COVID stupidity in MA

RIP The Pour House

 

I'd even go so far as to say RI hasn't really "spiked" except for the peak in late April/beginning May. We just can't get the metrics quite low enough to travel to ME and MA apparently. For reference RI is around 15% the population of MA with currently around 26% of the 3-day hospitalization average (303 MA vs 80 RI).

There could be extra paranoid circumstances, such as living with an old or sick relative, but all other things being somewhat normal at home there is no inherent danger in visiting beer gardens. You can scope the place out before committing, to make sure of adequate aisles/spacing, no queue line going next to tables, etc. Trillium had one of those circular foot pump hand wash stations outdoors in their beer garden which was very useful (to put sanitizer on your hands in the porta-john then try not to touch the door handle at all on the way out is an Olympic sport).

 

I haven't been in like a decade, and barely at all since college, but this saddens me.

 

Probably the main driver for the increased metrics is that RI is more densely populated than MA.

 

Unless staffers catch COVID and show up to work. That does happen a fair amount. There haven't been many instances of significant spread resulting from it, but the risk is definitely there and changes depending on the service model. A place like Notch that makes you order from your table via phone and then pick up at a window is different than a place that serves directly and requires in person interaction with a server, even a masked one.

 

Time of exposure matters too. Even if your server is infected and contagious, it's still quite unlikely they'll transmit anything to you in a brief 30-60s interaction, outdoors and masked.

 

Yes only New Jersey is more dense than RI, and they peaked so high that there was no way to go except much lower numbers currently. We've had a slower burn and therefore this back-end plateau has been a bit higher than surrounding states.

 

Yes, what @cmoney13 said. If someone's serving you outside and with a mask on there's virtually no risk.

They'd have to sit with you without a mask on and carry a conversation for at least a few minutes or more for there to even be a remote chance you'd catch Covid from them.

Also, let's think about this in the real world. Restaurants have had Covid infections, and while it ran through the employees, I can't think of any instance in which I've read a customer caught it from a restaurant employee. Especially a customer seated outside. Maybe there's been an instance indoors that this has happened, but that's not what we're talking about here.

 

I doubt I've been in live 15 years, but didn't Outback waitstaff used to sit with you in the booth and act all chummy with diners when taking orders?

 

Haha I do remember this somewhere, so that sounds about right.

 

I kind of recall everyone staying home except essential workers (which can include truck drivers, people who load and unload the trucks and put the food on the shelves- the list is pretty long), many people didn't leave their homes for two months.

 

Met my wife there over a Bucket of Rocks....

 

True, we did. From about mid-March to late April depending on where you lived.

In the April - June time frame many states opened up (some almost completely) and shouldn't have.

If we had locked down from mid-March through say June/July, I think we'd be better off. But no one in the US had the patience to do that.

And we didn't have enough testing (and still don't). We're just going to flounder until a treatment/vaccine arrives in Q4 2020/Q1 2021.

 

expecting people to stay home for more than six weeks for a virus that pretty much only kills people with underlying conditions- and is virtually harmless to the others- is a lot to expect. Especially when things like food and fuel supply have to be addressed. Many businesses that you enjoyed before this may not even reopen their doors after this is over.

 

You mean how much of Europe stayed locked down for a longer period of time and now their economy has improved because most things are open?

Sweden tried what you’re suggesting and then had to back track. And now their economy not only didn’t gain from it, it’s worse off. I could link to an article on this and a study that was done detailing how a prolonged lockdown is better for the economy long term.

You can try to force the economy open, but then the hospitals become overwhelmed. Once that happens, everything else crumbles. This is why every state that tried to be stubborn about this eventually had to shut down in some capacity. A quick google search will pull up how screwed Florida’s hospitals were. It’s short sighted to look at how this just affects the elderly and those with underlying conditions.

Oh and by the way, obesity is an underlying condition. According to the CDC in 2018 42.4% of the US population was obese. Not exactly a small amount of people.

To put this in perspective more Americans are dying of the coronavirus every month, on average, than died in the deadliest month of World War II.

If you extrapolate the deaths to February 2021 (the first recorded US death was in February of this year) it will potentially be the single deadliest event for a one year span in US history. Outpacing the Civil War, World War II, and maybe even the Spanish Flu.

Which is scary considering we actually did/have locked down to suppress that total, and unlike those events, we have modern medicine.

Without either of those we’d easily be looking at death tolls in the millions.

 

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

Many people without underlying conditions recover and then are left with major health issues. Previously healthy college football players, in one conference:

"the conference is aware of at least 10 players who have the rare heart condition myocarditis, which reportedly has a high prevalence in people who have had COVID-19."

https://bleacherreport.com/articles...ball-players-have-heart-condition-myocarditis

"A disturbing trend has started to emerge recently, however, of younger, healthier Americans developing this condition and at a higher rate compared with other viruses. "

https://www.chicagotribune.com/spor...0200815-66zen4didzfzbmq7qibxuw4c3q-story.html

 

“Virtually harmless...”
...says the guy who was freaking out a few weeks ago about people from out of state swimming at southern Vermont swimming holes.

 

If you've known someone who has had this, you would want no part of this virus, nor want any of your loved ones to deal with it (or deal with a family member dealing with it). It is devastating.