Yesterday was the day that barbershops here in town were allowed to open.They’d been open elsewhere in the county, but our local .gov wanted to show that they were ‘doing something’ about the virus. I think I’ve done a halfway decent job with my own clippers. Not perfect, but if you think your hair needs to be perfect then you clearly need more important things in your life to worry about. I think that, for the time being, I’m gonna save myself twenty bucks a month and keep working with the clippers. I can live with a cowlick here and there for twenty bucks.
So far, for me, thats been the biggest headache resulting from the Current Situation. They may be dropping like flies in Cuomo-land but our hospitals here are quiet and boring with none of the chaos and drama that the evening news likes to showcase.
:::shrug::: I live in a state with barely 1/20th the population of New York spread out over three times the square miles….social distancing is measured in miles here. But…not to pass up on opportunity to throw his considerable weight around, our local mayor – a philandering, alcoholic, overeating statist – decided that this was a great opportunity to flex and issued all sorts of orders.
As I’ve said, tongue-in-cheek, this is the lamest apocalypse ever. But, as I’ve also said, the flu isn’t the real headline…the real headline is all the downhill stuff as a result of it. Sadly, one of those effects will be more government control with the usual ‘for the common good’ pass.
One size does not fit all when it comes to government. What works in California or New York may not work here, and vice versa. But to assume that whats good for one state is good for another….well…that might be a little much. Laws and police thuggery might be what it takes to ‘flatten the curve’ in a cage with nine million people in it like NYC. But in my little bucolic college town it’s a tad heavy handed.
I know, I know….our mayor (aka “The Biggest Boozer”) will no doubt say that because of his edicts we have been spared the ravages of a Covid-19 outbreak similar to what they have experienced in NYC. And…you can’t really disprove a negative…so a lot of people will go along with it. But there’s just some reflexive response within me that chafes when .gov starts doing things like this. Maybe it really does make a difference, maybe it has saved ‘millions of registered voters’, maybe we’d all be dead of of the flu right now if they hadn’t threatened to throw my barber in jail…or maybe not.
All I know is that I haven’t been able to get a haircut for the last two months and I can’t shake the feeling that it was a lot of sturm und drang over something that wasn’t as big a threat here as it was elsewhere.
So Virginia has been in the same state with our (D) Governor. Today things are changing with new guidelines which are “Appointment only Strict social distancing Face coverings required.”
I don’t know how you practice social distancing with a barber .
Absolutely regional.
Here in NY, it’s like medical combat ( not to be confused with combat medicine).
The greatest takeaway from this pandemic, as you observed, is not the pandemic itself but rather the consequences of trying to contain it.
We wind up with the economic equivalent of chemotherapy; we take a financial hit and hope the virus goes away before thT hit becomes fatal.
Locations with low population density must be very frustrated with the measures we all took when ‘Social Distancing’ became the Golden Rule. Resource availability especially. The upside – price of gasoline (at least in short term) is great. Pity the number of places to drive to is so low …
Must be some sort of Yin – Yang thing.
Same thing here in Maine. At worst, ~1% of the population got the Kung Flu. Of those, ~2% died, almost exclusively elderly.
But summer camp for kids (all outdoors), has already been cancelled, because it’s run by the state university system, whose budget is owned by the governator.
This un-crisis is all about power, and Janet Mills is its queen.
In our state, although we were ranked as one of the “most infected per capita” or something like that, based upon the governments own numbers, 99.3% of the population didn’t get or hasn’t gotten infected. If you were one of the 0.7% that got it, there’s a 95% chance that it won’t kill you…and if it does, a huge percentage of those have some comorbidity like diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension, etc.
And we have people in our area, good solid buckle of the Bible belt types, just begging for more government control to “keep us safe”.
And now the precedent has been set for the next crisis…
Even our liberal counties in PA are bucking good Ole Wolf. I am seeing small businesses opening or opened already in my county/little town. I am dumbfounded how hard personal responsibility, hard work and freedom are for American’s. I guess that natural tendency wanting to be taken care of instead of taking care of oneself is ever so present.
Maybe the lesson here is that staying away from large cities in general is a good idea. Especially those that having international hubs has been validated concerning a pandemic.
I’ve been cutting my own hair off and on since ’65. Continuously since ’96. One helpful hint — PAY YOURSELF! Every time I cut my hair, I put money in my Haircut Jar. You’d be surprised at how fast it mounts up.
I live in Fort Bend County in Texas. 880,000 people in 1,100 square miles. 1,400 infected (by the official tests) and 40 dead. And all the dead had commorbidities (diabetes, heart, etc, etc, etc) according to our local paper.
This is a big nothing burger.
Here in the Portland/Salem area, a salon shop owner was fined some serious bucks for opening a couple of days early. Not by the state police, not the city police, not the county deputies, but by OSHA. To the tune of $14,000.00.
Then, seemingly unrelated, child protective services were called to her home.
Hmm. CPS says it has nothing to do with masks or the salon…
What’s next? Yanking her license to cut hair or do nails or shave toe knuckles?
Fiction meets reality. Shades of “Unintended Consequences” or maybe “The Bonner Incident”?
https://www.kptv.com/news/salem-salon-owner-says-oregon-osha-issues-14-000-citation-says-shell-stay-open/article_9a3761e6-9708-11ea-9cc3-1b1d00602ed2.html
I have myself a girlfriend who cuts hair so my usual scruffy look has been well tended to.
I can relate to the haircuts. No way I’m spend money I can use elsewhere just to get a haircut. I have a pair of electric clippers and just use a 1/16 inch guard and run it over hair and beard to keep it short.