Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

I haven't seen any COVID surcharges yet anywhere I eat, but as long as I knew the money was going to the staff and/or owners (for the mom and pop places) I'm fine with it

TheMillenniumRider said:

So since we routinely see organizations and other entities ignoring the science when it comes to cleaning...

While it might not do anything for Covid, I personally feel like the amount of cleaning places are doing now is simply what should have always been done just for the purpose of keeping things clean. I am not a germ freak by any means but I do get grossed out when I see the kind of people who touch the same things I have to touch. It has been nice seeing the crud that is normally caked on community items such as phones, computers, buttons, door handles, etc, at work actually look new again. Same for the POS systems at places like Publix and Target, no more black sludge from thousands of fingers all day. People are just gross so I have liked the cleaning.

Probably avoid the CC terminal at the Summerport liquor store. Just sayin'. 😱

Should have taken my dad to Massachusetts to get his vaccine. Could have gotten one myself.

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/02/12/massachusetts-va...s-concerns

I'll stick to my contactless payment at ABC in Clermont.

There’s keeping things clean, and then there’s ridiculous excess. The plastic handles on all the grocery carts at my local grocery are all brittle, cracked, and often broken with dangerous jagged edges because the cleaning solvent is harsh on the plastics. Some of this equipment has aged five years in the last eleven months, to the point of being actively hazardous to use. But hey, it’s disinfected.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

I think there is a good middle ground and that seems to be what I am seeing everywhere around me. It was crazy at the beginning of all this but has settled down to be what I would consider a normal amount of cleaning. It is hit or miss if I see someone cleaning the carts at my local Publix and Target but that doesn't matter to me because they have always had cleaning wipes for you to use. I have been using Oxivir wipes on a keyboard at work multiple times daily just to see how long it takes to fade, break, etc. and the thing just still looks new. Wouldn't be able to tell I have been doing it since June.

As we’ve discussed before, there are new norms from the covid era that happily may stick around long after the fact and this may be one of them.
Here in Columbus we now find our Kroger stores with carts stacked inside the entrance to pick up. Across the vestibule is a little station with spray bottles, paper towels, and a can of wipes. I think if it’s a concern to the customer they can sanitize away on their own. I always do.
Then there’s Giant Eagle who still employs a crew of cart handlers to collect, clean, and place the sanitized carts for pick up. No longer is it the polite thing for the customer to trot the carts back to the door or hand it off to another shopper on their way in. Instead, the good citizen will return it to the cart corral. One upside is that everyone seems to want to comply- no one picks up a cart in the parking lot and for that matter the lot is no longer strewn here and there with abandoned carts.
I think I prefer GE’s way of doing it.

Really good article on the forthcoming child vaccine trials:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/fauci-vaccines-for-first-gr...september/

RideMan said:

There’s keeping things clean, and then there’s ridiculous excess.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

Not sure if it qualifies as ridiculous, but my Little Caesars now comes with a sticker that says something to the effect of after it went from oven to box no one touched it again and the sticker is slapped on the box.

1. Were they routinely fondling the pizza after putting it in the box before?

2. If the offending pizza fondler wanted to strike again, couldn't they just replace the sticker?

I stopped at KFC the other day (my knickname is Two Piece and a Biscuit) and they had a sign assuring us that once the chicken goes into the fryer it never touches a human hand til we put ours on it. I suppose that means tongs only. And I suppose it also means it could drop to the floor and still get to a bucket untouched....

I remember when all of this started the local public transit authority said they would increase the cleaning of busses to every 48 hours. How naive was I to think they cleaned them every night? I think they said they would clean them every 24 soon after their initial announcement.

It is all fun and games until the 0.003% of the stuff that Lysol doesn't kill overcomes our immune systems.

Some of this is a bit like the leading poultry producers talking about how they don't feed their chickens antibiotics. Fun fact: in the United States it is illegal to sell poultry that has been treated with antibiotics. So it's kind of like fat-free cola, gluten-free water, and asbestos-free breakfast cereal.

Typically the pizza gets lifted with tongs, slid onto a peel, slid from the peel to a cardboard disk, then sliced with up to seven strokes of a 20" two-handled knife. The cardboard round is slid into the box, and the box is closed. If it was done right, by this time the pizza is still hot enough to cause burns if anybody tries to touch it. Of course it hasn't been handled!

At the one Giant Eagle here in town, I typically grab a cart from the parking lot and roll it into the store. I've had the employees give me horrified looks and remind me that the cart hadn't been sanitized; I usually point out that this is obvious, and if I'd had a problem with that I would have done something about it, like grab a cart from inside...

At the other store, I usually have to get one in the vestibule, and I've been known to also ask for a paper towel to wipe the cleaning liquid off the handle. I don't know what that stuff is; I know it damages the plastic; and I don't want it all over *me*.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Asbest O's, part of your morning balanced breakfast.

In the beginning when I was excessively cautious, (as opposed to just regular cautious today,) I was doing my 2.5 hour late night drive home from work and was hungry but was scared to eat despite 24 hr truckstops/fast food everywhere.

After putting an excessive amount of thought into it, I chose to eat at Arbys. My reasoning was that if I ordered deep fried chicken strips and mozzarella sticks, any viruses would be killed in the deep frying, and they'd be handled only with tongs afterwards to to being hot. You know, for my health.

Judging by the fact that I'm still alive today, I must have made the right choice!

I'm not nearly this paranoid today, but I still pack plenty of my own food for work and am still careful where I eat. Like if I enter a place and see the food preparers wearing chin diapers, I'll turn around and leave.

RCMAC said:

I stopped at KFC the other day (my knickname is Two Piece and a Biscuit) and they had a sign assuring us that once the chicken goes into the fryer it never touches a human hand til we put ours on it. I suppose that means tongs only. And I suppose it also means it could drop to the floor and still get to a bucket untouched....

If you haven't noticed you soon will that nothing at KFC is "finger lickin' good" anymore because the geniuses in marketing decided there can't be slogans with references to licking body parts during a pandemic.

I never thought it was that great a slogan to begin with. Licking your fingers? Gross. (truth)

When I eat good fried chicken, I always find myself trying to get every nibble of the crispy breading that I can, even if I gotta nibble it off the end of the drumstick bone. But that doesn't mean "Bone tip nibblin' good" should be a slogan either. (joke)

Yeah, I live a little bit different than y'all.

That's why I'm invincible.

I’ve also noticed that KFC is Kentucky Fried Chicken again. I guess someone decided fried food is back in good graces.

I got my first shot today- drove the 45 minutes and back.