The Coronavirus | Contains 4.5% Alcohol

[Moonface]

Still, this is a positive sign, especially considering things are turning dismal again in the US.

Yeah, the US has managed to hit 100,000+ cases per day for the last 7 days in a row. I don't expect it'll be long before the country can manage to get 1 million cases in a single week, especially with the holidays coming up.

[ShiraNoMai]

I almost feel like it's gonna be inevitable for at least 95% of the population to actually contract the virus at some point before the vaccine is in hand. The majority of people aren't helping stop the spread anymore and it's just gonna keep going up until it gets to that point, you know?

It sucks cause I feel like if the message was fed to the public properly from day one, we wouldn't be having such widespread "complacency" and general ignorance about it. Something as simple as showing this chart could've just made things so much different, I think:

[Dragon Lord]

Even if Trump had told people to mask up and take everything seriously, I have a feeling it wouldn't have mattered. Far too many Americans are stuck in their ways and consider being asked/told to wear a mask as a major violation of their freedoms. Obviously the way Trump responded didn't help matters at all, but with the way America is, I don't think anything would have stopped it from spreading like it has. Countries like Japan and other Asian countries are used to wearing masks during their flu seasons, so it's normal over there and obviously their people had no issues wearing them during COVID.

One of the reasons I don't mind wearing a mask is actually because I always wished that America would have been more like Japan when it came to wearing masks during the flu season. So while I don't agree with the whole "end of the world, blah blah blah" narrative people are still pushing with COVID, I don't have any issues wearing a mask.

As for a vaccine, I'm honestly more interested to see how it gets received more than anything. There's so many people around where I live that won't take one no matter what. Some people they think COVID is a hoax and others because they think a COVID vaccine is some government brainwashing conspiracy. Personally, I don't know if I'll get a COVID vaccine just because I'm personally not too worried about it. I normally don't get a flu shot either, so I just don't see myself going out of my way to do it.

As for some Minnesota COVID news, our Governor put new restrictions in place for bars and restaurants. In-door dining must close at 10 PM starting tomorrow (Nov 13th) and places cannot open for in-door dining again until 4 AM. In addition for bars, people cannot be at the bar. They have to sit at tables and remain seated, and the bartenders will have to go out to the tables to take orders/etc.. Honestly it's extremely stupid and he's an absolute idiot. Just shut them down for a month and see how things are progressing at that point, instead of putting these really silly restrictions in place. This isn't going to help at all and I'm willing to make a pretty good bet that he's going to end up shutting shit down again by December anyways.

[Moonface]

Yeah, Trump just gave the people who don't like masks more validation in their views. Being anti-mask is definitely not restricted to America. It just gets more traction here because there are more people in the US than other countries, so it's going to look like a much bigger group of people when it could possibly just be a similar percentage of the population as in smaller countries.

Closing places at 10PM seems....pointless to me. I think the UK did a similar thing and I just don't get the point. Like sure, it stops people being out past 10 but that's like saying "Well you can drive over the speed limit between these times but not outside because we can't have too many accidents from it". I also expect it just encourages people who would go later to go earlier and result in more people being present than there might normally be.

[Dragon Lord]

Agreed about the anti-mask thing not just being America, but it's definitely more of an issue here because we have more people who are like "The constitution makes it illegal for the government to tell me to wear a mask!" Like I said, Trump surely didn't help at all, but this would be an issue regardless. It's not going to stop being an issue because Americans feel entitled to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Even when/if Biden puts a federal mask mandate into effect, it's not going to magically make all these people start wearing one. They won't care about it one little bit.

Also agreed about the people just going out earlier rather than later. The "point" behind this is because they believe the reason for an increase spread in Minnesota is from 18-35 year olds going to bars and restaurants. Forcing bars to close down a few hours earlier really isn't going to do a whole lot. It doesn't effect most places around where I live, because a majority of restaurants and stuff close at 8-10 PM anyways. My work closes the kitchen at 9, and we don't open until 11 AM anyways, so overall we're unaffected for now. Though as I said, once this whole thing proves to be a failure, I'm willing to bet he'll do a hard shut-down of bars and restaurants again and we'll be limited to only doing take-out, or maybe even fully shut down.

[Moonface]

I think a hard shutdown is really off the table until after New Year at this point. Unless all but grocery stores are closed, people are going to be out in droves going holiday shopping, and then there's all the gatherings that are going to happen. It'd be better to hard shutdown when there aren't events happening that will encourage people to get together or go out.

[Moonface]

Going by what I've seen at my job over the last week alone, a lot of people are absolutely doing big gatherings for Thanksgiving. Panic buying has also come back again too where I live. Sigh.

[Eric]

Same...I'm hearing a lot of talks from co-workers making plans for the holidays. It's always funny to hear them say something to the effect of "well yeah, it's going to be a gathering but it's a small one...also, we're going to be responsible so it'll be fine." Like Patricia, your interpretation of how viruses spread has been completely lost on you.

Edit: Stupid people like this and the trend of our handling of the virus here in the states and in Europe worries me that this virus will, or has, become endemic.

[Dragon Lord]

Tomorrow begins a new round of shut-down orders from our Governor. Bars and Restaurants are not allowed to have dine-in services for the next 30 days (but I'm willing to bet it ends up being extended multiple times all the way to March or April). Overall not going to affect this area much, because the bars were already dead as fuck and this is probably going to end up causing a large amount of bars in rural areas to end up going out of business and being forced to close their doors for good.

As for my own place of employment, we'll really only see a change during our lunch time. Night time has remained like 95% take-out orders since after the first shutdowns back in spring, but lunch is the opposite. So we'll definitely see a noticeable loss of business from like 11 AM (when our kitchen opens) to probably 4 or 5 PM.

The High School here in town finally announced that they'd be going fully to distance learning once more after Thanksgiving, and will remain as such until after New Years.

The worst thing of all though is that our Governor still has no direction in anything he's doing. He put a 10 PM closing restriction on bars and restaurants two weeks ago, only to then shut them down a week later. I don't know what him and his team are doing, aside from wasting a lot of time and making a lot of pointless decisions.

[Moonface]

I expect most schools will close after Thanksgiving before the year is over. I know the colleges around here are no longer doing breaks in the middle of semesters and instead moved them all to the end of the semester, so as to not have students traveling in that week off and coming back potentially infected, but they can't really avoid having to be off for at least four days for Thanksgiving, so logically they would all go to online classes after it because who knows who traveled where and how many people they were around.

For anyone who has cable to see the news, has there been anything yet about airport travel for Thanksgiving? I've not heard anything yet but just wondered if anyone else has.

[Moonface]

I have a friend who told everyone yesterday that they discovered their parents lied about being sick with bronchitis so she would visit them for Thanksgiving. Turns out they actually have Covid and lied because they knew she wouldn't visit otherwise. She now has to tell everyone she has been around in the time between visiting her parents and finding out what they were really sick with, and after spending ages job hunting has to cancel an interview she was supposed to have today.

Best part is, her mother is a nurse and thought this was a good idea and doesn't get why her daughter is incredibly pissed off with her right now.

Some people, I swear.

[Mr EliteL]

Saturday, I felt strange at work. First 5 hours I was fine but then suddenly I felt tired. Kept going like a trooper until 12:40pm but had to go, was going to stay till 1. Thought it was something else but now I've developed a high temperature. To be honest it's starting to look really bad. Going to get tested, and will notify the bad or miraculous good news when I have the result.

You all stay safe and don't take distancing lightly. It was probably the rush during Xmas or this past Saturday I caught this.

EDIT: I'm feeling kind of better than earlier thanks to taking two strong paracetamol, although spent most of my day in bed and of course did not go to work. I've eaten way less than I usually do, so far only had a small amount of cereal, banana and a slice of dry toast. With the high temperature and low appetite I've had in total 11 symptoms that don't happen at once so I'm thinking I may not test positive but have to know how long I/we have to isolate. Another worker's off and she lives with her sons who also work where I work, meaning the store lost 6 people in one day. Oh crap.

My symptoms

High temperature, tiredness, fatigue, headache, stomach ache, diarrhea, low appetite, difficulty sleeping, sore throat, shivering, high heart rate (it was 112 and that was resting)

Hope I'll have better night as I felt terrible last night and this morning.

[ShiraNoMai]

Oh fuck, EL no

Hoping it's just a bad stomach bug. Fever and heart rate are just signs of fighting off infection.

[Mr EliteL]

Luckily my temperature has gone down this morning, but still have symptoms and I feel a cough coming on but I can hold it back. Have no strength due to a certain symptom and lack of food yesterday. I want to try and build strength back, but worried about that symptom continuing or getting worse. Have to ease into it. I've gone off ham and sausage/pigs in blankets as we kept having that for dinner since Xmas, it could've been them. You might be right about stomach bug, I just felt so bad Sunday night and yesterday I had to get confirmation it isn't worse. Still waiting on the home test as I didn't want to sit in an enclosed space with my sister when I was at my worst or spread it there. They're going to get tested themselves at a test site.

[Moonface]

I hope you get better soon EL.

Also, I love how Boris Johnson decided to have schools open for one day and then announces they're being closed from today onwards. That should've been announced before yesterday with the rest of the lockdown being put out yesterday like it was. Now all those kids have gone to school and who knows how many might be carrying the virus on them. What a joke.