Are covid shut downs coming to a town near you?

[RamblingMad]

I mean, they aren't wrong about the low wages and the fact that customers are expected to pay the majority of their wages for them, but that's a different debate.

I’ve worked in business way too long to have any sympathy. It always boils down to maximizing the owners wealth.

 

[dvcgirl67]

They’re failing because you want them to be forced to shutdown. If they failed on their own then they failed on their own but what you want is essentially a forced failure.

Or, we could do what they're doing in Germany. They shut down in late October for one month. They closed bars and restaurants and are paying those businesses 75% of their lost income during that period, which is way, way more than unemployment in most states in this country.

 

[Hikergirl]

Before COVID restaurant businesses were against raising minimum wages, which hasn’t kept up with inflation for decades. Now, they’re failing because they didn’t save enough even though they paid ridiculously low salaries. Why I should I be sad about it? Other businesses will open to take the place of the ones that failed.

First of all raising minimum wage isn't the be all end all answer, and some small business can't actually afford to that. It isn't as simple as "they just don't want too". Of course if you just think of small business owners as greedy and only out to screw their employees over for the all mighty dollar that isn't going to mean much to you anyway.
Second, in my state, a restaurant worker needs to make minimum wage so the employer can use a tip allowance but still has to pay them an hourly wage that equals minimum wage.
Third, it's been awhile but as a waiter you can make more in a weekend than an hourly worker makes in a week at their part time job. Of course that isn't guaranteed, but one thing that is guaranteed is that if that restaurant has to close it isn't paying anyone. Their salary is now $0.00.

You may not have sympathy for those business owners but you clearly don't give a **** about those people working for them either.
And if my state shuts down again and the economy tanks, will there be anyone left to be able to open a new business in it's place? Probably not.

 

[Hikergirl]

I'm going to guess the 'get over it' in that post was not referring to the business owners and employees, rather the individuals that can't handle any changes to their normal lives.

Maybe

 

[RamblingMad]

Or, we could do what they're doing in Germany. They shut down in late October for one month. They closed bars and restaurants and are paying those businesses 75% of their lost income during that period, which is way, way more than unemployment in most states in this country.

There is no way folks here would pony up the tax dollars like they do in the EU for protections like those.

Look at what Germans pay in taxes. Look at inequality measures in Germany. It’s a far nicer place to be if you’re the common worker.

 

[SaintsManiac]

There is no way folks here would pony up the tax dollars like they do in the EU for protections like those.

Look at what Germans pay in taxes. Look at inequality measures in Germany. It’s a far nicer place to be if you’re the common worker.

I’d rather pay for that than what we are paying for right now.

But I digress...

 

[Kitty 34]

This thread has been some very interesting reading for me. A lot of people I feel are very strong willed on this thread especially concerning a darn Virus that crept into our lives at the beginning of this year and of which we all still know very little about especially where "it" will go in the future. It's so sad.

Bring back a good 'ole "should I work or be a Stay at home Mom thread" or "homeschooling vs sending the kids to school" thread (Precovid of course!!). At least then people on both sides had a lot of material and opinions to throw out there.

On the Covid note.....My brother is still waiting for the results of his Covid test which he took at a clinic a week ago yesterday.........8 days ago!! So much for rapid testing 'round these parts!

 

[Colleen27]

There are so many things that don't make sense.
NY has just instituted a rule that restaurants and bars or anywhere else that has a liquor license have to close by 10 PM.
Somehow the virus won't spread at dinner time from 6-7 PM but it will after 10PM. And it knows if you'll be drinking alcohol. The store my ds works at is open past 10, I guess COVID doesn't spread there because they don't have a liquor license.
Now we can't have gatherings inside our home over 10 people. Yet I can go into a restaurant and sit there without a mask, breathing in all the same re-circulated air as everyone else for hours. I won't get the virus if it's before 10 though. I'll get in my home though.
I could go on but you get the idea.

Yeah, I think the time restrictions are often counterproductive. I can kind of understand it with restaurants because a lot of restaurant/bars shift to pure bar after a certain time at night (a popular loophole here is that restaurant-bars are allowed to be open, whether or not the kitchen is open, so they're staying open late to fill the demand for somewhere to watch the game or listen to live music), but with retail and other businesses it only serves to compress the same or similar number of shoppers into fewer hours, making those hours more crowded.

Seemed to work perfectly in New Zealand.

Apples to automobiles, in terms of the size of the countries, the ability to isolate from other nations, and the social supports that were implemented in order to do so.

The thing is, for all the kvetching on these threads about the problems with America, lockdowns really haven't worked for most of the world. They work while in place and then as soon as they're eased spread ramps up again. Aside from the couple of island nations that have pursued a total elimination strategy, all lockdowns do is kick the can a bit further down the road... which is really only a solution if we could somehow lock down for another year or so until a vaccine is widely available. Otherwise, this cycle of lockdown/open/lockdown/open is unavoidable.

 

[tvguy]

Apples to automobiles, in terms of the size of the countries, the ability to isolate from other nations, and the social supports that were implemented in order to do so.

The thing is, for all the kvetching on these threads about the problems with America, lockdowns really haven't worked for most of the world. They work while in place and then as soon as they're eased spread ramps up again. Aside from the couple of island nations that have pursued a total elimination strategy, all lockdowns do is kick the can a bit further down the road... which is really only a solution if we could somehow lock down for another year or so until a vaccine is widely available. Otherwise, this cycle of lockdown/open/lockdown/open is unavoidable.

Not sure I agree. Everyone is too quick to find excuses as to why it won't work instead of just trying it.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Not sure I agree. Everyone is too quick to find excuses as to why it won't work instead of just trying it.

We cant just try it. We have no safety nets for people.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Not sure I agree. Everyone is too quick to find excuses as to why it won't work instead of just trying it.

Haven't you been paying attention to the other countries of the world though? We have already seen that total lockdowns have X effect and there are countries, like Canada, who have decided "let's not do total lockdowns but try something else". And looking at "just trying it" frankly I don't want people to play with our livelihoods like that like willy nilly.

 

[Heather07438]

Cuomo says a lot of things.

I was trying to offer some clarity. There was reasoning offered.

There are so many things that don't make sense.
NY has just instituted a rule that restaurants and bars or anywhere else that has a liquor license have to close by 10 PM.
Somehow the virus won't spread at dinner time from 6-7 PM but it will after 10PM. And it knows if you'll be drinking alcohol. The store my ds works at is open past 10, I guess COVID doesn't spread there because they don't have a liquor license...

 

[dvcgirl67]

I’d rather pay for that than what we are paying for right now.

But I digress...

I agree. I feel like our problem is that we just sort of gave up. We did well in parts of the country during the first wave. But then the virus flared in the south and out west in California. Then it started to flare up in the upper mid-west, and now it's everywhere again.

It's also become clear that we need targeted stimulus for businesses that are struggling due to the original shutdowns, but even more for businesses that continue to struggle. So much of it is hitting the travel and service businesses so hard. But it can be related to regions as well. For example, in my area where people commute to the city for work, dry cleaning businesses are getting crushed. People aren't dry cleaning clothes for work, special events, weddings...etc. That's just one example of many that I can think of.

If the government doesn't step in to help support businesses that are dying a slow death, we'll see another leg down in this economy.

 

[Colleen27]

Not sure I agree. Everyone is too quick to find excuses as to why it won't work instead of just trying it.

Because there is no way to implement a comparable strategy here. It worked for NZ largely because they import basically all of their essential needs (almost 70% of their economy is service sector, much of that tourism-dependent and therefore closed regardless of any lockdown because of international travel restrictions) so they could effectively lock down a much larger share of their population, and because their population is highly concentrated in a small number of cities (just 4 cities account for half of the population). The logistics of both implementation and enforcement are entirely different in a country as large and spread-out as ours, and in an economy where a lot of businesses (from factories and meat processors to the countless service businesses that support the trucking industry) are essential to maintaining basic needs.

 

[penn19]

There are so many things that don't make sense.
NY has just instituted a rule that restaurants and bars or anywhere else that has a liquor license have to close by 10 PM.
Somehow the virus won't spread at dinner time from 6-7 PM but it will after 10PM. And it knows if you'll be drinking alcohol. The store my ds works at is open past 10, I guess COVID doesn't spread there because they don't have a liquor license.
Now we can't have gatherings inside our home over 10 people. Yet I can go into a restaurant and sit there without a mask, breathing in all the same re-circulated air as everyone else for hours. I won't get the virus if it's before 10 though. I'll get in my home though.
I could go on but you get the idea.

 

[DLgal]

But aren’t kids also more likely to be asymptomatic? Which means they are only testing the ones who show symptoms or lives with someone who shows symptoms. There could be a lot of asymptomatic kids out there.

Or not.

Our schools in Orange county, CA have been back in session for 6 weeks. No outbreaks. Only a few scattered cases across our 50 or so school campuses. No further spread from those cases. Case numbers in our city are not up from the very low daily numbers we have always posted (around 10 new daily cases in our city of 300,000). If kids were asymptomatic spreaders, surely their family members would have seen increased cases, and numbers in our city would have gone up correspondingly. But they haven't. It needs to be said, though, our district has a VERY comprehensive amd strict safety plan in place. Without that, we might be having a different outcome. Our district also spent $17 million, mostly in funds donated through a foundation, to upgrade the campuses with safety in mind. Returning to school safely CAN be done, but its not cheap, and that is where relief funds in this country SHOULD be going, as a priority.

 

[tvguy]

We cant just try it. We have no safety nets for people.

Well, let's see
.
PANDEMIC SPECIFIC SAFETY NETS:
>$600 a week for 39 weeks on top of state benefits. (That alone probably would be enough to help people for the estimated 6 week shutdown that had been proposed.)
>$1,200 in federal stimulus money.
> Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program.
> Federal income tax filing deadline pushed back 3 months.
> Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility
> Main Street Lending Program
> Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
> Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility
> Mortgage Relief
> Rent Relief (and prohibition on evictions if non-payment of rent is pandemic related)

Now, my head is not in the sand. For some people the assistance is so generous they may be in for an ugly surprise when they file their 2020 tax returns next year because the programs pushed them into high tax brackets. My neighbor is a contractor with 5 employees and he took part in the Paycheck Protection Program. He has been able to continue paying his employees, but now that the tax considerations are included, his business is facing a tax hit on the $100,000 in assistance he got. His employees won, but he will lose thousands by accepting the money.

 

[tvguy]

Because there is no way to implement a comparable strategy here. It worked for NZ largely because they import basically all of their essential needs (almost 70% of their economy is service sector, much of that tourism-dependent and therefore closed regardless of any lockdown because of international travel restrictions) so they could effectively lock down a much larger share of their population, and because their population is highly concentrated in a small number of cities (just 4 cities account for half of the population). The logistics of both implementation and enforcement are entirely different in a country as large and spread-out as ours, and in an economy where a lot of businesses (from factories and meat processors to the countless service businesses that support the trucking industry) are essential to maintaining basic needs.

Well, if you saw the news today about Chicago's stay at home order, the lockdowns are coming, right or wrong.

 

[Farro]

Well, let's see
.
PANDEMIC SPECIFIC SAFETY NETS:
>$600 a week for 39 weeks on top of state benefits. (That alone probably would be enough to help people for the estimated 6 week shutdown that had been proposed.)
>$1,200 in federal stimulus money.
> Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program.
> Federal income tax filing deadline pushed back 3 months.
> Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility
> Main Street Lending Program
> Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
> Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility
> Mortgage Relief
> Rent Relief (and prohibition on evictions if non-payment of rent is pandemic related)

Now, my head is not in the sand. For some people the assistance is so generous they may be in for an ugly surprise when they file their 2020 tax returns next year because the programs pushed them into high tax brackets. My neighbor is a contractor with 5 employees and he took part in the Paycheck Protection Program. He has been able to continue paying his employees, but now that the tax considerations are included, his business is facing a tax hit on the $100,000 in assistance he got. His employees won, but he will lose thousands by accepting the money.

Do you understand the issue of no stimulus bills getting passed right now or possibly even later?

 

[Traveling on cc points]

View attachment 538088

Hope it work for us in CT too. Our idiot governor copies what NY does