OT: - What changes are you and family making to your lifestyle due to coranavirus? | Page 33 | The Boneyard

OT: What changes are you and family making to your lifestyle due to coranavirus?

huskeynut said:
No changes for the wife and I.

We live in a 55+ community in central Florida. No events have been cancelled. Friday night was a club dance. I played in the band - 9 instrumentalists and 5 singers. Over 300 people in the audience dancing away. Saturday night we had two performances of Herman's Hermits with Peter Noone. Dinner was also part of the package if you desired. Both shows were packed with 525 in our ballroom. Both dinners were at max of 80 people.

Sunday we traveled to a Barbershop Quartet concert. Another 300 people. Never was a thought of cancelling the event.

Our resturant and Bistro are packed every day and night.

Our travel club has cruises and European trips planned but no talk of cancellations yet. Our medical hospital across the street is giving us constant updates. Nothing near the crap being air on several new outlets.

Maybe because we live in a community of people that have been there, done that and got several t-shirts that there is no sense of panic or overreaction.
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How are things there? Any precautions being taken?
 
If a retirement community is not on full lockdown at this point, that is pretty negligent IMO.
 
kingdobbs said:
Per capita, it’s probably going to be much WORSE for those rural areas, because it will take many fewer cases to overwhelm a small rural hospital that may be the only one for 30-50 miles, maybe more.

Litchfield County has three hospitals in its borders: Torrington, Sharon, and New Milford. Between them there’s approximately 300 beds ( and for the sake of argument let’s say that hospitals in border cities like Waterbury and Danbury are at or over capacity). BUT, according to 2018 hospital survey data conducted by the state health strategy office, 2/3 of those are filled on average on a given day. So the number of new hospitalizations they can handle is about 100 (Or about thirty between them). If we hypothesize that 20% of infected persons will need hospitalization (and that’s probably overestimating a little bit, but not by much), that means that the capacity of the hospitals would be met with 500 confirmed infections.

There’s just about 190,000 people in Litchfield County. That means the county as a whole can be 100% over capacity (ie, 1000 total infected, 200 requiring hospitalization) with a 0.4% infection rate versus the total population.

That’s not a lot of people, all told.
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Patients are movable. So the portable 100 bed portable hospital already up in Middlesex County could help. There are also a couple of National Guard medical units in the state that can add some capacity with mobile field hospitals or use of existing armories.

What's more important is the learning that has happened since January. Test results have gone from three days to one day, to in some cases a few hours. They are on the verge of a 5-minute test results. That means earlier intervention and less hospitalization. Hospitalization has run between 10 and 20 percent. It also means earlier detection of potential hot spots.

Treatment studies are being run all over the country and all over the world. Many are showing some promise. If you can treat and release in a few days instead of two weeks that clears many beds.

The medical community will get better and better at this. FEMA will get better at distribution/delivery of supplies. And states will get better at inventory control and delivery. The later that these communities are hit, the more learning that will have taken place.

Getting smarter and being more efficient counts for a lot. And with luck more sunlight and moisture in the air will naturally slow the contagion. I would much rather be in a small town than a big city.
 
My point isn’t really to say that it’s an unsolvable problem, because it’s not, or that rural hospitals are fated to become horrorshows with no way of averting the inevitable.

Just to say how quickly it can go tits up in a localized outbreak with a relatively small number of infections and the right conditions (and not even “black swan event” types of conditions, conditions that are within the realm of normality such as a city hospital being overwhelmed and not able to take on patients from the suburbs or rural exurbs), and that the prevention plan for a rural area really can’t be to say “eh, it’s a big city problem” and roll the dice when there’s an easy way to tip the scales in your favor.
 
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kingdobbs said:
My point isn’t really to say that it’s an unsolvable problem, because it’s not, or that rural hospitals are fated to become horrorshows with no way of averting the inevitable.

Just to say how quickly it can go tits up in a localized outbreak with a relatively small number of infections and the right conditions (and not even “black swan event” types of conditions, conditions that are within the realm of normality such as a city hospital being overwhelmed and not able to take on patients from the suburbs or rural exurbs), and that the prevention plan for a rural area really can’t be to say “eh, it’s a big city problem” and roll the dice when there’s an easy way to tip the scales in your favor.
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Several hospitals across the boroughs in NY are already well overrun. There was a picture that got out of nurses wearing garbage bags because they ran out of gowns.
 
Rocktheworld said:
Several hospitals across the boroughs in NY are already well overrun. There was a picture that got out of nurses wearing garbage bags because they ran out of gowns.
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People who think rural areas will be worse per capita don’t understand how this spreads. It simply isn’t going to spread at all where people are apart and stay apart. The NYC metro area has 1/4 of the U.S. deaths. That’s no coincidence. Proximity to others is what is dangerous.

Safe: walking, biking, motorcycle, your own car
Not safe: cab, bus, train, plane, Uber/shared car

Now there are different risks in rural areas. The food supply isn’t as good. The hospital capacity is low and distant. A friend lives on Martha’s Vineyard and they are being inundated by fleeing New Yorkers, yet they already lack food and supplies. I could go to Vermont and probably be completely safe from the Coronavirus but I’m not sure I’d have food. Suburban Boston seems ideal. I have space enough to isolate and our stores are restocked well.
 
storrsroars said:
Tornado warning just ended. 15 minutes of downpour, five of hail. High winds, but no tornado. Didn't lose power.

For scale, that raised garden is 7 bricks deep over where the wire tomato fence is. Six are underwater. And that's with a french drain built into the raised bed.
View attachment 52404

Fun times! Good thing I didn't drop down seed this week.
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Time to grow rice.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Now there are different risks in rural areas. The food supply isn’t as good. The hospital capacity is low and distant. A friend lives on Martha’s Vineyard and they are being inundated by fleeing New Yorkers, yet they already lack food and supplies. I could go to Vermont and probably be completely safe from the Coronavirus but I’m not sure I’d have food. Suburban Boston seems ideal. I have space enough to isolate and our stores are restocked well.
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I don't understand wth is going on in CT. Was texting with my brother in Danbury last night. He's not a hoarder so he finds himself unable to procure any toilet paper after trying everything from warehouse clubs to Honduran bodegas and everything in between. Looks like I'm going to have to UPS him a few rolls this week. Do stores not restock up there or is everyone simply filling up their basements with the stuff?

The hoarding appears over in Pittsburgh for the most part. I can get pretty much anything other than hand sanitizer.
 
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Letsgohuskies11 said:
He literally says its because level of testing has dropped off...

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The number of daily tests has plateaued at 110,000 tests a day. But that’s still a ton of tests daily. He’s watching the number hospitalized and deaths. In absolute numbers we see increases. In rate of change we see a slight decline. The curve is starting to flatten.
 
storrsroars said:
I don't understand wth is going on in CT. Was texting with my brother in Danbury last night. He's not a hoarder so he finds himself unable to procure any toilet paper after trying everything from warehouse clubs to Honduran bodegas and everything in between. Looks like I'm going to have to UPS him a few rolls this week. Do stores not restock up there or is everyone simply filling up their basements with the stuff?

The hoarding appears over in Pittsburgh for the most part. I can get pretty much anything other than hand sanitizer.
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I‘m in Massachusetts. Not really finding TP or many other paper goods. Food supply is fine. What I’m seeing here is that stores closer to Boston are more often empty based on pictures from people. Further out we are ok. I think the TP just sells instantly.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Rate of increase in cases has slowed. Check Nate Silver for this stuff. It’s a lagging indicator though.
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Not here in SD, we have accelerated to at least 70 cases a day

Certainly not in NY
 
HuskyHawk said:
The number of daily tests has plateaued at 110,000 tests a day. But that’s still a ton of tests daily. He’s watching the number hospitalized and deaths. In absolute numbers we see increases. In rate of change we see a slight decline. The curve is starting to flatten.
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On top of this, the curve flattening is like moving an aircraft carrier, results would be *very* slow. It's important to pay attention to these small changes and consider context.

Also if you're in MA and looking for a stocked grocery store - Natick Wegmans. Since it's attached to the now-closed mall, there's virtually no foot traffic. Two Saturdays in a row we've been there after 5pm, the store has been almost completely empty and well-stocked. Only a couple of paper goods items in short stock and some random meats sold out, but otherwise a breeze.
 
formerlurker said:
Getting back on topic of the OP, there is zero tolerance for food waste. There is no more "it's not enough worth saving" when deciding what makes up leftovers.
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This was my first thought too. Like wow, all the food we let go bad in our fridge cause we felt like going out. Puts it in perspective.
 
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HuskyHawk said:
I could go to Vermont and probably be completely safe from the Coronavirus
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This is frankly silly thinking this far into the pandemic. This will be everywhere in a matter of time. It’ll make its way through Wyoming. It’ll probably make its way to Alaska.
 
brasssbonanzaa said:
Right, the rate of increases has dropped off. The actual number of cases leveled, that would mean the rate of increase dropped.
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His argument was that there were fewer positives because there were fewer tests. Insinuating that the only reason positives are leveling off is because we stopped testing as many people for some reason other than fewer people requiring tests.
 
storrsroars said:
I don't understand wth is going on in CT. Was texting with my brother in Danbury last night. He's not a hoarder so he finds himself unable to procure any toilet paper after trying everything from warehouse clubs to Honduran bodegas and everything in between. Looks like I'm going to have to UPS him a few rolls this week. Do stores not restock up there or is everyone simply filling up their basements with the stuff?

The hoarding appears over in Pittsburgh for the most part. I can get pretty much anything other than hand sanitizer.
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It is to a significant degree that supply chains tailored to “just enough and just in time” fulfillment haven’t quite managed to catch up with the increase in demand due to hoarding and panic buying.

It's a philosophy that came out of manufacturing but filtered its way "down the line" to where retailers are making use of it in their fulfillment management. The ideal is that rather than keep a huge amount of inventory on hand, you try and fine tune your order management to anticipate your needs and trying to get just enough inventory to fill the shelves and hopefully before the shelf actually empties.

I work for such a retailer (yes, we sell toilet paper; no, we probably still don't have any). Apart from product that we sell a large amount of during the course of a particular time frame, most product we don't carry any overstock beyond what's actually on the shelf. We also don't have a lot of broad capacity to "just order more"; ordering is done "at the register" (i.e. when product is scanned at point of sale) by the computerized systems that manage ordering and stock levels.

The manufacturers and distributors are also tailored to this.

Systems like this can usually handle small to medium increases in demand on a store to store basis. What they usually can't handle is a large spike in demand across the board. And demand hasn't seemed to abate lately (again, largely due to the hoarding and panic buying in the first place; when paper goods hit the shelves, people seem to jump on them before the pallet even gets off the truck).
 
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@kingdobbs Solid explanation. Thanks. Luckily, my store is the busiest in the chain and typically gets some quantity of everything, although current TP is single roll and limited to a couple.
 
storrsroars said:
I don't understand wth is going on in CT. Was texting with my brother in Danbury last night. He's not a hoarder so he finds himself unable to procure any toilet paper after trying everything from warehouse clubs to Honduran bodegas and everything in between. Looks like I'm going to have to UPS him a few rolls this week. Do stores not restock up there or is everyone simply filling up their basements with the stuff?

The hoarding appears over in Pittsburgh for the most part. I can get pretty much anything other than hand sanitizer.
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Is your brother in serious need or just trying to responsibly stock up? If in serious need I've got 12 rolls he can have and I live close by. Let me know if that would help.
 
The simple fix is to ask someone at the store when they stock and would be a good time to come. Like the 7/11 around the corner, I know to go there Mondays and Thursdays around 10pm
 
formerlurker said:
Is your brother in serious need or just trying to responsibly stock up? If in serious need I've got 12 rolls he can have and I live close by. Let me know if that would help.
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sent you a pm
 
storrsroars said:
@kingdobbs Solid explanation. Thanks. Luckily, my store is the busiest in the chain and typically gets some quantity of everything, although current TP is single roll and limited to a couple.
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hey Pittsburgh! u listening in on here? secretary of not throwing things out! lol. and as far as ct south, along the coast from say, westport up to stonington, if someone cannot fill a reasonable shopping list including hardware, alcohol, food, health supplies, and the like, well, that's on them, cuz its all there, including bath tissue in some places. and also first hand, its trickling back into the iga's and such across most of the hills and vales in new england. now, the last time I checked, folks seem to be running to here from the west and the cities, so we're gonna have to add that to the equation. it's lookin like I ain't getting no isopropyl alcohol at my supermarket anytime soon, tho. dang war...
 
storrsroars said:
@kingdobbs Solid explanation. Thanks. Luckily, my store is the busiest in the chain and typically gets some quantity of everything, although current TP is single roll and limited to a couple.
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One of the bigger failures retail as a whole made in the ramp up to stricter social distancing and lockdown rules in many places, one which compounded with their "just on time" philosophy, was in not swiftly enacting and enforcing stricter "per person" item limits on certain goods.

For instance, the Dollar Tree in Florida that sold the paper goods in this viral video probably shouldn't have done that.

Perhaps the extent to which panic buying occurred couldn't have been anticipated to the fullest but I imagine many retailers are looking at writing up "panic buy playbooks" for the next go around.
 
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