Is It Monday Again?

Welcome to another week! So I see that several places now have tip lines where you can squeal on people and businesses that are not following the rules! When did we turn into a live action version of 1984?

A friend of mine wanted to start a pool as to when society would just start ignoring all this stay at home stuff. Given some pictures I saw from California beaches and Central Park, I’d say we are already in the first stage. People are going to reclaim outdoor spaces. At first, they will try to maintain social distancing but that won’t last forever.

Waiting for the first businesses to just start flouting the laws in places behind the new iron curtain where certain governors are enjoying their new found powers. Just a guess but it wouldn’t shock me if some garden centers in parts of Michigan opened up. Then we get to stage 2 and we’ll see how local law enforcement acts. Then it gets super interesting.

It will be interesting to see what happens as certain places start to set people free. You can certainly expect everyone to be monitoring closely. If cases spike, you’ll have lots and lots of “I told you so” stories. If they don’t, then I’d expect media silence. But if people are freed in places and things don’t go to hell, then it puts more pressure on those places that are keeping a tight lid on things. That could also make things really interesting.

I won’t go a real rant here but the original plan behind curve flattening was to reduce the case load so it wouldn’t overwhelm our medical system. It wasn’t to keep people locked up until we had a vaccine. We are starting to see layoffs in hospitals – the Mayo clinic is either furloughing or cutting hours for almost half of its workforce. Does that sound like an overwhelmed healthcare system?

None of this is to minimize what is still a nasty virus. But we know so much more now than we did when all this stay at home stuff started. We got spooked by models that haven’t been predictive and by a constant drum beat of doom and gloom from our media. We know who the high risk groups are. We also know from several antibody tests that the number of people who had the virus is much higher than we suspected. Which means that the death rate among young healthy folks is much much lower than some of the early predictions.

I’m not saying to toss all caution to the wind but if we aren’t using the data and all we’ve learned to make some smart decisions, then we aren’t doing anyone any favors. For example, in places where working from home is an option, allow high risk types to continue to do that. If that’s not an option, then why not direct more of the stimulus money that way. Make smart decisions based on the risks.

Anyway, all of this is going to make May a very interesting month. As if we haven’t already had an interesting year.

Rocco’s upper respiratory thing came back. I’m waiting on the vet to see if we can just get a refill on the antibiotic or if they want to see him again. He’s mostly fine but he just coughs a lot. I’d tell people he has the virus but I don’t think there’s a real sense of humor about that yet.

Our farmers market is going to open on Saturday but they are doing a drive through market. I guess you just drive up the various vendors and get stuff. To be honest, I’m going to wait a week or so because I suspect this is going to be a work in progress. I imagine there’s a lot of kinks to work out.

Well that’s all I’ve got for now.