Rode the bike to town yesterday. Very small, spotty town in the rural southwest that arose for no good reason I ever learned and has been slowly dying in sections like a juniper since probably before I was born. And as for the “shutdown” rules…
People still pay attention to all those lines taped on the floors but I notice the makeshift face masks are mostly gone.
The only retail outlets still closed are the thrift store and a probably doomed storefront gym that just opened before the shutdown.
Both restaurants were doing brisk business at their drive-throughs, as was the only liquor store.
A little coffee shop that (to my great surprise) did really well when it opened a couple of years ago but that closed immediately after the shutdown is taking this opportunity to do a lot of construction and is apparently expanding as a restaurant into an adjoining building – but it’s still closed.
The auto parts store is “open” again but you have to call ahead and the manager will meet you at the door with your purchase.
The Subway sandwich shop, which was closed for a couple of weeks, compromised by leaving the eat-in booths closed and asking people to wait outside if there’s more than six people in line.
And there are sneeze shields everywhere, which probably isn’t a bad thing anyway.
Well, to put this in perspective, America has lost more to this pandemic (60,778 deaths) in the last month than the number of deaths (58,209) suffered in Viet Nam. And, the virus hasn’t peaked in America yet.
Careful, you keep riding that bike to town you’ll become a townie before you know it!
Joel,
Here’s something to brighten your day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0dzwjPtAwY
TK421a – to truly put it into perspective, Corona-Chan is still quite a bit short of a normal seasonal flu.
And hugely short of medical system-caused deaths.
And in comparison to the yearly Cholera outbreaks in the late 1890s to 1910’s in the South, Wu Ping Cough is still a poor loser.
Tim McCann: That was terrible! I loved it!
Which also happened to be almost word for word the first comment on the page, but so what.
@ Beans – yes COVID-19 causes an illness that does have flu-like symptoms plus COVID-19 and the flu can be mild, severe, or, fatal and both can also lead to pneumonia. However, the overall profile of COVID-19 is more serious
The flu season goes from October, when it gets cold, to when it warms up in the spring which means a 5 or 6-month run. COVID-19 has only been serious in the US since early March. So, if it’s like the flu, this means there are another few months for it to run. Considering that there isn’t a vaccine yet, there’s no herd immunity and no evidense that COVID-19 will subside with the warm weather, the 5 to 6-month run is optimistic
As for body count…
The mortality rate of the flu is 0.1%. The latest studies place the mortality rate of COVID-19 between 1% and 3%* So far of those who have caught COVID-19, worldwide, 7.1% have died.
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445320301018
That mortality rate is BS, it’s 7.1% of people with symptoms bad enough that they are hospitalized are dying. When they test 100% of a large group they find out that most people who get it show no symptoms, and of the ones that do most are mild.