All right, everyone, new thread! I meant to open it yesterday on May 1, but I was extremely busy with work stuff.

How is everyone doing? Are your communities starting to reopen? How do you feel about this? Do you think it is wise or unwise? Are you going to rush right out and go to a restaurant? And what about work?

Governor Brown of Oregon has eased restrictions on elective medical procedures, including dental offices, but that's really it so far, and it makes sense to me. Those procedures were restricted due to shortages of PPE, which seem to have been resolved. Oregon has very low coronavirus case numbers, so our hospitals are easily meeting those needs without being anywhere near capacity.

The courts are still running at very reduced capacity, doing only essential functions which would include arraignments for new criminal cases, in custody trials and shelter hearings when the State has to remove a child based on abuse. Pretty much everything else is pushed out. We're looking at increasing the workload throughout May. People who can work from home are still largely working from home, and we're only running two to three courtrooms a day at most (out of 12). The summer is going to be terrible, and I don't know how we are going to catch up when they start feeling the effects of the hole in the state budget - we're an income tax only state, and income tax receipts have plummeted.

With respect to commerce, restaurants are still takeout only, grocery stores are still at reduced capacity, and shortages are still occurring. However, there are obviously more people on the road and out and about than there were three weeks ago.

What's up where you're at?

My government still mistakes marketing for governance. They have no real interest in problems or solutions, only in maintaining a facade of success while avoiding either oversight or accountability.

We still don't have enough PPE or ventilators. UK manufacturers are exporting both because the government, instead of ordering from them, has given contracts to Dyson for ventilators and Burbury for PPE kit.

We're starting to do testing but the government is interested only in reaching a marketing number of '1,000 tests a day' without any metrics for who should be tested or retested or what is done with the results. NHS England has 667'965 professionally qualified staff. That doesn't include the care home sector, or Scotland or Northern Ireland. UK population is 68,000,000. 1,000 tests per day is a meaningless metric intended only to give the impression that the government is doing something.

Our Prime Minister is declaring success and saying that we are the best in Europe yet even the governments figures show that we have had 27,510 deaths of people who have had a positive test result confirmed by a Public Health or NHS laboratory and hundreds more are dying every day. Yesterday we had 739 reported deaths.

It's my understanding that the Civil Service was asked to plan for a twelve-week lockdown, which means we have seven weeks to go.

Meanwhile, we've had the sunniest April for many years and May promises to carry on the trend. The people I see in home town are respecting social distancing. There is no pressure to reopen. There is concern that reopening too soon will make things worse and reopening without having solid testing date is just a leap in the dark.

We've loosened restrictions and reopened some things in my area - dentists and eye doctors are accepting patients, and you can go to a salon now, I believe, although gyms are still closed. Restaurants are open at 50% capacity. I think we have two active cases at the moment (in my town, not the state as a whole). Testing is somewhat expanded - you can now be tested if you have one of the common symptoms of COVID-19, no requirement that you've had contact with a confirmed positive case.

I'm still concerned about the possibility of asymptomatic cases, and about people's attitude about stuff reopening. There are a lot of angry people who say they're going to go wherever they please as much as they'd like the instant anything reopens because this whole virus thing is just a government trick anyway, which, if we do have asymptomatic cases, is going to work out terribly. But there isn't much I can do about that. On the plus side, my workplace is letting us stay on our "work from home" schedules for now so I'm only in one day a week (could change at any moment, which does create problems planning my grocery shopping). Parts of my job are a lot harder from home (I can't exactly cart home a week's worth of books to catalog), but parts are much better. I feel like I've become a data manipulation wizard in the last couple weeks, and our library catalog is getting some nice enhancements that wouldn't have been possible a few months ago because I was too buried in my regular work.

I'm generally a homebody anyway, so I'm handling being at home fairly well, although making sure I have decent meals to eat is still taking a lot more work and planning than I'd like.

Mike - Trump is exactly the same with his ridiculous claims about his own successful management of the outbreak, and his trumpeting about our exceptionalism. I ignore him completely because he is just utterly full of shit.

We have outstanding first responders and front line medical providers - as does England, I'm sure. I have nothing but respect for them and the risks that they are taking for the rest of us every day. Unfortunately, whatever successes we are having (and we are obviously not exceptional, our self-congratulations notwithstanding) are in spite of Donald Trump and his administration, not because of them.

His most recent claim, that Obama left him with broken tests for a virus that wouldn't exist for three years after he left office, just perfectly encapsulates everything about him. He is a weak, sad, vicious person.

Nebraska's set to start opening for a parts of the state on Monday, although I found out some things opened early this week. I'm not thrilled with this since our positive cases have been doubling in number literally every week for the past month. We're still going in that direction. We've got multiple meat packing plants in the state that are particular hot spots. I feel horrible for those communities and how hard hit they've been.

We're also still low on testing people at this point. The governor says numbers are supposed to start increasing next week, but the state will have already begun opening by that time, so that's very frustrating. At the beginning of last month, we were solidly in the bottom ten for positive cases. Starting this month, we're just barely in the bottom 20. I doubt we'll stay there long.

I'm not sure how seriously the average person is treating it here. I have noticed a difference in the behavior of people in the 2 stores I've been switching between for groceries the past 2 months - Costco and Target. Costco treated this seriously almost immediately and adopted a lot of safety measures very early on. As a result, I've noticed the majority of the customers there wear a mask going in. In contrast, Target adopted safety measures much later on and not as many. When I go there, I've noticed far less than half of the customers wearing masks.

Like the shoppers took their cues from their store, I think Nebraskans will be taking their cues from the state who will be telling them its safe to start opening things which they'll take as the okay to start rushing out and doing things without precautions. I want to be wrong. But when your governor is saying it's safe to start opening the state even as the numbers double every week, it's hard to be positive.

I'm lucky to be able to work from home and to have that extended until at least June, even if my hours did have to be cut. I don't know whether people will go rushing out immediately Monday here or not. I know I won't.

Things are still closed here in Ontario. We seem to have hit a plateau but we're generally still getting over 400 cases a day (probably half of them or so in long term care homes). This makes me glad that we're not reopening right now, and that I will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future (probably at least for the next month or so). Basically everything is still closed except for non-essential businesses and they will probably only look to start loosening that restriction if things continue a downward trend for the next week or two (I'm not sure whether they consider the last week to really have a downward trend). I'd only feel comfortable with reopening if they stepped up the contact tracing significantly. I can't see myself going out to restaurants much if at all when they reopen although I might pick up takeout.

Quebec is a different story and I've been watching that play out closely. They're talking about sending kids back to school (and thus reopening a lot of stuff) by May 11.

Most states in Australia are starting to ease restrictions, except Victoria (my state) which has been taking a hard line from the beginning. The governor equivalent, called the Premier, has refused to ease restrictions because our state has a higher percentage of transmissions from unknown sources. He was getting a bit of blow back, but in the last two days we've had cluster cases pop up in a kindergarten, a meat processing facility, and, I think, a medical facility, so I think he's taking the right steps. My hairdresser just sent me a text Friday saying she's reopening (they were never forced to close because the PM is an idiot) and I'm not sure what to do - I don't think I'm comfortable with the idea for a few more weeks yet, until the expanded testing across the state reveals a bit more data.

Meanwhile, the Prime Idiot has pushed through a tracking app for which he won't release the source code (or, they will, but they're redacting portions of it), swearing it will be totally private and only used for health reasons, even though Amazon servers are being used; it has to be running constantly to work, won't allow your phone to lock, and drains the battery by pumping out constant bluetooth signals. And it's completely voluntary, but restrictions won't be eased until half the population downloads it. But it's absolutely voluntary to participate, and people should not feel obligated to download it. Only restrictions won't be eased until they do.

Shopping supplies have returned to normal, though still no flour.

Reply to post #8 (show post):
The best way around the app is to carry your phone in a Faraday bag and switch of Bluetooth when you make a call.

The flour thing is a problem in the UK too. Apparently, domestic flour is a tiny proportion of the market. Most flour is sold in huge commercial sacks and millers aren't easily able to adapt to small bags.

Reply to post #9 (show post):
I'm not downloading it and neither is my husband. The Australian government has a recent history littered with security leaks, data tracking, and anti-privacy legislation. Nope, nope, nope. And I refuse to support talking out of both sides of the mouth.

Glad that everyone is still here and relatively okay.

UK government is not doing well. Neither is the US on dealing with this pandemic.

The city I'm in is in a shit-load of additional problem. Police violence escalated and using the pandemic as an excuse to harass shops that support democracy. Yup, you heard it right. Also used the same excuse to harass journalists and shoppers.

While this is happening, the self-discipline of the people pay off with zero new cases for five days now.

People really deserve better government. It is true in a whole lot of places.

Stay healthy everyone.

Our governor is opening parts of our state while keeping parts closed which makes no sense at all, as individuals are just driving over to the counties that are open to enjoy what’s open. Our cases are increasing each day which the governor says is due to increased testing, getting caught up with the backlog of test results, and a variety of other excuses.

Our state was never one to be on lockdown, as our governor expressed that, there would be too many exceptions ( individuals & businesses) to a state-wide lockdown, as our state was essential to the food and business market. I understand what she’s saying to a point but some individuals needed to be told what to do and to held accountable. The manufacturing plants needed to be told specifically what to do/what steps to take immediately and make them accountable. There’s also the language issues within those plants, this is a huge issue. There should have been a task force set up to handle the manufacturing side of staying open during this period.

Our stores are still out of the Clorox items and you can find T.P., if you shop early. Soup is a hot commodity and so is some headache medication. WalMart has individuals counting the amount of people in and out of the store each day. There’s tape on the floor in every store I go to, 6 feet apart. I think it’s about 2/3 of the population wear masks when out. Some stores say, “ one individuals per cart” or “ no children, no one under 16 allowed because of the virus” yet there’s families walking in or couples.
The city that I live in, we’re told to stay home unless it’s necessary. Well, people have many definitions of what this is. We’re also told to get outside and exercise yet the parks are closed but kids are on the park equipment. There’s people who don’t leave the house at all where others ride around in their motorcycles, some kids play football in the park, some adults gather out on the lawn, some are now cruising the avenue in their cars like they did when they were younger.

Welcome to Iowa.

Kansas is starting Phase I re-opening starting tomorrow, although our cases and deaths continue to rise. Maybe 25% of the population in the stores are wearing masks, including workers. No one is social distancing, so we are adjusting when we go to the stores. I don't know if it matters to people here anymore. Most restaurants are re-opening already for curbside and delivery.

Our PTO had a Zoom meeting to iron out some things for next year, if we do physical schooling. I got a promotion of sorts, moving from the secretary position to the VP position. Whether that even matters or not depends on how the summer goes and if we can get cases and deaths down. My kids have 15 days left of school and are looking forward to summer, which will be very homebound this year. Some of the teachers decided not to return to teaching, either moving on to a different line of work within education or simply retiring.

I made the trek to the grocery today. Apparently the rolling shortages have reached packaged lunch meat and refrigerator biscuits. However, eggs are back in stock. Also, there's no yeast.

In the UK there's a very popular program called Gogglebox (which is slang for television). The format is that a group of families from around the UK are filmed as they watch television. It's remarkably compelling, watching people watching TV.

Anyway, I think the best measure of how people feel about my government's performance in managing COVID-19 comes from the Gogglebox reaction to Boris Johnson's briefing. You can find it at the link below

Twitter
https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1256898073328041984?s=20

Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNqY-O9_Zk

@Mike Yeah, that sounds about right.

We should probably be glad that this doesn't exist in the States, since I don't think I could handle live commentary of Trump. I suppose we get a lot of that on twitter anyway, admittedly.

Oh, it turns out that Ontario is opening a few non-essential businesses as long as they can keep social distancing rules.