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Covid-19 Discussion

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
Staff member
Administrator
Argh, so amazing times to live through. Gives me a fresh perspective on the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times" or words to that effect. I normally have 4 to 5 band thangs a week. All are canceled here at ground zero in the US, Snohomish/King county in Washington state. I've been seeing band mates complaining about being bored and I'm like I have so many projects to do around the house, how could anyone be bored? One of my groups is passing recordings around to dub and get up on our web site. Time to clean up our examples of why you might want to hire us said the leader. Here's hopin y'all are well and making ends meet.
 
Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times"
Probably a bad choice of quotes considering where the disease may have originated :p However, thanks for starting this thread.

Anyhow, we have 12 cases out here in AZ. We had at least one in the county where I live (Maricopa) and I don't recall where the rest are.

My wife had to pick up something baking-related yesterday and she went to the small-ish grocery store that's essentially around the corner: no toilet paper, no hand sanitizer. Lots of people. Because of the "lots of people" tag, I did the weekly grocery shopping at the big grocery store at 7am today. Checklist:

* No TP
* No paper towels
* No chlorine bleach
* Very little random cleaning stuff (Windex, Scrubbing Bubbles, etc.) left
* Very little random laundry detergent or softener left
* No hand sanitizer
* Decent supply of soap, soft and not
* Very little milk left, other than organic (with the 100% markup over regular). Fake milk (almond, etc.) was in full supply.
* No pasta (noodles)
* No Ramen noodles

Limitations being enforced:
1 hand sanitizer bottle
1 gallon milk
1 carton of eggs
1 package of feminine hygiene products

Line for cashier: only four or five people. Not bad. It only took me maybe 15 min longer to shop than normal. I even bought fresh baked goods.

It was either Thursday or Friday that all employees where I work were told to stay home unless your job specifically requires you to be at work. My company's global with about 30,000 employees, so that's a big lift -- and we've only had one probable case. The private school my wife teaches at and daughter 2.0 goes to is closed until Wednesday, although teachers have to come in. All the public school districts in my neck of the woods are shut down. Arizona State University, which has 90,000 students (I just looked it up), has turned into all online classes. The church my wife goes to was filmed live, but had no audience. My flight to see my mom in a couple weeks was changed on Saturday. I called then called her and she said she'd much rather that I stay home, as she and her husband (and me too, really) are in the high-risk groups.

I know that some people were laid off because of C-19. I feel sorry for them.
 
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Week to of WA state suggested lock down and we're getting a lot of projects done. For example, the chicken coop that has been sitting in my living room in boxes is now done. And it's going to be in the 60s and sunny today which is quite wonderful. Hope all are well and coping.

ChickenCoop2020.JPG
 
Doing well here in the country. We have been ordering a lot of carryout food to support our local restaurants. My Mom's senior living facility went on "semi lockdown" today. Dining room and public areas closed. Direct meal deliveries to each room. No visitors except for caregivers. We qualify for that, although we can't bring the dogs to visit. Residents are free to come and go if they are able.
 
Doing okay here in Alabama, most of the cases are in Jefferson county, but some are in my county.
USM's going to online classes, though, which irks me a bit, even if I know why.
Most grocery stores are rather empty of groceries, though.
 
I work from home, so my job has not changed at all. There are now over 70 cases of C19 throughout my company.

My flight changed again. Even though they offered to upgrade me to first class for $29, I cancelled. The airline just gave me credit, which I don't mind. Hey, I'll eventually go out to see my folks ...
 
Streets are sooo empty, had our first grocery delivery, and started milk delivery. Today I took our two cars in for their annual oil change and checkup. There was no one there but one desk guy and one mechanic. They said I could schedule any time that week. My second car, the band car hadn't been run in a month so I was glad it started right up. Suzy made us masks but for the most part we never go out, even to visit my 90 year old parents!
 
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Here in Australia we're probably about a week to 10 days behind the US on the Coronavirus development curve, it got here later. We're now locked down, confined to home except for essentials. No travel between states and nobody in or out of the country except if you're returning home, if you can find a flight. At first there was a rush on stores and paper goods vanished. There must be people with a lifetime supply of toilet paper. I went out for some essential shopping a couple of days ago and the paper goods were slowly reappearing. Rice and pasta had dried up, as has almost all hand sanitizers and some cleaning products. Fortunately I have a good supply of isopropyl alcohol, ti-tree oil and our own aloe vera plants, so I'm making our own hand and surface sanitizer.
The number of new cases is decreasing, but there's a long way to go yet. Ain't life grand.
 
Yes, we jumped on it pretty quickly and it's working well for us so far. We've had some irresponsible folk who seem to think that the rules don't apply to them, but the police are using a "tough love" policy with large fines and it seems to be working. Fortunately we don't have the enormous undocumented/uncontrolled refugee situation that Europe, the UK and the US have. Due to simple geography Australia has always been self-isolating to some extent. Good luck to all out there.
 
I'm in the US. I would actually love it if our government closed everything except pharmacies and grocery stores for two or three weeks and said that you have to stay home, with the exception of walking the dog(s). I think we'd get over this pandemic fairly quickly. Or a lot of folks would own dogs.

I do have a few minor problems with the semi-shelter-in-place, which I'm not going to complain about. A medium size inconvenience is that my wages will be sliced a bit starting next month. A major one is that my close-to-100 year old grandmother-in-law is in bad shape and her relatives can't come to visit if she dies.
 
I have been very fortunate. The pandemic and shutdown hit Florida just as our semi-seasonal performances began to slow down. Only 3 of my gigs have cancelled so far, but there will be more. One bandleader, George Lilly (of George Lilly and his Half-Fast Allstars) paid us for the 2 jobs of his that were cancelled. I don't leave the house for any reason.
 
I'd assume my usual concerts in NY July/Aug. will now MAYBE occur in 2021. Will be the first time I missed a summer season since 1986. It's the only place I play now, so it'l be a long time in between. Canada seems to have had a better plan in place for a pandemic, though of course all has been shut down now here since mid March. The numbers in the U.S. are staggering-- almost 1/3 of those worldwide. I saw a clip on Facebook of Bush encouraging preparation for a pandemic and it was eerie. Then that went to the back burner. Canada should have 1/10th the cases & deaths as the U.S. but it's probably more like 1/100th. But, it doesn't matter when Trump "opens up" the country-- until there is a vaccine. Open it May and disaster. Open it in 6 months, same disaster.
Either way, it seems both countries took time to react. Say March 14-- "flights will be cancelled beginning Monday". Why not NOW? My wife's March 12 physio session at the hospital saw them wiping each station down in between patients. Then a day or 2 later everything shut down. Why wasn't it all shut down that day, March 12? Did Canada & U.S. not see what happened in China, and by then Italy & Iran? May have made little or no difference anyway, but it is a good question in hindsight.
 
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I lost everything from St Patricks Day through Halloween - 7 months unemployment.

So I'm self-isolating with by wife/lover/best-friend and we are having a good time together.

We're both unemployed as we make most of our living gigging. Fortunately, we do something no government and not many people do, we live below our means. The mortgage is paid off, I have 3 or 4 more car payments, and other than that we have zero debt. Also as self-employed folks, we built up a savings account for out-of-work times. We haven't been out of work since 1985 except for one month after 3 hurricanes hit, so we have a decent amount in the fund.

We're of the high risk age so we are only going out for essentials and being very, very careful. I haven't been out of the house, except for walking exercise on my own street for 2 weeks now. I will have to go to the store sooner or later for perishable food supplies. I'll bring bleach spray, alcohol, and a home made face mask.

It's like living in a science fiction movie. The invisible enemy could be anywhere, it could be possessing anyone you see. People are walking around in masks and gloves, eyeing each other with suspicion, and keeping their distance -- cue theremin music.
 
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I find it hard to watch the news anymore as the pols tell us how good we're doing but the deaths and infections continue to rise higher than any other country in the world. I was hoping to start up the sax quartet in July. Now I'm thinking I'll hold off a bit longer. Thank goodness for the online recording projects. But I'm really not getting even a third of the play time I used to get when I was performing in the public. Here's hoping you all are doing well. Be safe, be smart, be strong.
 
Here in Oz we are now seeing the beginning of a second wave of infections, although so far its not producing the levels of the original wave. Our strict lockdown policies have served us well, with national figures of around 7500 cases with 104 fatalities. Oz has a slightly larger population than Florida, which has had 140,000 cases with around 3500 fatalities. It's got to tell you something. We started to open things up a bit last week, but as soon as the second wave numbers came in we went back to lockdown again. No musical employment here, and I suspect that it will continue that way for a long time yet.
 
A week-ish ago, the AZ governor decided that he'd leave the "mask on" requirement up to the individual cities. Mesa, the city where I live and part of the sprawling "Phoenix metro area," is a "mask on" city.

Grocery store update:
* Restrictions on cleaning supplies. One item per shopper. Stock is at maybe 25%
* Restrictions on hand soap and hand sanitizer. One of either per shopper. Stock is at about 150% for hand sanitizer, albeit expensive. Liquid soap is at 10%.
* Paper products aren't at 100%, but they're now back on the shelves. Maybe at 25%.
* The cashiers have plastic guards over their checkout stations.
* The six foot "social distancing" is still in effect and grocery stores now have decals on the floor every six feet.
* Safeway/Albertsons, which is the store literally around the corner, but is too expensive for big shopping, has lanes in the aisles. Like, aisle 1 is "down the lane" and aisle 2 is "up the lane."
* Meat prices are 50% or so higher than before Covid19. I think it was $6 for pork per pound and $9 for beef. Chicken is also high, but I try to buy that in bulk and when on sale/

Oddly, the deli department didn't have roast beef, today. The worker I talked to said that it comes in every other week.

My grandmother-in-law, who was a couple years shy of 100, died during the second month of lockdown. We haven't had a funeral/celebration/whatever. She was a nice and fun person, so I look forward to a time we can do that. Additionally, my mom is having some other non-Covid medical issues and I'd like to go out and see her, but both of us live in very high-risk states (AZ and NY) and both of us are high-risk people. I have a plane ticket credit and I hope I'll be able to go out to see her sometime this year.

The company I work for put all its staff on either a couple weeks furlough or a wage reduction at about the second month of lockdown. That's going to be lightened next month. They've also starting opening some offices.

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On the very bright side, I've heard a lot of online recording projects, as Jim mentions. As I'm an anime geek, I was very happy to find Yoko Kanno got together some of the musicians (+ some new folks) who played music for the 22 year old, groundbreaking anime Cowboy Bebop. It's good stuff. The Cowboy Bebop anime is now ad free on Hulu, too.
 
Recently on Facebook:
New Daily Cases:

Florida (pop. 21M)-- 5,508
Texas (29M)-- 5,489
Arizona (7.3M)-- 3,591

Canada (37.5M)-- 279 (mostly Quebec & Ontario)

Don't know if that's confirmed anywhere but, what's going on down there.
And will we ever see the border open?
 
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