Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Gary Dowdell said: The virus is seasonal...

This is 100% not true. You're disputing the account of a doctor on the ground, with decades of experience, in an attempt to counter what he can plainly see in real life. You don't know what you're talking about, and the reason that his job is harder.

Last warning, don't post bull**** here.

Concerning PPE: We can only use the hospital provided PPE and are not allowed to bring in our own PPE from home. That would be grounds for disciplinary action against us.

Concerning MN numbers: We have open beds at our hospital, however we may not have nurses to provide care for patients in those beds. Thus, the beds cannot be used. When a nurse calls in sick, and cannot be replaced on short notice, those beds cannot be used.

We are having a COVID outbreak on our Psych unit. We cannot admit patients to our psych ward for 2 weeks.

COVID is not seasonal, per say. However, risk increases when people are indoors in confined areas.

Then you need to file a grievance. There is no shortage of masks at this point in time. Why is the hospital refusing to provide more?

And having the public find out you were disciplined for bringing in your own mask, because the hospital refused to provide you with new masks, would be a publicity nightmare for them.

Welcome to being a federal employee...

Conditions I am describing in MN may be very different from where you live.

MN governor press conference:

MN in top 10 in the country for COVID cases.

Hospital beds 93% full in metro area, 95% out state.

Bars/restaurants take out only. Gyms closed. Youth sports cancelled.

Liquor stores remain open - so I’m good.

Jeff said:

I mean, cool, you're good with your risk level, great, do your part to not increase the risk level of others and it's all good.

What else can you do? There's literally nothing beyond this easy achievable middle ground to consider. Anything beyond this mentality and you're drifting into the lanes I'm talking about.

You can't possibly know if the teenager you encounter needs a lung transplant or if you'll be the middle-aged guy who has symptoms for months. It's not just the people who die.

Aww. Too late.

Seriously though, there's lots of things you can't possibly know. Don't get hung up on worrying about them. Covid-related or not.

You're never gonna win me over with stuff like this because it's a mindset I simply don't operate at. (And given your responses to my hot takes for the last 9 months, I suspect it runs in the opposite direction as well) In fact, it sort of triggers my contrarian tendencies.

I preferred and completely agreed with your earlier post:

Jeff said:

There is no reason to be fearful or freak out if we do the basic things.

Yes. This. All this. Nothing more or less than this. This makes sense.

We shouldn’t need to lockdown the country and we shouldn’t have been dry humping strangers but here we are. Somewhere in the middle is indeed where we needed to be. It’s so frustrating.

Here’s a great example. One of many. A group of parents decided to hold a homecoming dance for seniors in a barn. No masks and certainly no social distancing because duh it’s a dance. Now here’s the shocker. An infected student was in attendance. They infected at least 3 other kids so far who have been in classes since. The high school is now closed, and all sports and activities have been haulted.

Come on man...

Shades said:

Then you need to file a grievance. There is no shortage of masks at this point in time. Why is the hospital refusing to provide more?

And having the public find out you were disciplined for bringing in your own mask, because the hospital refused to provide you with new masks, would be a publicity nightmare for them.

This, 100%

Could you bring your own disposable masks to wear over top of your work provided mask? I've doubled up before on a completely full airplane flight where the old lady across the row was hacking up her right lung.

They may be available on Amazon and your local gas station but that doesn't mean they fit the safety protocols of his hospitals PPE requirements. That is how it works at my job with everything from Covid PPE to hardhats and climbing harnesses. Sure I can find my own but if they have not been vetted through our Safety Department, I can't use any of them. You know, insurance and stuff like that. So if the supplier the hospital buys from isn't at full stock, they are going to be short at the hospital and there isn't much you can do about that.

I’ve been paying attention for many months and it’s odd how the virus bounces around. At first there were hotspots and cold spots, and they went pretty much as you might expect. I’ll use my state of Ohio as examples here. Large, denser cities had the cases and our rural areas had for all intents and purposes, none. Now it’s the rural areas that are reeling from an extreme upsurge. I’ve seen the models - 1=2=4=16, etc - and maybe that’s what’s finally happened to them, but it still seems strange to me that they basically missed the first pass. Our cities are taking it hard too, but new places are being taken by surprise. I have a friend here who’s originally from NW Ohio, one of the worst areas, and his mom asks every day when he’s coming for thanksgiving and every day he tells her he won’t be in attendance. Those people are still living their lives as if nothing is happening.
Finally, there’s the nurse who described patients that, while they were being moved to a ventilator, insist that it’s all a hoax.
Watching people in a continuous state of denial is exhausting, maddening, and heartbreaking.
I wonder if the parents who insist on holding homecoming dances are actually trying to look after their kids or if they’re just trying to prove that they were right all along. The dances of ‘21 and ‘22 depend on the kids and their parents being alive.

Shades said: And having the public find out you were disciplined for bringing in your own mask, because the hospital refused to provide you with new masks, would be a publicity nightmare for them.

Public outrage might get an otherwise unqualified reality tv host that paid hush money to a porn star elected president, but it doesn’t pay the bills or help someone that’s 60 years old and been in a profession for 35 years find a new job.

RCMAC said:

II have a friend here who’s originally from NW Ohio, one of the worst areas, and his mom asks every day when he’s coming for thanksgiving and every day he tells her he won’t be in attendance. Those people are still living their lives as if nothing is happening.

Same with Cuyahoga County in Northeast Ohio. They are back to stay at home orders with crazy numbers, but my parents are flying down to their Florida condo this weekend. The news tells them that gatherings of 10 and more are dangerous, which to them means 9 and under is 100% safe. They can't fathom why I'm even asking about what they plan to do and where they plan to go in the 5 days they are vacationing before Thankgiving Day, etc. It's not the flying down here that bothers me in the least. It's their behavior when they get here that does.

That safe/unsafe black and white thinking is the most mind numbing failure of critical thinking. I see memes like "If masks work, why do we need to close everything?" and "If your vaccine works, then why do you care if I get one?" Also, "if it's safe to eat indoors, it's also safe to have parties." I think very early in the thread someone on here was saying that if gatherings of 50 were banned, they'd have a gathering of 49.

None of these things are 0% or 100%. All of them are on the sliding scale (bingo!) of safety and the more we do in conjunction, the better off we are in aggregate. I don't know why that concept is so difficult to grasp, but apparently we can only think in binary.

ApolloAndy said:

All of them are on the sliding scale (bingo!)

I think it's safe to say on page 130 of this thread that all of our bingo cards are 100% covered.

I still need “if we needed a vaccine they’d have already developed one”.

Nothing about the response to this pandemic should have been political...but of course it has been. I was curious if anyone was "keeping score" on positivity at the capital and came across the following stats according to NPR.

In the Senate, 6 Republicans have tested positive and 0 Democrats have.

In the House, 16 Republicans have tested positive and 9 Democrats have.

What does that mean? Hell if I know. But, it does seem like politicizing ones own response to the virus may have some consequences, if only anecdotally.

I will say this. As a local government official who has been riding this roller coaster since February I am exhausted and waiting for relief. The fact that the current administration has yet to invite the incoming administration to the table to address this pandemic is reprehensible and yet another in a long line of failures. The abdication of responsibility should give everyone pause, regardless of your political leanings.

Without being political, and just measuring outcomes based on restrictions, you can observe that places with fewer restrictions are now having larger outbreaks.

And it's fine to talk about the economic impact, but this myth that the economy won't suffer if you just let things go has been busted time and time again. The "but Sweden!" crowd fails to observe that Sweden's GDP took an 8.6% dump second quarter (for reference, the US dropped 9.5%). By contrast, New Zealand chose to take the hit, lock down hard, at the cost of a 12.2% hit to GDP, most of which was recovered in the third quarter, with less than 0.1 deaths per 100k. Smaller economies and not the most apple-apple comparisons, but I think the unescapable reality is that:

• There is an economic toll no matter what.
• Controlling a pandemic will involve sacrifice and loss no matter what.

If the outcomes at each end are similar, I tend to want to lean toward the less people dying end of things, especially when a nation like the US can afford to take care of people in that short-term.

So how are the old hotspots doing? Seems like it rural areas getting hit hard now. Are the worse areas the ones who were doing well all year. Or is this just cyclical because the ones who had it once are now able to get it again?

Just shut down, oh wait, we can’t do that because practically everything is essential. So let’s half shut down? I guess let it continue to spread, but just not as quickly like we did last time?

NBC reported today that the fatality rate we almost twice as high in some rural areas, because they simply can't treat everyone. Some rural hospitals don't even have a single ventilator. Strictly on a per capita basis, it seems like it's worse for rural people. That's also what was predicted earlier this year.

The CDC official guidance now is not to gather for Thanksgiving, which people will ignore, and by Christmas it will be worse.

To bring it home: It's probably safer to visit WDW now than it is to drive to family for Thanksgiving. I don't know what to even do with that.

If you go to WDW, eat inside gathered around a small table and sit inside for several more hours laughing and talking, your risk is probably about the same as driving to family for Thanksgiving. And if you stay outside, wear masks and stay distanced at family's house for Thanksgiving, your risk is probably about the same as going to WDW.