.
It’s very few peoples’ favorite chore even now, but before the widespread availability of washers & dryers, doing the laundry was one of the most demanding and least rewarding essential jobs. Any time after the Civil War up through the first Gilded Age, there was a standing trope about ‘washerwomen’ — drudges reduced by circumstance to picking up bundles of others’ soiled linens, heating huge amounts of water to ruin their hands scrubbing heavy wet sheets, shirts, and undergarments, hanging out the wet results to dry, and then heating cast iron implements on wood stoves to finish the job, before toting the fresh laundry (usually on foot) back to the various customers. Because it was a skill that every woman learned, since most homes already had the basic implements available, and because it was the sort of job that anyone who could afford it would gladly pay someone else to do, ‘taking in washing’ was the stereotypical terrible fate of widow ladies and other unfortunate women.
Since this was something every adult could be presumed to understand, there was also a standing joke about the nation’s capital and its monopoly industry: The city was called ‘Washing Done’ because its inhabitants made their livings swapping each others’ most tedious and demanding chores between them. ‘Washing Done’ was a specific, political catchphrase.
I thought of this when I heard about some of the earliest COVID-19 outbreaks, at places where vast numbers of strangers gathered to enjoy themselves before dispersing widely to their homes: A 40,000-person New Years potluck in Wuhan, various spas and funparks, a Swiss ski resort where the first British victims seemed to have picked up their infections. Tourism has become the go-to industry for many localities, where a comparatively modest expenditure and a large labor pool with few other options can hopefully attract itinerants with money to leave behind. ‘Tourists Welcome’ is our 21st-century version of ‘Washing Done’.
And now it’s reached the U.S., and not just the Disney parks and Las Vegas casinos. From TPM, “An Unexpected COVID-19 Hotspot Emerges In The Colorado Rockies”:
… Brueck would soon become one of the first diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Eagle County, Colorado, a region of the Rockies spotted with idyllic resort towns. Dozens of people came down with similar symptoms around the same time.
And the confirmed cases have continued to climb — so much so that Eagle County’s numbers have grown to the “hotspot” conditions found in much larger U.S. cities. As of Friday, there were 61 confirmed cases of the disease there, according to the state — nearly as many as Denver in a county of around 55,000.
While those numbers alone made Eagle County the heaviest-hit county in the state, the disease is likely much more widespread than the confirmed cases let on. Between a hundreds-deep backlog of test results and the typical gap between contracting the disease and showing symptoms, public health officials haven’t been able to track the true extent of COVID-19 spread…
Lying awake that night two weeks ago, Brueck remembered hearing about the first confirmed case of coronavirus disease in his state — a man who’d traveled to Italy and then returned to Colorado, where he went skiing at nearby Keystone Resort and Vail Mountain.
The Friday before feeling symptoms, Brueck had worked his restaurant job in the same area…
Normally around this time of year, the prime ski spots within Eagle County’s borders — Vail, Beaver Creek and Avon among them — would be flush with tourists from all over the world enjoying the Rocky Mountains and the sprawling hospitality-based economy that’s sprung up around them over the years.
Now, the slopes are closed. The Eagle County Regional Airport’s arrivals board is a red wall of cancellations. The area has emptied of international tourists and seasonal workers, whom resorts kicked out by the hundreds earlier this week.
Unlike many large, urban COVID-19 hotspots, the outbreak in Eagle County is affecting small towns, some of which are home to service workers who, Avon said, sometimes don’t have internet access. On Friday, the mayor was preparing to distribute print-outs of Cook’s op-ed around a mobile home park in town. Other towns facing a surge in cases ought to get creative when it comes to informing residents, Smith Hymes said.
“Somehow, at the earliest possible opportunity, even if you have to use alarmist language, they have to get the message out any way they can about how serious the situation is,” she said…
Which worries Ed Kilgore, at NYMag:
… Now that Trump has gotten the memo, and is at least rhetorically echoing expert assessments of the threat posed by COVID-19 and what Americans must do to stem its spread, there’s still a big gap in perceptions. As Ron Brownstein observes, it involves geographical differences that reinforce partisan differences:
If the virus never becomes pervasive beyond big cities, that could reinforce the sense among many Republican voters and office-holders that the threat has been overstated. It could also fuel the kind of xenophobia that Trump and other GOP leaders, such as Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have encouraged by labeling the disease the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus.”…
But even if (or, more likely, when) the virus spreads beyond the big metropolitan areas, there’s a chance it will simply reinforce small-town and rural hostility to the culturally alien influence of big-city folk aligned with foreigners, given the more cosmopolitan (demographically and economically as well) nature of Urban America…
Indeed, there was an urban-rural split in perceptions of the threat posed by the last great pandemic just over a century ago:
Eva Kassens-Noor, a professor in the global-urban-studies program at Michigan State University, studied urban/rural patterns in the 1918 flu pandemic in India. Her research found that mortality was much greater in urban places above a certain density level than in rural places below it. She believes that U.S. communities will experience the coronavirus in contrasting, but complex, ways: While the disease will probably spread more rapidly in urban areas, she says, more of the population there is young and healthy. And while outbreaks may not be as pervasive in rural America, they could still prove very damaging because the population is older and has less access to quality health care.
In other words, we could see higher mortality from COVID-19 in nonmetro areas, even if the number of cases (and the perceived need for strong mitigation measures) is lower.
So how will that play out psychologically and politically? It’s possible confidence in Trump and his administration will flag in Red America as the pandemic ceases to be mostly a blue-state, big-city phenomenon. But it’s also possible heartland insularity will feed on itself and embitter endangered people even more toward the godless, elitist mongrels of the East and West Coasts and the pathogens they breed.
Baud
That’s also why adopting the most alarmist pessimistic predictions could backfire on us.
Jerzy Russian
I discovered that I am low on wood glue. I think the local Home Depot is open because of infrastructure needs and the like, but I will probably try to hold out for a few more weeks. When the woodworking projects are done, we can move over to quilting to keep busy.
Martin
@Baud: The alternative is underestimating the impact, doing too little and then actually hitting the most alarmist pessimistic predictions.
I mean, good social models require looking at the context in which they are made. Do you have a epidemic forming? Are you doing anything about it?
So you have to plan for the worst case, because by the time you know if what you did worked, it’s too late to change course. Maybe California is a bit more accustomed to this as earthquakes happen so rapidly that you can’t scramble and prepare. You either got it right before the event, not knowing if the event might happen or not, or you didn’t.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I have some things I need to do for the next couple of weeks, and then I’m considering learning Spanish on Duolingo. This all would be easier if the weather were 20 degrees warmer.
ETA: Given that I’m a writer and have access to the internet and ebooks, I could get used to quarantine. I expect I’ll get irritable after a while. As long as neither Mr DAW nor I gets sick, I’m lucky enough to be in a good living situation.
Martin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Leaning into Watergirl’s suggesting of making our own fun, we should all learn a language together and then one day everyone stops commenting in english and switches to Vietnamese or something, without telling Cole.
Baud
@Martin:
I’m not talking about planning. I’m talking about internet gloom porn.
Mai naem mobile
Okay, so what you’re saying is that it was not a Democrat hoax but souper sekret plan to kill off the red voting olds in the rural areas thus making it harder for Trumpov to win reelection?
Original Lee
One of my cousins and her husband are ER doctors in rural Colorado. They put in orders for PPEs and other things back in December, when they thought they’d be seeing a post-Christmas break uptick in flu cases. The orders were late and also inadequate. My cousin had to go to Ace Hardware to buy eye protection for the entire emergency room staff out of her own pocket. At least they are being really careful with scheduling so everyone is getting time off for mental health / being outdoors as well as adequate sleep.
joel hanes
@Baud:
The virus is going to become pervasive because a sufficient minority of people in areas in which it has not yet become pervasive will act like idiots because they disregard information they do not like.
Those kids going home from spring-breaking on Florida beaches have seeded thousands of hot-spots that will be apparent in three weeks.
Ilieitz
I know this is off topic but Trump and his band of idiots just fired all of the Peace Corps Volunteers. I knew that if he could figure out a way to shut them down he would
oldgold
Today’s numbers from Italy: cases 53,578 (+6,557); deaths 4,826 (+793)
Benw
@Baud: given where many R voters and politicians get their information, does it really matter what predictions we make? They’ll be told what “we said” to make us look as bad as possible, so we might as well try to do the best we can regardless…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Benw: Remember it can also have a negative effect on jackals mental well being.
bbleh
And this would be different from the recent course of events, urged on by over a generation of Republican politicians … how, exactly?
The insularity and bitterness will always find some excuse to feed on itself and grow. If it’s not disease, it’s a lack of appropriate hostility toward immigrants or people of color or LGBTQ folk, or too many schools and not enough churches, or or or. This will just be another in a long, long list of grievances, about which, sadly, I can no longer bring myself to care.
pamelabrown53
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m already irritable and I’m introverted enough to welcome the self-quarantine. However,my anxiety level has been increasing because here in TX., we have no real guidance except from grocery store corporations and local government.
Yesterday, got an “emergency text” (like an Amber alert) from our city health dept. Just info. on wash your hands, don’t touch your face, etc.
My point is that I’m finding it difficult to concentrate and engage in the many undone, productive tasks I could do here at home and now.
Hopefully, this is just a bad few days.
Brachiator
Bad stuff may happen.
We will just have to deal with it.
It may help tremendously if we defeat Trump and the Republicans in November.
joel hanes
@pamelabrown53:
I find that it helps to disengage and go outside for a while. Your backyard, if you have one; a walk, if you don’t.
SFAW
@Baud:
Your concern is noted
ETA: I imagine the persons who “adopt the most alarmist pessimistic predictions” are a relatively small cohort, although “the most alarmist pessimistic predictions” is not very well-defined.
WaterGirl
@Martin: You couldn’t pick a language that would be easier to learn, could you? :-)
I did laugh out loud when I read your comment.
cmorenc
Many North Carolina beach islands, popular tourist spots, have now been closed to anyone but residents, owners, and workers. So far, this includes all of the Outer Banks, Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach in the Wilmington vicinity, and Surf City / Emerald Isle in the central coast. The south-facing Brunswick County beaches in the far southern part of the NC coast have so far not shut off visitors, but there are well-sourced rumors that closure of all nonessential businesses in the county is being seriously considered, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the visitation restrictions sooner or later extend here. We have a house on Sunset Beach (where I am at the moment) in Brunswick County – our island sits in the N.C. side of Little River Inlet, which divides N.C. and S.C. at the ocean.
Elizabelle
There is enough to worry about. I really don’t see the point of Ed Kilgore’s column, or disseminating it, because it’s all a great unknown at this point, and we cannot do that much about it anyway. Clickbait city for those who aren’t depressed enough.
The title: Red America May Blame Blue America for Coronavirus
Yeah, they just may. Fuck ’em.
I’m with Baud. Why do we have to load up on clickbait gloom porn?
There is enough tragedy afoot in the world without conjuring up more.
Kattails
Just found this via Stonekettle– hamster dining out with Mom
SFAW
@Martin:
Well, Raven DID teach us “xin loi,” so we could use that.
WaterGirl
@pamelabrown53: Some days I do pretty well, other days I am totally distracted.
It stinks to be in a state where there’s no leadership. I’m in Illinois, where we are locked down officially as of today, and I think that’s totally smart.
Not a good year to live in a state with bad leadership.
Elizabelle
@pamelabrown53:
Hugs. My house has not been “Kondo-ized” either. Finally made the spaghetti sauce that’s been on my to do list for 3 days.
We are living through a pandemic not seen in 102 years, but with instant communications and probably too much stimulation.
The suggestion to get outside is a good one. Take a (socially distanced!) walk if you can. Call someone who might need a call him/herself and cheer each other up.
Get offline for a bit. Grow that attention span!
It’s a marathon.
WereBear
@Elizabelle:
May? What’s this “May” BS, right? Of course they will. They already do.
Mary G
SW
Jefferson County Colorado here. What isn’t captured in this piece is the fact that this isn’t just about the mountain communities. Every weekend the middle and upper classes from all along the front range, the population centers of Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, etc head up to the same ski areas to use their passes to mingle with the same tourists in the same packed lodges at the bases of the mountains shoulder to shoulder at the bars and then get in their cars and head back down the mountain on I-70 to their homes and jobs for the work week. This has been going on since December when the outbreak occurred in Wuhan and the Chinese denied they had a problem. So we have had community spread here in the Denver metro area since then. God help us all.
J R in WV
We’re pretty rural, nearest neighbor is 100 yards away in a near vertical direction, more like a quarter mile on the farm road. Kroger’s is half an hour drive, our main grocery store, although I’ve started hitting up Aldi’s which is 8 or 10 minutes closer. When we moved out here, the road to town was a twisty two-lane road with lots of heavy truck traffic, and it was more than an hour to town. Now we’re 12 minutes from a big 4 lane expressway.
Balloon Juice is my social connection — the Jackals are who I “talk” to the most, though I email with friends and cousins as well. Got an email from Kona, HI where a cousin lives. He provided a great link that many jackals might enjoy, it’s truly a LOL moment. He was looking for garden seeds and found this! Do check out the photos of the … fruit? gourd? whatever it is.
I’m really grateful for the Internet, I have access to distracting space opera novels, magazine articles, pictures of classic autos, etc, etc. If the innertubes crash I’ll have more trouble staying “quarantined” up the hollow.
lamh36
I’m only really sharing this because thhe media has to do better than this, especially local media since the national media is dominated by Chump. People are already freaked out.
I wanted to mention that this headline is a bit misleading. Yes, she was tested for Cororovirus, but if her test results haven’t come back then calling this a Coronovirus related death is irresponsilble.
BTW, unless they are married, or have some legal documentation, her “partner” won’t be able to obtain her test results. Her next of kin will, so either parents or siblings. So he wont know for sure either.
He’s speculating and won’t have any idea if she was positive or not, unless they had LEGAL documentation that made him her POA.
TO BE CLEAR: She may well have died from complications of Cornovirus, but she also may have died of another respiratory illness. She never went to the ER even when she “felt something in her lungs”. Hospital ER would have tested her for other things other than Coronovirus.
Nelle
I just came in from a walk in the chilly sunshine. Visited with one neighbor while he stood up on his porch, and another while he stood in the street and me on the sidewalk. I took sidewalk chalk (I bought it for my granddaughters who are not now coming) and drew a hopscotch pattern in front of my front door and smiley faces on the driveways of several neighbors that I know. I’m 68 and will likely never grow up.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I have been working from home for a while, so did not feel as though I was under quarantine.
Often on a weekend, I will do a google search for “showtimes near me” to see if there is a movie I might want to check out today or tomorrow.
When I searched a short time ago, there was nothing. I forgot that the movie theaters are all shut down.
Now I feel the quarantine.
raven
@Martin: Choi Duck!
lamh36
@lamh36: Also, When you go to the ER, they will tell you to self-quarantine while waiting for resutls but also if you to start feeling worse come back to the ER. If they had found some other underlying condition, they would likely have kept her on isolated observation UNTIL her test results came back.
raven
@J R in WV: How far are you from Louisa KY?
Starfish
The virus may affect the most people in urban areas, but it has already reached rural areas. Mississippi seems to be ramping up testing, and they have 140 cases now.
Anti-urban racism is not just for Republicans. A lot of the NIMBYs who live in wealthy communities may consider themselves Democrats and have been saying, “See, *this* is why we should not build more housing in our community where most housing is $1M+.”
SFAW
@raven:
Welcome back!
[I don’t know if this is your first comment since returning (if that’s what you’re doing), but it’s the first one I’ve seen.]
trollhattan
@pamelabrown53:
IDK what awful fate befell Texas that since Ann Richards your governors have been a special kind of awful. Hang in there!
And maybe, just maybe the place flips in November. Is Abbot up for reelection?
raven
@SFAW: Nah, couple of days but thanks.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Not until 2022.
Lapassionara
I just watched Katie Porter’s sister (a physician in Texas) do the math regarding total population of U.S. times expected infection rate. She took the low end of the infection rate, which amounted to, IIRC, 150 million people infected. If 10% of those infected need critical care, that is 15 million. If some percent of those need a ventilator, then the U.S. needs way more ventilators then it has right now.
What she did not mention is that each person on a ventilator may need to be on that ventilator for 5 to 8 days (I have heard different numbers). So if we do not spread out the number of people getting the virus, i.e. flatten the curve, we will have to begin rationing care, as Italy has done. Since I am in a group, age-wise, that will not be given a ventilator under that scenario, I am feeling fairly alarmed right now.
Especially with Trump at the helm.
Fleeting Ex-istence
@Ilieitz: What? Well, damn. I hope, in the Aftertimes, we’ll again see the need to teach and learn from people in other cultures.
Mary G
Sab
@Elizabelle: My house hasn’t been kondoizes either because I am a packrat. I’ve been chopping up old sewing scraps to make facemasks. The prototype was pretty labor intensive but they should get easier. The damn cat keeps unthreading the sewing machine.
Wag
I lived in the Vail Valley and practice medicine in there for 13 years before moving to Denver. It is a tremendous community, that will pull together very well. That said, the coronavirus is hitting hard. I just received a notification that a long time local was the first eagle county fatality from the viral infection. He was a good man, well known in the community for singing at apres ski Parties. In addition to sending infected people around the country, it sounds like there is an outbreak of coronavirus in Mexico which is traced back to Mexican tourists. The weeks leading into holy week or a time for wealthy Mexican tourists to come to the Vail Valley, and apparently the president of the Mexican stock exchange got infected while visiting Vail and brought it home with him.
Sad an interesting times. I hope it ends as well as possible with a minimum of fatality.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Vietnamese is easier than a lot of others I could have chosen: Korean, Icelandic, etc.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So what’s the point of this article; what ever outcome is, the conservatives will see themselves of victimized. We already know that. This is the problem of any job that involves fixing problems, whether it is a car mechanic or brain surgeon; there are always ignorant douches who will sit on their ass and tell you how you suck. Donald Trump is the poster child for that mentality; someone called him on his BS and put him charge and even though he is the most powerful man on earth, Trump just sits there and whines how everyone else sucks and how he could do it better.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle:
Every time I think about going through things now to simplify, I don’t want to do it because I’m not convinced that I won’t be coronavirusing everything I touch. :-( Maybe after I’ve been home for 14 days. I was at day 10, and feeling safer, and then had to go out to the store yesterday b/c of the gov’s order. I am back at day 1 again. Frustrating.
raven
@Martin: Because of the infusion of French in Vietnamese?
Martin
@Mary G: It’s well known that most bootstraps are made from antiviral materials.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: It must be hard playing the banjo while standing at an angle like that!
NotMax
It’s something, if sounding somewhat clunky.
Understandable but regrettable.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: We love you, too.
NoraLenderbee
A language closer to English might be easier to learn. How about Frisian?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And something else, even if these cow bothering idiots understand that it was the “Coastal Elites” who saved their bacon from a slow death they will still hate all more because the Evil Libertards were right. As John said, they hate.
J R in WV
@cmorenc:
OK, NOW I’m jealous !!! We have visited most of the barrier islands from Delaware to Key West and Sunset Beach was among the best.
Not far from the Green Swamp Conservation area chock full of carnivorous plants, for the bonus win! Native Venus Fly Traps and Sundews. When we visited the conservation preserve, we were hiking in on the maintained path, looking everywhere for the Fly Traps and Sundews, and then I looked down — there they were, on the path itself underfoot !!! Then, once we saw them the first time, they were everywhere! Great fun!
Mnemosyne
I’m more than a little freaked out about the whole thing because I have non-severe asthma that’s acting up because everything is in bloom right now. (I don’t have allergies — it’s strictly the sheer amount of crap in the air that’s clogging up my lungs.) I’ve been taking my temperature in the morning and at night and it’s been fine so far, but I’m nervous about what could happen if I do catch it.
On the plus side, G managed to score the last 20-pack of toilet paper at the grocery store this morning, and now I know how prehistoric women felt when their man came home with a big slab of wooly mammoth. ?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’ve been doing that for a while now. I can read basic things pretty good know.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
I got allergy related sinus infection today. It sucks.
NotMax
@Martin
Klingon or go home.
:)
Miss Bianca
@Kattails: Aaaaagh, screaming cuteness!
J R in WV
@raven:
How far are you from Louisa KY?
We’re 49 miles east on twisty county roads. My Grandma was born there, I’ve been to family funerals there. Why do you ask?
Martin
@raven: Part of it. But they have a romanized written language which is easier for westerners to pick up – particularly for a blog where nobody is going to know how badly we fuck up the pronunciations. I think Korean would be harder because you also have to learn a very different kind of writing system. Icelandic is just fucking hard in every way. Its hard to pronounce, which we could gloss over, but they have an extremely baroque grammar.
I guess as a service, we should be learning Gaelic or Welsh, given that quite a few of us are attached in one way or anther to those regions, and the languages are dying.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Yeah, the one thing I find *really* comforting about living in CO right now (hot spot capital of the non-coastal West, yee-haw!) is that our governor’s office and state legislature are both being run by nice, competent Democrats.
Well, that and the weather has been mild enough for me to spending several hours a day out in the fresh air with my new horsie. Honestly, I was so afraid that I had fucked up bigly by getting her right when the 1918 Spanish Flu decided to shake hands with the Great Depression, but it’s been a godsend to have her to focus on.
chris
Bert and I went visit to the Mother of Pines this afternoon. We kept a respectful distance since she’s surrounded by wet bog and wild rose bushes but she’s still looking good.
NotMax
IMPORTANT
Android phone? Beware, do not click on it.
CovidLock ransomware exploits coronavirus with malicious Android app
Eric U.
@Mnemosyne: I have pretty mild asthma and it has been particularly bad recently. Not the best timing for that.
There are rural folk that drive down the road I can see out of my study window. The traffic has not slowed at all. I have no idea where people are driving, nothing is open. I guess they are driving to get cigarettes and lottery tickets. At least I think the convenience stores are open.
WaterGirl
@Lapassionara:
So say we all. Or at least many of us. I have had the “not enough ventilators, people dying hallways” image in my head for at least 3 weeks.
That’s why I am furious at people like my brother-in-law.
He and his 3 buddies flew to fucking Florida for 5 days, just returning yesterday. They just HAD to go to some bar for some big St. Patrick’s day celebration in Tampa.
It’s selfish and irresponsible.
He is over 65 and has serious health issues. My older sister asked him not to go, his daughters outright pleaded with him, begging him not to go.
I am really wondering if he might be worried about dying because of multiple health issues, and he decided he’d rather go out with a bang. Not a happy thought for me, as you can imagine. He is more like a brother since i have known him since i was 13, and he was there for my first kiss.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
LOL!!
NotMax
@NotMax
Heh. Too late realized that could be read as not to click on the link provided. DO click on that to learn about it, DON’T click on the message or app for the malware should it show up on your phone.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: Yeah, I read the story in the NOLA paper. (I think you linked to it!) Headline:
This 39-year-old New Orleans woman tested for coronavirus. She died before getting her results.
Which made me wonder if it could be something else. The paper was pretty good about not saying it was COVID, since … unknowable at this point.
But sad to lose a 39 year old woman.
And she had that experience of seeming to improve slightly before taking a nosedive — have heard of that in stories about other COVID cases. From her boyfriend’s FB post about her death:
That was the last time he saw her. They texted Friday morning; she did not answer later in the day; he found her dead in her kitchen Friday night.
Natasha Ott was a former Peace Corps volunteer who was a social worker in a program with HIV positive clients.
From the FB post; looks like it was about 11 days from onset to death. (Tuesday to Friday the week next.) She was tested about Day 6, but never got the results.
The last lines of Joshua’s FB post, from about 14 hours ago:
Mary G
@Lapassionara: Those sisters know their way around a whiteboard.
@Martin: I know what an exponential curve looks like intellectually, but that chart brought it home to me on a visceral level. Tennessee was only like 4-6 days behind on some of the actions, but they have the horrific curve that Italy is going through, and Kentucky is beautifully flattened as the president would say.
Last, I am a huge fan of Ed Kilgore and feel a bit defensive of him. He’s spent decades in Democratic politics, starting with his home state of Georgia. He’s trying to say that approval ratings and presidential bad behavior might not affect the deplorables’ votes and we need to focus on GOTV. Remember our Balloon Juice tag – Peak Wingnut was a Lie.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
You have a new horsie?! I demand photos!
In fact, you should probably send photos to a front-pager to cheer all of us up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t find it now, but earlier a Washington Post reporter tweeted that he had seen three basketball games, a soccer game and a couple of large picnics. Someone else that last night the pubs in London were doing a brisk business on what was I gather their last night open? I don’t get it. Do people not see the images from Italy?
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: My niece in Colorado is taking great comfort in the actions of your governor. Glad the horse ended up being a godsend – it could surely have gone either way.
Elizabelle
@Wag: First, my sympathies on your friend.
I put up long excerpts from a Los Angeles Times story about the Mexican jet setters taking COVID19 back with them on the previous thread (#106 and a few after that.)
Here’s the LA Times story:
Los Angeles Times. Some of Mexico’s wealthiest residents went to Colorado to ski. They brought home coronavirus
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
One thing I’ve been wondering is the places on lockdown…are you allowed to walk your dog? Because mine is kind of picky and doesn’t just go right in the yard. She’s got to walk a little bit before she’ll do her business.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
The link is valid and should be clicked on. My sentence construction was less than optimum.
Elizabelle
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Yeah, I think dog walking and walking is OK in the US (maybe not in Italy; don’t know).
Just maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet from other humans. (Which may mystify your dog.)
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Why easier? We have time……
Mnemosyne
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Yes, dog walking is fine but they want you to keep social distance. A 911 dispatcher I know says that the last thing the cops want to do right now is to haul someone in for something dumb like walking their dog when that means they’re going to have to be in the confines of a squad car with a potentially infected person.
L85NJGT
@Lapassionara:
This nurse in Bergamo hasn’t seen anyone in ICU come off of ventilation in two weeks.
tam1MI
A-fricking-men to this. I am already scared and worried about not just myself, but my friends, family, and co-workers. All the gloom porn does is make me want to just give up. I think that is what is driving at least some of the irresponsible behavior we have been seeing with people spring breaking in Florida and the like. The attitude of, “Since we are all going to die no matter what we do, why not have a little fun on the way?”
Nelle
This may sound distinctly uncomfortable, but I’m thought experimenting with coming to terms that this might mean my death. If there is a triage situation, I have no doubt and every expectation that I will not get treatment. I’m 68, a bit overweight, have a cough. I’m staying in, though my husband can’t resist occasional quick darting out (he’s out right now, conducting a check flight for a National Guard guy who is about to go to helicopter training and wanted more of my husband’s teaching, even if just in a small plane).
I think my head began to come to terms with it when we lived in New Zealand and I realized that, if there were limitations within National Health Care, the services rightly would go to someone younger, particularly if that person had small children. Am I playing tricks with myself, I ask. Is my not-brain self ready? Maybe I’m trying to motivate myself to finish some organization. But I did get our wills (needed new ones after moving to a new state) ready, most of the finances are in order, etc. Household papers and junk will be a problem, but they can always just burn it all up.
Anyway, I’m not aware that I’m particularly scared or anxious. I am trying to be prepared, though how one emotionally prepares for a pandemic and it chaos, is beyond us. Prepare what we can and then let it be.
Uncle Cosmo
@Martin: I vote for Czech. The diacritical marks alone will drive the Blogmeister around the bend. Plus, I have several textbooks with CDs, a really topnotch dictionary, a 4-page cheat sheet, and “401 Czech Verbs.” Also copies of “The Great Gatsby” and “Dubliners” in Czech.
JaneE
I live in a tourist town, but our season is late spring thru mid fall. Normally traffic and visitors would be ramping up now, but just 40 miles north is a ski resort area, and they just reported their first confirmed case of COVID-19. Most of the businesses here are used to the winter lean times, but absolutely count on making enough the rest of the year to keep them going. Some close for the winter, most places reduce their hours. Now, no one is open except for delivery and take-out. Most everyone did take-out before, but not many did delivery. The motels and campgrounds and packers can’t even do that.
Even the traffic up and down our residential street is lower than usual, but I can hear one of the neighbors outside talking to someone right now. We will see how it goes after a couple of weeks like this.
divF
@Uncle Cosmo: I suggest German, just to make esteemed commenter Amir Khalid happy.
raven
@J R in WV: One of my best friends from high school (and Vietnam) was a coal mine safety inspector and lived there. He got prostate cancer and it looked good but he hit a deer while riding his motorcycle back from the VA in Huntington and didn’t make it. His widow is still there and very active in animal rescue.
raven
@Martin: I can’t swear pretty well in Korean and Vietnamese. Immersion I guess!
Eunicecycle
@Uncle Cosmo: I second. My niece lives there so I could surprise her!
Ken
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: It would depend on the shelter-in-place order, but the ones I’ve seen allow going outside for both pet care and exercise.
Here’s the one from Illinois, which also keeps the cannabis dispensaries open.
different-church-lady
A few days ago I had the unfortunate realization that the effect of this crisis is that everyone is going to go right on being who they are, only more so.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Remember: within a week we went from “Wash your hands and maintain 6 foot distance” to “IF YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE OR TOUCH A SOLID OBJECT WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!1!”
There’s a sweet spot, but none of us know where it is.
evodevo
Mr. Evodevo and I made a grocery run this AM looking for something for supper…there was literally not a piece of fresh meat in any of our favorite groceries, OR our little local butcher shop/deli. No TP either, of course, though I didn’t care about that since I loaded up a couple weeks ago before this all hit. The Toyota plant (Georgetown) suddenly announced they would close down for the next 3 weeks, and I guess it got real for the locals who tend to be Repub denialists. The gov has already mandated closure of everything except essential businesses, so a LOT of self-employed/small business/”independent contractor” people are really really screwed. Economic panic has started to set in for them. HOWEVER, our curve is a lot flatter than other states, so far, and our verified case load is still below a hundred. Fingers crossed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Korean has an alphabet, it’s actually pretty easy to learn, now if you move from hangul to hanja, that’s different(hanja is Korean using Chinese characters).
Denali
Apparently there is a hot spot in Albany, Georgia, where 6 people have died and 46 are infected with the virus. The town is currently on lockdown. How has this happened?
Anne Laurie
Take her for a nice long walk, you’ll both feel better — just stand well away from any other humans, you’ll be fine.
In fact, in some *very* locked-down places, like Madrid, walking a dog is one of the few things people are allowed to leave their homes to do. There are jokes on twitter about neighbors ‘borrowing’ dogs, just so they have an excuse to get some fresh air! (Including at least one possibly-fake video of someone ‘walking’ a toy dog at the end of a stiff leash, for the lulz.)
Elizabelle
@divF: I like the idea of German. It’s got some incredibly descriptive words, and you can puzzle out the meaning of some of the long ones. Plus, we already know the alphabet.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I will, I am taking photos – in fact, I was thinking of petitioning Water Girl or one of the other FPer’s to let me do a little guest post on her – I got her from an equine rescue agency here in CO, which do God’s work for horses the way humane societies and rescue groups do for other animals.
ETA: Seems like that might be a natural point of interest for the jackaltariat, even if they don’t give two hoots in a holler for off-track Thoroughbreds.
Origuy
I started doing Duolingo with Russian, which I had already been studying. I got pretty far along, and decided that it would be a long time before I went back to Russia. I switched to Spanish, which I studied in school. One thing I like about Duolingo is that you can take a test and skip the basics if you already know them. I’m in section 5 out of 7 in Spanish. I studied German in college but don’t remember much, so I didn’t pass the basic test. I started Welsh just for kicks, but I haven’t gotten very far in it.
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle:
Not formally *knowable*, but if you consider the mortality rate for pneumonia among 39 yo, even those with other health conditions, and the per capita rate of diagnosed COVID in LA (third highest in the nation and focused in NOLA) …
It was COVID.
Fair Economist
@Denali:
Georgia has it really bad. They started getting outbreaks all over the place about 2 weeks ago. Testing is slow and the government dragged its feet (total Republican control, of course). There’s a nurse tweeting from Augusta who says they are already overwhelmed and doing 16 hour shifts. Plus, it takes only one superspreader to make an outbreak like that.
HinTN
@SFAW:
I’ve clearly missed something. Where is Raven?
Miss Bianca
@Origuy: Oh, Russian *and* Spanish! I took one semester of Russian in college, wish to Bog I had taken more – I *loved* it! Alas, I waited till the fall of my junior year, and other, more pressing duties, like accumulating the credits I actually needed to graduate, made themselves manifest.
Always wanted to go back to it. Spanish I have studied off and on for years, that would be useful to go back to, too!
I like the idea of a BJ challenge: go and learn one new thing, or practice a new art or craft, during this quarantine period and tell each other about it!
Amir Khalid
@divF:
Bahasa Malaysia pun boleh.
HinTN
@raven: ask and you shall receive…
You haven’t been around in the morning, at least that I’ve noticed.
Alex
Colorado— I have worked at high altitude, and had pneumonia at moderate altitude like most of Colorado. Altitude plus respiratory distress is a nightmare.
satby
@evodevo: you’re somewhere in the vicinity of Lexington? My son who was working for the Toyota plant in Georgetown got a job with the city of Lexington doing fleet maintenance, so he’s considered essential personnel. Luckily, because his girlfriend was told to stay home from her job and her son is home from school, so he’s the only one bringing in any money. I’m so glad a Democrat was elected governor there, it’s helped slow the spread. And the information from the state government is accurate and gets the gravity of the situation across.
Anne Laurie
@Alex: Ugh. You remind me how much I would *not* want to be experiencing ‘respiratory distress’ at even modest elevation.
Back in the year 2000, I had a sinus-blocking cold during a hobby conference in Albuquerque. Made the mistake of taking the aerial tram up to the Sangre de Cristo park resort… and came down on the next tram, because my nailbeds were turning blue!
For months afterwards, I’d start wheezing after even moderate exertion. Scary, and I knew it was only a cold…
pamelabrown53
@trollhattan:
Sorry, but I’ve only lived in TX. about 9 months.
Raoul
@SW: And there are those of us who are fortunate enough to have a condo or cabin, and travel a few times per season for a long weekend or week. I fly out from Minnesota.
I was in Summit County, riding at Keystone and Breck, Feb 24-Mar 4. (Keystone had a mumps outbreak in that time as well!)
It’s March 21, so I think I’ll be ok from that trip. Thankful that it’s unlikely I was a vector from there, but a week or 10 days later I might have been (though I was tracking CV19, and even traveling home on the 4th I was handwashing and sanitizing like mad. And grateful for a half-full flight. Can’t imagine I’d have stayed much longer, I was ready to flee and be with my honey at home).
But my best snowboarding buddy lives in Colorado Springs and was last at Keystone on March 13. His partner is a respiratory therapist. I was a little aghast at my friends choice to go. He did follow some social distance notions – loading lifts only with a friend he traveled with, eating a sandwich he brought at a picnic table. And it was a Friday, so not as crowded. But he said the lift lines were hard to keep spaced well.
By March 16, the county was shutting down. I got text and email messages as I am registered as a ‘business’ (I rent my place short term). It was basically: GTFO if you aren’t a permanent resident of Summit. I hadn’t thought to go back out there anyway, but they made it clear: Very limited hospital capacity, stay away.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: I’m pretty sure that can be arranged!
Uncle Cosmo
@divF: Est ist mir egal.
SFAW
@HinTN:
He took a hiatus for a few weeks (or maybe more?) Kay has also decided to stay away; I hope it’s not permanent, I really miss her.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
I vote for ig-pay atin-lay, although I’m ot-nay uent-flay in it.