kennycrudup

The only distress is from busting my gut so hard!

synergistic

That's not the typical reaction when folks hear that my dad is fighting cancer in the middle of this, but hey - find happiness where you can find it!

kennycrudup

I know someone going thru Chemo now who doesn't do that, and ... hang on, gotta go check ... yup- she's still very much alive!

And you with the melodrama; what does he think is going to happen, CV is going to jump out from behind the back seat and attack him like in some cheap horror movie?

synergistic

I think he figures that the worry that someone might see him wearing it on his drive home and roll their eyes is a lesser issue than the worry that he might have encountered the virus at the office and could transfer it to mucus membranes if he tried to doff in the vehicle instead of waiting a few minutes until he got home.

I'm glad your friend has thus far avoided infection - if she had decided to protect herself differently, would you have told her that she was just worrying about a boogeyman in the backseat? Just really can't understand why you waste any time worrying about how others choose to protect themselves.

kennycrudup

Wouldn't have to- she's smarter than that.

Well, the "time wasted" is mostly manifested posting in this thread- but as to why I even care at all, just as mentioned upthread, half of CV is the disease, and half of CV is the hysteria; we're spending a lot of time, resources, and money trying to placate people- the overwhelming majority of whom will be materially unaffected, mind you- that think they're going to "die from Covid". Barriers, distance, wipes and sanitizer and contactless this and contactless that and one can't help but all that just feeds into the hysteria.

I hate all this stuff, but what really bugs me about isn't about "today", it's about "tomorrow"; now that it's been determined how easily they can use fear to get the public to do this stuff, it seems they'll never stop doing it. I'm seeing more and more permanent Covid measure installations as time goes on, all for "your safety". So what's next? Flu season? "Everyone put your masks on!" High pollen or smoke count? "Masks people!"

FT is a bubble, and I have to keep reminding myself of that when I'm here- but in the outside world, more and more people are getting tired of it all- hell, most of the conversations when I'm out turn into swapping "Covid infection stories". But to hear FT tell it, we should all be dead.

screeton

One of the flash up ads on the SWA website cites a study to the effect that universal wearing of surgical grade or higher masks, coupled with the current HEPA filtering of cabin air, results in a likely transmission risk of less that 1%. So far so good. Then in smaller print, the ad states that SWA does NOT require universal wearing (ok to take off to eat or drink) and does not require surgical grade mask or higher (the ineffective "gator" single cloth layer will suffice.) The question.... why does SWA not move to require some of these proven policies? I have just rebooked trips in April, May and June that started out over 17,000 points (or the equivalent $$ value) and have now dropped to less than 4,000 points each. I am happy about a bargain, of course, but I worry about SWA financial health too, as well as their possible need to cut back frequencies even more. The continual price drops for these trips help confirm that advance bookings remain weak. The main reason bookings remain weak is because passengers are afraid to fly. Why not embrace the proven precautions 100% and advertise that SWA is doing EVERYTHING possible to make it a safe trip. Sorry, but allowing my seat mate to remove their mask for most of the flight to eat/drink does not inspire confidence. In March, it will have been a year since my wife or I were either one on a plane, when the year before we averaged a trip or more each month. We are past ready to get back to traveling, and so is the rest of the population. All we need is a carrier who is going to understand the concerns and set policy accordingly.

toomanybooks

The effects of the lockdown, in deaths and shortened lifespans and suffering from depression, PTSD, suicide, stress, lack of money and thus health care and proper food/utilities, inability ever to retire, alcohol/drug/child/domestic abuse, people skipping colonoscopy/cancer/heart disease/etc. screenings, lost livelihoods, kids having education totally screwed up for life, (especially those with special needs), most landlords circling the drain, and 500 other things, if honestly tabulated, would outweigh the deleterious sequelae from COVID itself at least 10x.

Not to mention that our currency will soon be worth less than toilet paper with all this lunatic money printing to give away to everyone in sight.

Screw it, I am gonna hunker down for a year. Let the whole damn economy implode.

Let me know when 100,000,000 pissed-off people decide to march on DC with pitchforks. I shudder to think who might be leading such an army. I will have the popcorn out.

Loose Cannon

This.

joshua362

Indeed. Despite taking all precautions, isolating and avoiding life, I likely got it during a bi-weekly trip to BJ's, must have run into the wrong person at the wrong time despite the masks. It was an uncomfortable week in bed, nothing to do but take Tylenol and wait, it was over the day I got back the results.

Loose Cannon

A virus is going to do what a virus will do. Remember the common cold is a coronavirus. And there is no vaccine or cure for the common cold.

nsx

Not yet. I would be surprised if we don't have a cold vaccine within 5 years based on recent research and development.

Doppy

Maybe he thinks that wearing a mask is such a miniscule inconvenience it's not worth the trouble and small risk to take the stuff off/put it back on multiple times on his trip?

Except that empirical data shows that business activity is down when the spread of COVID is high, regardless of whether there is a formal lockdown or not. The data is pretty clear that getting COVID under control is the best thing you can do if you want to have a good economy. In the places that took it seriously, everything is open, nobody is getting sick, and economies are growing.


Recently >4000 people per day were dying in the US, I'm not sure that counts as fear of a made up threat.

I would be happy if some things continued after COVID. For example, sick? Stay home, or, if you must go out, wear a mask. Wonderful, nobody wants to catch your cold. Restaurants cleaning tables, menus, condiment jars, etc. more thoroughly? Great, food poisoning is not fun.

Maybe post COVID there can be companies that encourage sick employees to come to work instead of work remotely, and restaurants that intentionally maintain low standards of cleanliness and advertise themselves as such so that people who prefer to get sick can know where to go.

Likely those precautions also resulted in you getting exposed to a low viral load, and thus having a less severe case than if you and the person you got it from were not wearing masks.

Aside from age, the people who had the most severe cases were often family members who got it from a member of their household. Somebody gets it outside the house and then spends all day in a confined indoor space transmitting a heavy dose of the virus.

Of course a single anecdote is not data; 442k deaths is evidence that it's serious.

kennycrudup

480K Americans die from tobacco-related causes every year (and will likely do so long after CV isn't the threat it currently is). Your number is neither unprecedented nor will it be ongoing; it's a blip in the timeline, yet we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

FlyDeltaMD88

I see there's no rebuttal to my post. Sorry to tell the truth but this isn't Herb & Colleen's quirky Texas airline anymore that we all knew and loved.

screeton

Arguing about covid precautions here is somewhat like wrestling with a pig in "mud." Even if you win, you still are covered with "mud*." [* feel free to substitute any other substance found in pigpens, at your discretion.] Those with common sense will be guided by science and by what is happening in the world around them. Those of a different persuasion will gripe about every tiny inconvenience, thus confirming a significant degree of selfish inconsideration for anyone else. Some businesses will suffer because of these nay sayers who, in their ignorance, are helping keep the pandemic going. Simple fact... the economy is not going to recover until the pandemic subsides... many people are NOT going to eat out, NOT going to browse in department stores, NOT going to get on an airplane. Some will, of course, but many will not, and many businesses will suffer economic hardship in the interim, either financially or by passing the pain on to some of their employees who will be furloughed. All the arguing in the world about how tobacco deaths exceed covid deaths, or common cold is a virus like covid, etc etc etc will not matter. What will matter, is when people stop seeing their friends or acquaintances come down with covid, and when they stop hearing about some of them on a vent in a hospital, and when they stop getting the call that some of them have succumbed to the disease. Back in the 1960s, in various activist movements, there was a saying... "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." Its still true.

OK... I'm suitably covered with "mud" and not even sure if I've won, but I've at least practiced my writing skills.