Coronavirus ~ COVID-19

[Kätzchen]

So, not sure if any of you know about some of the things going on in my own metro area of Oregon. Last week, after nearly two months of people who desperately needed unemployment benefits, our governor was presented with enough evidence by two Democratic senators, who represent big districts of voters in our metro area, to force the governor to fire the chief honcho who used to run the Unemployment/Employment department. Many people in our state have not received unemployment covid benefits to this date. Two and a half months later, still no one has received any monetary assistance. My sister-in-law is in that group of people who are in dire financial straits. I would be in that situation too, had I still been an independent contractor and in the same industry she is in. Thank heavens I am not, but wow, imagine how bad it is for people who are still not receiving any compensation from being laid off their jobs, due to the ongoing spread of COVID 19.

Which, btw, the largest county in our metro area is planning to open up to the 1st phase of opening up the county. Not nary a word in the news about up-ticks in new covid cases, which there are new cases being reported each day since last week or the week before. But we hear about it via OPB news snippets during the first airing of news on the radio as we drive to work.

Each day that goes by, particularly this coming week, highways will be jam-packed with frenzied drivers hurrying to work, which will make getting to work a long an arduous commute. Even public transit still has limited service and limits the amount of riders allowed on buses or trains. It is going to be a nightmare, once next week gets under way.

Today? I went out and bought more toilet paper, face tissues, and restocked OTC meds I have run out of, since things disappeared from stores weeks ago. We still can't find cleaning products like we used to be able to buy, before this all went haywire in early March.

But I've found replacement supplies at natural grocer types of stores. I've had to pay a higher price to get it, but at least I have what I need on hand here at home, in case we come to a screeching halt again. It's hard to find clean fresh uncompromised food sources. I am super careful where I buy my produce, because in recent local news, several produce suppliers and local produce farms were found to have their work crews who tested positive for COVID. So that is very concerning news. It makes finding uncompromised food super difficult.

At work? This past week, plexiguard barriers were installed everywhere on campus. Laminated signs are on nearly every window, door, hallway, in the elevators, bathrooms and no lobby furnishings have returned -- so people can't sit in the lobby or meander around doing nothing or claim that no one told them they can't stand around invading each other's space. The six foot rule will be enforced and it will all be on CCTV so people can't lie their way out of not knowing the rules and/or the new standards for conduct & decorum (pinch of sarcasm alert).

I'm worried. I am very concerned. COVID is not over with and now it's going to be super serious if new waves of illness take off due to people not changing their behaviors.

That's all I got for now. I hope we all survive and that safety is not compromised over the coming weeks and months ahead.

[C0LLETTE]

CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

What a coincidence that the companies that own the largest grocery chains in Canada all decided – some within hours of each other – that the danger posed by COVID-19 no longer merits forking over a couple of extra bucks for each employee. Surely the timing is just happenstance; these companies would never collude on something so untoward.

With the exception of Walmart, which ended its program on May 31, all the other major grocers – Loblaw, Metro and Empire (which owns Sobeys and Safeway) – decided last week to end their “hero pay” programs, which saw employees earn an extra couple of dollars an hour in exchange for working during a global pandemic. The companies cited the end of acute-crisis conditions and the establishment of a “new normal” as justification for returning to regular wages.

Now, perhaps these grocery chief executives know something about contracting COVID-19 that the rest of us do not, because according to ... well, virtually everyone else, the pandemic in Canada is anything but over.

Grocery-store employees are currently working in what is probably the highest-traffic workplace outside of hospitals (and hospital staff, it should be noted, are actually trained to work under pandemic conditions). That regions are slowly reopening doesn’t mean the risk to individuals is gone; it means that the outbreak has been controlled to the extent that hospitals, testing and contact-tracing can theoretically keep pace with continuing infections. In Ontario, the number of new daily infections is roughly where it was in late March, back when these companies first introduced their pandemic pay bumps.

So while these grocers might feel confident in their carefully crafted messages about normalcy returning to their stores, the reality is that in many regions, grocery-store workers will still continue to get sick. The difference is, they will now get sick while back on minimum wage.

It’s true that the pandemic pay bump, which saw Loblaw, Walmart and Metro employees paid an extra $2 an hour and Empire workers earn an extra $50 a week plus $2 extra for every hour over 20 hours, was always supposed to be temporary. It was introduced amid an initial panic that stores wouldn’t have enough staff to maintain essential operations during those uncertain first few weeks. But the health risk to front-line grocery workers hasn’t changed all that much between then and now. Plexiglass shields and physical-distancing practices were implemented around the same time as the pay bumps, not materially after.

What has changed since the end of March, rather, is the business case for a $2-an-hour premium. Grocery stores operate on relatively thin margins, where wages constitute the largest proportion of operating expenses. Now that Canadian cities are starting to reopen, resumed restaurant operations threaten to cut into the revenue and profit surges these stores have enjoyed over the past few months. And the looming expiration of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (although the federal government announced Tuesday it will extend the program by eight weeks) means more people may soon start looking for work.

Taken together, these are good reasons for a profit-minded company to scrap a bonus-pay program. It has absolutely nothing to do with employees suddenly being safer at work.

But then, we all knew that. These companies’ responsibilities are ultimately to their shareholders – not to the people stocking cans of tuna for $14 an hour, hoping they don’t bring the virus home to their families. Loblaw spokesperson Catherine Thomas essentially said as much in an e-mail to the Toronto Star, where she noted that “the company is no longer benefitting financially from COVID-19.” Alas, if only the rest of us could understand the angst of watching an enormous, unexpected profit reared from a wildly destructive disease slowly start to dissipate.

There is, perhaps, a good reason for government to get involved, especially considering the curious “coincidence” of the companies’ announcements and past subsidies the government has handed out to the industry. But on a matter like this, when corporate interests appear to have strayed so far from the basic principles of human decency, customers’ voices tend to wield more power than a government summons ever could achieve.

In normal times, callous, profit-centric corporate behaviour is not particularly remarkable. But one effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to amplify our society’s ugliest tendencies in a way that’s difficult to ignore. Clawing back an extra couple of dollars from grocery staff during a pandemic, while spuriously implying the risk is no longer there, transcends conventional ugliness to become distinctly grotesque. Deep down, the people behind the corporate decisions at Loblaw, Walmart, Metro and Empire surely know better.

[homoe]

On Friday night, like nearly every other weekend for the past month, the bars and nightclubs in downtown Scottsdale were packed. Dance floors were jammed. Lines to get in stretched for blocks. And almost nobody wore masks or gloves. When Gov. Doug Ducey lifted Arizona's stay-at-home order May 15, giving the green light for much of the state's economy to restart, he said residents had the right and responsibility to gauge the risks posed by the novel coronavirus and to act accordingly. “What an Arizonan decides to do is up to them,” he said.

"When I see packed nightclubs, I'm deeply concerned," said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, who is one of a growing number of local officials in the state calling on Ducey to better regulate the industry. "It sends this message that we're through this — that we've defeated it."

The state recorded 7,121 new cases between May 31 and June 6 — a 54% increase over the previous week and the largest week-to-week increase since the pandemic began. Arizona has also seen a spike in hospitalizations, with 1,400 people hospitalized on Friday, up from 755 a month earlier. ICU capacity in the state has passed 80%, according to the Department of Health Services.

Arizona is one of 22 states that have seen the number of new daily cases rise — which health experts say is likely a result of the end of stay-at-home orders.

[homoe]

Per Bill Shaikin of The Los Angeles Times Dr. Anthony Fauci said that if there is a 2020 MLB season, the season — including both the regular season and the postseason — should end in September before a second wave of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) hits the U.S. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said, “If the question is time, I would try to keep it in the core summer months and end it not with the way we play the World Series, until the end of October when it’s cold. I would avoid that.”

Of course, the idea of a 2020 season at the moment seems farfetched given the inability of MLB ownership to make any concessions towards the MLB Players Association — which already agreed, back in March, to salary cuts in the form of pro rata salaries — in order to facilitate getting games underway. Commissioner Rob Manfred went from saying a week ago that MLB will “100%” having a season to yesterday claiming he was “not confident” in having a season.

[~ocean]

it's either die or survive ~ give up our past lifestyles likes and dislikes to survive ~ it's not a hard decision. it's TEMPORARY . to get to the point of survival and live like we once knew we need to sacrifice . I ask myself daily how intelligent are humans ? Why do so many people world wide continue to be ignorant and careless with others lives with their own selfish stupidity.
and those of us that have the desire to live and survive ^ 5 . I won't and don't listen to unmasked people ~ ** blocks my ears to the WH idiot **

[homoe]

Originally Posted by ~ocean

it's either die or survive ~ give up our past lifestyles likes and dislikes to survive ~ it's not a hard decision. it's TEMPORARY . to get to the point of survival and live like we once knew we need to sacrifice . I ask myself daily how intelligent are humans ? Why do so many people world wide continue to be ignorant and careless with others lives with their own selfish stupidity.
and those of us that have the desire to live and survive ^ 5 . I won't and don't listen to unmasked people ~ ** blocks my ears to the WH idiot **

.....

[homoe]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence says the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic is “a cause for celebration,” but a new poll finds more than half of Americans calling it fair or poor.

The Gallup and West Health survey out Thursday found that 57% of U.S. adults rated the national response to COVID-19 as fair or poor, particularly in light of the fact that America has the world's most expensive health care system.

The numbers amount to a flashing warning for President Donald Trump and his White House team, eager to change the narrative from projections that show a growing number of U.S. pandemic deaths to a story of American resilience and economic revitalization that reinforces his reelection bid.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion article published Wednesday, Pence castigated the news media for focusing on rising COVID-19 cases in states like Texas and Arizona. “We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future,” wrote Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force. “That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.”

The poll found that only 23% of adults rated the national response as excellent or very good, while an additional 20% rated it as good.

[Blade]

Did you see all of the cars waiting hours before testing began in Miami/Dade County Florida this morning?

NC starting mandatory mask tomorrow and not going to phase 3 until mid July. I'm sure that isn't set in stone but will be revisited then.