going to wander around a (different) beer festival, and no way am I going to go to THAT race, either, even though it’s open grounds rather than a stadium. I have serious anxiety when I go to the damn grocery store; I’m not going to large events any time soon.
Ksmiami
@Jeffro: My recent philosophy is I will wait this thing out and the Constitution ain’t a suicide pact…
danielx
@Ksmiami:
1) Not good at all, but there are idiots out there, and not all of them MAGAts, who will do it anyway. For as long as they last.
2) Ummm…you have to look at the upside here.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Places like LA county? We have around 11 million residents. Not 20,000.
West of the Cascades
This stuff about the meat processing plants (forcing workers to show up without adequate protection, being declared essential businesses, given liability waivers) is making me increasingly vegan-curious, or at least pescetarian-curious. From an environmental perspective, there’s no justification for eating meat (it just tastes good to me and is a lazy-to-get source of protein).
danielx
@narya:
No Indianapolis 500 this year. It’s not the full month of debauchery that it used to be, but it’s still a huge hole in some people’s lives.
Not mine, I haven’t been to the track in over twenty years and had no plans to ever go back, barring someone offering me free tickets and a limo ride to and from the track. Not even that would get me there now, nor yet in August which is when it’s been rescheduled. Nope, never happen.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin:
(Gotta click it.)
HTH!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
@joel hanes:
This definitely worries me out here in my rural red county. I went to our local feed store yesterday for chicken feed. I was wearing gloves and a mask. When purchasing it, I had to lean over a roped off area that is supposed to keep the customers from the sales clerks. I asked if she was okay with me leaning over to use the card reader and she said, “Oh sure. That’s just for show.” What?! She went on to tell me how she just doesn’t know who to believe about this virus. She figured we just need to be “careful.” It seems to me that there are way too many people out here who believe nothing will happen to them because “we aren’t San Francisco or LA.”
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Flake and Sasse have a bond in my view, by trying so very hard to be earnest and openminded while being absolutely doctrinaire Republicans with their every action. Gag.
Sasse gets extra demerits by being a fucking scold.
narya
@danielx: Yeah, that’s one of the events I’m talking about. They’ve rescheduled it for August, but no way no how. Crowded walk to the track from our parking spot, crowded waiting around, crowded stands. Just . . . no. I’ll miss the Trackerita, though (the guy who sits to our left always brings margaritas for everyone in the neighborhood).
Mart
@PenAndKey: Trump ain’t worried about meat packer safety. I’ve been to a few dozen and normally at least 90% of employees are Hispanic. (Typically management is white). Steven Miller approves of this death March.
ThresherK
Sneak preview of West Virginia’s parking lot with thousands of people holding millions of dollars in their fists waiting to spend it.
Or is that Disneyland on opening day? I can never tell.
Calouste
@Zzyzx: Depends which Trump you’re talking about. I think the issue of an abused woman trapped at home with an abuser during isolation is pretty high on the radar of Mrs. Trump.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
Hereabouts, you need a really good reason to be more than about 10km (6 miles) from home, or the cops at the roadblock can arrest you.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Cheryl Rofer: Ah, good. I felt there was something missing, and you put it in words. The schedule doesn’t look flawed, by itself, but it’s just a timeline, not really a plan.
Timelines are great; but they’re going to run into reality, and if you keep holding to your timeline when reality is vomiting coronvirus bile in your face, you’ll end up looking like a great orange imbecile hoping that maybe strong light, or injecting disinfectant, like a cleaning, could save you from your own fsckup.
(IIRC, FSCK is “File System ChecK” in Unix, and it’s also used as shorthand for what people say when they have to run it. Please remember, I’m a Windows guy, so take such ‘knowledge’ with a grain of extra coarse salt.)
LongHairedWeirdo
@Zzyzx: Yeah. Do you have the odd, twisted, sense of pride when seeing Washington drop in the ranks of “most infections/deaths”? We’re down to number 17 or so, which feels kinda-good, but ever so tragic.
Having construction come back will be interesting. Construction should be *really* good at worker safety, but it all too frequently isn’t, because, all too often, the costs for failure are born by the workers. I’d believe a good construction company should have the *ability* to work safely; I guess we’ll find out whether ability and desire match up.
Mohagan
@Scout211: Here in Ukiah, Mendocino County, CA, the local Rainbow (feed) store and several other stores have plastic shields hanging down in front of the checkout and cash registers, so the clerks are safe. Masks are also required, I think, by the CA gov. I see a lot of them, but it varies with the business. On my weekly food shop, I feel safe going into Safeway, Luckys, and the Co-op, which are all-in on masks, cleaning, etc. I haven’t set foot in Wal-Mart for weeks now, since it had a much more relaxed vibe about the virus last time. Ukiah has a pop of 16,000+ and Mendo Cty overall about 87,000, but it is filled with ridges and forests so the population is quite spread out and lots of isolated towns. The roads from the coast (Fort Bragg and Mendocino) to the inland valleys (Ukiah and Willits) are both 2 lane windy roads. Mendocino is the only county in California with 2 Audubon groups since the coast and the Ukiah valley are so different.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Peale: Massage is a professional service when performed by a credentialed masseur/masseuse. I’ve had years of ineffective PT for my hip, and more productive treatment for it via massage by skilled workers, so don’t think it’s pure personal-service stuff.
Of course, even spa massage clinics are usually run by licensed massage folks, which blurs the line, but if the LMT is wearing a mask, and the client can do a proper washup after, it should be of minimal risk, especially if the client is also masked.
Kent
Costco has completely vertically integrated its poultry operations from farms to processing to the store. Although you can still get non-Costco chicken like Tyson and Pilgrim’s pride in Costco stores.
That said, Costco does seem to be operating substantially more responsibly than Tyson or Smithfield with its processing. They have had something like 9 workers test positive but they have rolled out universal testing for all employees, paid sick leave, $2/hr pay increase for hazard pay, and more rigorous cleaning, screening, and social distancing in their plant. So they haven’t seen the massive numbers that other plants are seeing: https://www.1011now.com/content/news/Nine-Lincoln-Premium-Poultry-workers-test-positive-for-COVID-19–570003741.html
I suppose if you want to buy frozen chicken or rotiserie chicken and don’t want to support the bad-actors then Costco seems the best best unless you have some local source for sustainably produced chicken.
Kent
@LongHairedWeirdo: Another Washingtonian here. Yep, I also have a perverse sense of pride in how WA has bent the curve further down than any other states that have suffered from major outbreaks. If you look at the trajectories, both VA and TN will soon pass us as well.
Construction is probably as good of an industry to re-open. There are a lot of half-finished construction projects around here (Vancouver area) that will suffer costly weather damage if they aren’t allowed to continue to completion. And a lot of construction is outdoors and in situations where workers can distance compared to say indoor offices or indoor factories like food processing plants. Plus, construction is filled with thousands of small independent subcontractors so it is really dominated by small businesses. Even the giant builders like DR Horton or the big commercial builders rely on small independent subs for most of their work. So construction is different from say meat processing where the companies have deep pockets and, in the case of Smithfield, are foreign-owned.
By the way. They never stopped construction over in Oregon. Construction projects in Portland have continued for the most part, with some distancing and masks and such.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Kent: Yes, I’m always careful about construction, because I’ve heard horror stories about Texas; but I worked in a warehouse that was awfully nervous about OSHA, for a pharm warehouse that was awfully nervous about the DEA (and they stopped selling medical grade ethanol because they *couldn’t* get calm with the revenuers, period), and I know that a well regulated industry can be *really* careful with their people.
So it’s like “I know a *good* construction company can teach people *good* PPE use. And I hope they do. And if we could have rational expectations… (pauses and thinks about Texas, and just loses the heart to keep going)”.
Anyway: hopefully, in most places, we *can* have *some* rational expectations.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
That sounds like a really good thing — but we live just over 20 miles from the nearest Kroger’s where our prescriptions also are filled. So there would have to be an adjustment there for that reason.