Covid-19 ... coronavirus ... thoughts?

only remotely related to the virus, for the past week or more some news stations have been leading off and staying on city protests for a good deal of their coverage. no surprise why some people don't think it is as critical as it is saying the pandemic is totally overblown.

but talking about being overblown... here is a map showing the area of Portland where protests have been going on...

Portland 05.jpg
confined to about nine city blocks, the vast majority of people in Portland are totally unaffected. rather than spend the time covering what is happening to 100% of the U.S., this is what some via the lopsided news coverage are considering a major problem. it's not even a major problem in the city of Portland itself.
 
overlandflyer said:
but talking about being overblown... here is a map showing the area of Portland where protests have been going on...
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To be quite frank I´d be worried about the kind of things going on there even if it happened only on one street in my entire country. If the government doesn´t respect its citizens there´s no way the citizens are going to respect the government and that´s a bit of a problem.
 
it's only the matter of perspective ... sure, if i were a business owner who's store was being affected, i wouldn't dismiss the Portland situation, but to make that the national headline only goes to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic. people watching those newscasters are seeing COVID-19 as "not a big deal".
 
overlandflyer said:
it's only the matter of perspective ... sure, if i were a business owner who's store was being affected, i wouldn't dismiss the Portland situation, but to make that the national headline only goes to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic. people watching those newscasters are seeing COVID-19 as "not a big deal".
Click to expand...
Exactly! If their were no virus and the economy was doing well it would barely make the news. And our Pres would not be talking about sending the Army in.
 
In England, gyms have been closed since March - but have just reopened...

On Monday I did a 1 hour zumba class on day 1 of my gym re-opening.
People may be apprehensive about going so they may be interested in my experience.

The gym / zumba was particularly well organised. At reception everyone was asked to use sanitizer. The toilets were open - so there were no problems with that... The route was marked on the floor (although we knew the route) and waiting places were marked in the corridor outside the room so you could wait to go in with appropriate distancing. On the floor there were crosses taped on the floor and there was about 2.5 to 3 metres between each cross. It was in a big sports hall so extremely well ventilated for the amount of people that they were limiting the class size to (24 in this case) using a section of the hall - the rest of the hall was unused... Everyone had to leave the hall through a fire exit - so there was no passing anyone coming into the building. Everything was so well organised and well thought through that we were comfortable to take off the masks that we had put on to go into the building.

We were both so pleased that we had gone. It was lovely seeing some of our friends.
 
In England, dance classes have been closed since March and have just reopened.

On Tuesday I did a salsa class... The format was very different from a normal salsa class / event. Normally you would between two or three classes followed by a couple of hours of social dancing where you would dance with a number of friends...

The dance community is currently forming bubbles...
I am lucky as my husband dances so he was my automatic choice of dance partner.
Single dancers have been forming dance partner bubbles and allocating a single person to dance with.
Class bubbles have been forming - consisting of five pairs of dancers. For a block of four weeks - the same five pairs will dance in the same class.

The hall had been marked off into 5 mini dance floors and each couple had to dance on their own floor spaces...
There was a path down the middle which you had to use to go to the toilets.
Sanitizer was provided.
You did not need to wear masks - and no-one did.
We had masks with us - but were comfortable that we could be distanced at all times.
There was a single class followed by 15 minutes of music to dance to.
At the end we had to leave by another door.

Cleaning took place between different classes - and we saw friends leave from an earlier class - and queueing to go into the following class.

Again - it was well organised - and virus appropriate.

It was enjoyable - but much shorter than a normal salsa night - and certainly not the same as social dancing with lots of different friends.

It is probably as near to normal as we can legally get currently...

Interestingly - a week ago I was looking into sports masks as I was sure that I would need them for both zumba and salsa.
My experiences this week make me think that they are not necessary for me currently.
I will continue to take normal masks with me to both salsa and zumba in case rules relax before I am ready...

I am risk averse generally - and would definitely wear a mask if going within two metres of anyone.
I cross into the road if anyone walks near me and avoid public transport and shops.
It is good that some things are being organised where social distancing is being enforced so that we can feel safe.
 
Of course in some of those empty-of-people areas the squirrels carry the plague.

Thankfully we can cure that these days.
 
All four of my grandparents were adults in 1918 and survived that pandemic. I knew them all and 3 survived into my adulthood. I remember well them telling me a lot about their experiences in both world wars and the depression, however none ever mentioned the virus or flu epidemic. I don't even know if they had the flu. I wonder why.

Today's news includes one of our congressmen who apparently believes he contracted the virus because he was forced to wear a mask. Ignorance abounds...
 
We need to fully close our border here again, there are a lot of Victorians trying to sneak across the QLD border in cars and trucks which have valid passes to enter the state, 2 were arrested in town this morning when they were found hiding in the back of a truck. It has not been released yet as to if they have the virus or not.
 
alligatorob said:
All four of my grandparents were adults in 1918 and survived that pandemic. I knew them all and 3 survived into my adulthood. I remember well them telling me a lot about their experiences in both world wars and the depression, however none ever mentioned the virus or flu epidemic. I don't even know if they had the flu. I wonder why.
Click to expand...

My father was the youngest of a big family.
During the first world war his oldest brother was a soldier who was injured. His oldest sister was a nurse. His second oldest sister worked in munitions. All three survived.
One of his sisters died aged 9 in 1918 from the flu epidemic.
 
my dad, born in 1913, had an older brother who died young. i never found out how.... not even sure if my dad knew for sure... but now i'm beginning to wonder.

i'm not sure why i've been haunted by this idea recently, but in the entire population, i can't help but think there are some ... including younger people, who may intentionally be trying to catch this virus for the chance they might infect others at risk who have a greater chance of it being a terminal illness.

i hope nobody here lives in Georgia.
that state is surely headed for disaster sending their kids back to school with no mandatory prevention requirements.
 
I guess my family was lucky in that my great grandfather served in WW1 as part of the Camel Corp in the middle east and returned home physically ok and none in the family were touched by the Spanish Flu. Like now it probably helped being remote rural.
 
as someone who played varsity soccer for 11 years from 6th grade through college senior year, i can't imagine what school athlete's are going through. aside from soccer during the fall season, i usually found games over the summer with friends and when it got too cold, many of us switched to hockey for the winter. being isolated from team activities like it is now was never even a thought.
 
I drove by a high school yesterday and there was a baseball game going on. Thing looked pretty normal, no masks, no social distancing I could see, though I did not go in. The only odd thing is that it's not high school baseball season, maybe they are trying to make up for lost games earlier. I am not sure it was a great idea, but nobody asked me.
 
yeah, i had a friend who was a pitcher on our college team (he pitched a no-hitter...!) and their season was end of winter/ very early spring until the end of the school year .... ours was about a week before Memorial Day, but i know school years are all over the place these days. like BBall, they probably just started their season before it was 86'ed in March.
 
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