Darn inconvenient, is what is! I had to go out and buy a new printer today. Fine. I head up to Best Buy. Some flunkie wearing a safety vest is at the door of the store. He asks me what I want. “I want to buy stuff”, I said. He pulls out a tablet and asks me what model or description of the …”Let’s cut to the chase”, I interject, “can I go in there and look at printers?” “No, we’re not letting anyone in.” “Great.”, I turn on my heel and leave.
Need some packing material to ship packages. Head over to the local newspaper to buy a few end rolls. Get to the lobby doors. Locked. Sign in the window says that for ‘safety’ they’ve closed the lobby and any business can be conducted by phone or internet.
Hmmm.
Some challenges I was not expecting.
Dumpster dive for the packing materials. Retail stores that receive goods are a great source for boxes and bubbles.
n
This looks like the new normal for a little while. Went to get some cat food yesterday and I had to tell the clerk what I wanted. She then went into the store and got it for me. I had to pay via a remote credit card reader. I did the tap, took the food and was on the way. FYI, one of the things that have come out of this is a reluctance on the part of store owners to take cash. They are not happy with germ-laden bills even when they have gloves on. In our area, some places have even stopped excepting cash.
Accepting
Oops…
If they won’t take cash, give them an IOU with your phone# or email, tell them to get in touch when they’ll take it. Then leave with your items.
UBAZ, if a vender refuses paper money, why would the vender take a paper IOU? And, if he refuses to take the paper IOU, then what? Leave it on the counter and run out with the stuff you went out for only to be met by the police when you get home?
Anyway, it’s not a big deal. There were a very limited number of venders that were refusing cash. Folks from the Ontario Government have already dealt with the problem.
We boomers lived through the Korean War, the Vietnam War. The Cold war wasn’t fun and games either. The Cuban missile crisis, The polio epidemic and we remember kids and adults in iron lungs. The measles, the mumps, chicken pox, pneumonia and the Hong Kong and Swine flu.The advent of the take over of the Democrat party by the CPUSA. According to the government we shouldn’t have survived much beyond 3 years old. But we survived our unsafe cribs and lead in the paint. In Michigan had a Farm Bureau feed mill mix in PBB tainted insulation with cattle feed. We and the farm land survived the slaughter of thousands of dairy and beef cattle. We still carry the chemical in our bodies.
We also survived above ground nuclear testing which saw fallout reach as far as all American cities in the Midwest and the east coast and is more than likely the reason for the increase in cancer rates in the adults alive then.
So WHAT IN HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE.
We have been through worse. Besides this gives me a legitimate reason NOT to visit my relatives.
So everyone needs to chill. This won’t last forever. We will overcome this like everything else we have faced and overcome.
Agreed.
The difference is that the media (prob at the direction of some America-hating politicians+billionaires) is stampeding the sheep. I am actually pretty impressed at how good a job they have done.
I agree about your larger point about our bubble wrapped world, but I would like to point out that all the stuff you listed killed a metric ton of people, changed the shape of the world, and had serious and long lasting effects for the participants…
We (the collective we) will get thru this, but we won’t be the same, and neither will the world for decades after.
nick
What you are ignoring is the fact that the American health care system is a for-profit enterprise with a very limited amount of ventilators to treat the sick. Consider what is happening in Italy, which has a better health system* BTW, and how they are being overrun. Their big mistake was not trying to flatten the infection curve soon enough by closing sown businesses and social distancing which is the same this that Trump is failing to do.
https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-MAP/0100B59S39E/index.html
* The average life expectancy in Italy is 85.4 years for women, 81.1 years for men.
* The average life expectancy in America is 81.4 for women, 76.3 years for men.
Only, there is no basis to believe Italy has a “better healthcare system”.
We have far more excess capacity than Italy did amongst other things.
My favorite thing this week: My little virtue-signaling town decided to ban plastic store bags last fall to save the Erf (but also to *sell* paper bags to customers for $0.10/piece, or reusable PLASTIC bags for $1.50.
That B.S. got my blood pretty hot. But *TODAY*, I walk in the grocery and the single-use plastic bags are BACK, baby! Free of charge.
You see, the geniuses now realize reusable bags are filthy & major vectors for disease.
But we can rest easy now, because “their intentions were good”.
Sue them for a appropriate amount($1,000,000) for interference in “Interstate Commerce”,ask judge it be taken from investments/pensions not operating funds and no tax increases to make it up.
The Walmarts where I am aren’t doing anything different except for the first time yesterday, I saw a lady by the buggy park just inside wiping down buggy handles for those coming in the store. They also changed there open 24 hours to open at 8 or 0830.
So, here is the solution. CDC says if you suspect you’re infected wear a mask. We need to treat everyone as if they’re infected and require the wearing of a mask in public for 30 days. This will reduce the spread and people can gone on with their lives. It would be far cheaper to produce the masks than shutting down the economy. South Koreans are doing this right now, it never was about early test. They’re wear masks to reduce the spread!!!! The mask may not keep you from getting it but will prevent you from giving it to someone else.
Even better than wearing a mask for a month, why not shut down ALL social media for two weeks and watch this thing go away.
The Japanese have been doing this for decades. For fun find out how the Germans lost 6 million masks to Nigeria,why were the masks shipped through Nigeria when they were made in Germany and shipped to German government warehouse?
Go on with their lives
Drivethru’s doing booming business here. The dining rooms are closed but people still have their junk food habit to feed. Wallyworld is open for business w some purchasing restrictions but the bread, meat, TP, and cleaning aisles are – well – cleaned out. What I find amusing is the lack of critical thinking among these folks. They just stare at the empty shelves and leave without much of what they came for when all they had to do was walk to the other side of the store – the automotive section for example. That area is still packed with RV cleaning supplies, TP, and soap (I like Lava – good stuff) etc.
The garden dept is full of spring planting flats – out of lettuce in grocery? Spend 6 bucks, buy a couple flats of lettuce or arugula, set them in a pot and within a few days you’re picking “baby greens”. Plenty of fresh herbs there too. Need bread? Make it! Lots of flour and yeast in stock. Need a recipe? Here’s an excellent one I use (beware – it’s a little sticky) that produces fantastic bread for almost no effort.
https://www.startribune.com/recipe-no-knead-bread/11461321/
You could always simply buy a breadmaker too. Sporting goods still had a lot of freeze fried food hanging there. I guess my point here is there are many work arounds for shortages if folks would simply spend a couple of minutes to connect the dots as opposed to staring wide eyed and open mouthed at empty spaces.
Stay Healthy
Darn inconvenient indeed! The other day I was driving around this big ambulance trying to find some lunch from a place that a) didn’t have a drive thru with a low awning or b) didn’t have the lobby closed. The old “lunch and a bio break” are difficult to achieve “in these uncertain times” (as all the ads on the boob tube tell me).
Pulled up to a Sherwin Williams paint store to purchase a lambs wool applicator and the door was locked. A sign said employees only but you could call their number and order products. Back to the truck to retrieve my phone to place my order.
The ironic thing is when the clerk came to unlock the door to bring me the applicator he dropped the receipt, we both made a grab for it and we touched hands.
So much for their locked door policy.
Largely mindless, media-driven overreaction.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/epidemiologist-behind-highly-cited-coronavirus-model-admits-he-was-wrong-drastically-revises-model?utm_source=63red.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=63red
The bigger the “crisis” the more media consumption. The more media consumption the more $ flow towards media. And that is ignoring the opportunities the “crisis” provides to slam your political opponents.
Those in charge never get in trouble for being too draconian in response to a crisis. So what have we lost in the overreaction to this crisis? Jobs lost, lives destroyed, huge unaccountable monies spent…all in pursuit (and reaction to) of another self-important media moment.
Not to minimize the risk…clearly there is a substantial risk to a defined population. But instead of isolating those truly at risk instead we isolated virtually everyone.
“We had to destroy the village in order to save the village“
To all those that won’t accept cash. Uh, It’s illegal to not accept it for the purchase of any item, under any circumstances. That’s what our Constitution says, under Article I Section 8 – “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”…..
And just WTF are people supposed to do that don’t have a bank account, or a bank that even uses or is set up to use debit cards (mine is a very small bank & has direct deposit (barely). All those insistent upon using electronic monetary transactions for anything but long distant purchasing (and there are ways around that – called bank checks /money orders) will rue the day. Coming soon to a local near you…..
You are playing right in to their hands and will soon have no say in any matter. You will no longer be acknowledged as simply “deplorable dirt people”, but will be referenced as subjects….. It appears it’s heading in that direction at breakneck speed…….
Legal precedent is “Federal Reserve Act”,only gold and silver coin is “money” by constitutional definition