Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

my friend's wive pissed off a whole bunch of teachers by basically saying the teachers that are "high risk" (PLEASE STOP USING THIS FUCKING PHRASE - people who aren't your arbitrary definition of "high risk" are dying from this!) can stay home and teachers that don't feel comfortable can get another job. I'm sympathetic to you being stressed out that your soon to be kindergarten kid might not be able to go to Kindergarten in fall and you may be on the hook for childcare again, believe me....

but fuck, it's not fair to shuffle a much bigger burden onto someone else.

Schools here in Wales are opening fully in September with limited social distancing for the kids as "Children, especially younger children, don't seem to transmit the disease to one another, or to on to adults". Yeah, that seems very fucking scientific.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53349005

went to laundrette this morning for the first time since lockdown started. didn't feel safe despite there only being 2 people in there and i didn't do the usual thing of waiting inside (walked home, had breakfast, walked back to pick up stuff, walked home again, 10 minutes each way)

anyway, it's the first time i've been that way since saturday and there's a newly burnt out car 2 streets over. i had no idea.

(white city rave / riot also passed me by, although i did hear the helicopter)

I'm actually surprised that my child's been back at school for 5 weeks and there haven't been any cases there or school outbreaks that I know of anywhere nearby. Had assumed he'd go back and it'd have to close at some point. Only one week left before the summer break now.

i have recommended emily oster a bunch here. i haven't read this interview but she's been good on this stuff on her own blog

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/09/reopening-schools-coronavirus-pandemic-expert-analysis-politics-2020-355466

My union negotiates our salary and benefits with the city. Other than that, they don’t have much say in our day to day working lives — which is driven mostly by administration. Our local handles grievances, and other workplace complaints, though what they can do is constrained by our workplace contract, which is very preferential to the administration. I say this with no disrespect, because I owe my job to the union, but a large function of theirs seems to be reinstating people who have been laid off (usually with just cause).

Yeah, that's the downside. Unions do often protect toxic people with seniority.
That said I've been out in the wild so much of my life that I hope to never have a non-union job ever again, when there isn't one... God help you, because the mythical American "small business owner" won't give a shit about you. Most of my union experiences involve my reps fighting protracted, years-long contract negotiations fighting for inches.

Post offices are like ATM machines where the people working there are the same as the people you are inevitably stuck behind at the machine. No hustle meets no clue, how little can I do over the longest span of time.

We got the Blue Collar Comedy tour up in here

That post is vile, IMHO. Postal workers have to deal with totally insane shit all the time, including customers threatening to kill them nearly every day, so fuck off with that shit

Not to mention they're the victims of decades of underfunding and lack of support from the Federal government

My mom was a postal carrier back when it was a really good job. She got a good retirement and everything. I feel bad for anyone that works there now, it got run into the ground.

I love the post office! Give them more money. It's a bargain and an invaluable public service. I just meant that when I go to the Post Office, like going to the ATM machine, I'm often behind someone taking a long, long, long time (per the comedy cliche), and they are often being assisted by an overworked staffer also taking a really long time, probably for different reasons, certainly under less than ideal conditions, even in the best of recent times. I think if they were better paid and supported, maybe the experience could be better for all involved. (Or maybe not. You want hoary comedy routines? What's the deal with the DMV? My local DMV is *packed* with employees, and they behave exactly how they've been portrayed in pop culture for years.) Anyway, even if there are reasons, I think it is totally fair to complain when, even in the pre-covid days, there is one person behind the counter with three empty stations and 15 people ahead of me in line. And that's in the off hours. Hell, once I got to the postal worker behind the counter and they were out of all regular stamps except Christmas and collectible stamps. Stamps! Maybe it's just my local office, I dunno, but if you don't think it's ok to complain about waiting in line, I don't know what to say.

I do love my regular mail carrier Tim, but he hasn't come since this covid stuff started. I hope he's OK.

Speaking of not ok, I'm beginning to seriously think that reopening schools in person to any extent is just a bad idea. I do understand the burden it places on families - I have kids in school - but as long as the country is going in the direction it's going in (which is to say, no direction) it just doesn't seem prudent. I think it would make more sense to have to school from home until at least January, planning on contingencies in the meantime. Maybe a new president will make a difference. Maybe a vaccine will appear. First and foremost, maybe we will finally learn *why* kids appear less susceptible to covid than adults and take that into account. There are lots of countries that have reopened in person schooling, to some degree, but many have done so with a baseline that their national governments at least somewhat give a shit.

Speaking of not ok, I'm beginning to seriously think that reopening schools in person to any extent is just a bad idea.

Hey, remember that famous right-wing boogeyman, the All-Powerful Teachers Unions that control the Democratic Party? Where are they on all this shit?

trying to figure out how to get back to work but also not die

people now in Florida trying to deny we're in bad shape because some sub-news blog that calls itself "Justthenews.com" reported the shocking, controversial fact that the 15,000+ some odd cases reported yesterday might have included some late reported positives. which even if true, happens frequently, and is why 3 and 7 day rolling averages are more useful to look at than a single data point (not to mention - there were accusations that the FL Dept of Health was retroactively manipulating data and "spreading out" cases reported in a single day amongst multiple days).

or pointing out that we have plenty of hospital capacity cos some of the capacity has returned after looking bleak a few days ago - of course neglecting the fact that there's always an ebb and flow to those numbers as people get discharged and new patients are waiting to be admitted, and that hospital capacity is undoubtedly spiking (https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/07/08/two-charts-show-positive-trends-for-florida-in-coronavirus-battle/), and if they routinely exceed discharges, we'll continue to face bed battles. 25% capacity during a pandemic isn't the same as 25% capacity during a normal time of year, either.

I'm so sick of arguing with these assholes that are going to get us killed.

They had a panel of 4 or 5 doctors on one of the nightly newses last night, all of them were totally comfortable sending their kids back to school (provided implementation of effective social distancing measures) bcz of lower transmission rates among young kids. benefits of having in-person class said to outweigh (again, reportedly smaller) virus risk. I don’t know if most schools have the cash to implement effective social distancing measures though *shrug* #wtf

I think I mentioned it upthread, but our local K-8 district said it would cost $11 million alone just to hire extra teachers to staff the extra classrooms to house the newly spread out, socially distanced kids. The best outside the box solution I heard (which would still cost money; everything costs money) is to hire college kids not returning to campus to serve as auxiliary teaching staff/assistants/support. But as I've heard countered, the teachers unions likely wouldn't be happy with districts spending piles money to hire temporary support staff to help them after so many years of dealing with staff cuts and stagnant salaries. Though who knows.

And also those college kids become a third potential disease vector.

What proportion of the various Chads and Brookes, hastily pulled into schools each day, are spending their evenings at trendy bars and shouting at one another over bad house music and worse cocktails?

Back at the office for the first time today. I must say it's kinda nice to work in what used to be a 100-ish person office, now capped at a potential capacity of 30 but in reality there are maybe....8 people here? arguably safer than my house.

oh! it's almost like all the things teachers were asking for all along were actually important?!!?!?!??!

also, again, please stop erasing nontraditional college students from the discussion

Also worth noting that a majority of college-age people are taking Covid and everything else that is going on in this shithole much more seriously than the generations older than them. If they aren't, to be honest, I don't blame them, because getting blackout drunk is a lot easier to do than confronting the fact that an enormous section of the American populace, including its leaders, have fucked any chance of normalcy they could ever imagine for the rest of their lives

But yes to La Lechera, too. My husband will be getting his associate's degree this fall, he's 35.

Tbh we're thinking of applying to schools in other countries, me for a PhD and him for his BA or BS

At the risk of leaning into the "mostly apolitical" part of the thread title, it seems the new guy Trump put into to destroy the USPS from the inside is doing a bang up job of things!

I do NOT say this to be alarmist, but the new Postmaster General is actively working to destroy the product, service, and integrity of the USPS. PLEASE, if you care about your mail service, especially at a time when it allows you to stay home in a pandemic, read this thread.

— Letter Carriers for Antifa Chapter President (@DingusJMcGee) July 12, 2020

On a related personal angle, the package of records I ordered from Woodsist got shipped to me on June 3rd from Long Island. This morning, almost a full six weeks later, it finally made it to the distribution center in... New Jersey.

there seems to be one piece of direct evidence in that thread, and it's a tweet that no longer exists:

The directives, shown below, even if implemented at peak efficiency, would pale in comparison to the repeal of the 2006 PAEA that required 70 years of retiree prefunding. But right-wingers don't want to touch that, because they WANT that poison pillhttps://t.co/j70GFtyBPp

— Letter Carriers for Antifa Chapter President (@DingusJMcGee) July 12, 2020

it's not that i don't trust Letter Carriers for Antifa Chapter President @DingusJMcGee, and i wholly believe that the appointed postmaster general probably really is trying to destroy USPS from within. but goddamn people, get some evidence

otherwise you're just a person telling stories about what you heard

here's a reply:

People is the post office have asked me to share these since they can't due to fear of backlash pic.twitter.com/5F7otO5hHo

— Kessie Vao @ Onlyfans (@KessieVao) July 13, 2020

the POOMs and only the POOMs

Yeah that Dingus McGee one might not have been the best to highlight, but I did think it summarized in one thread a lot of what I was seeing elsewhere, just more concentrated and easier to link to. The replies get interesting, as Karl Malone notes.

Should we have a "Rolling USPS Dwath Spiral" thread?

i don't know if that post above is the original "directive" that was linked to (and then removed). But if it is, that looks to me like a regional summary of a directive, not the directive itself. you can tell that from the final page - "many of the changes are good and should have been done years ago." lol. many of the changes are good! i'm gonna start saying that myself. but it's not what someone near the top would say.

pic.twitter.com/gvLejTklnw

— Kessie Vao @ Onlyfans (@KessieVao) July 13, 2020

as for the substance of it, we all know USPS is in deep shit, and we all know any trump political appointee should not be trusted and is probably literally a buddhist demon from the plane of thick red smoke. but read again what the primary complaint is about this whole plan, the directive. the twitter complaint starts by just saying that the evil plan is to do a worse job of delivering the mail, to do it more slowly. well...maybe. but more immediately, the only thing in the directive (or the powerpoint summary of the directives by the regional employee?) that relates is on that first page:

"The USPS will no longer use excessive cost to get the basic job done. If the plants run late they will keep the mail for hte next day. If you get mail late and your carriers are gone and you cannot get the mail without OT it will remain for the next day. It must be reported in CSDRS."

here's how the #resistance tweeter briefly alludes to that: "Now, in a futile effort to curb overtime (which could be addressed be hiring additional staff, or better training new staff to reduce turnover), we are simply saying "the people of the US will simply have to deal with indefinite delays for their mail."

sorry, but this is a person with good intentions who doesn't know wtf is going on. hire more staff? train more staff? for an organization that is being financially ruined by republicans? these crappy results - slow mail, no OT, internal dysfunction - are primarily the result of underfunding and a political party that would rather kiss the ass of private delivery companies than support a government function that helps people.

Alright, sorry for sharing that Karl. I didn't expect to have to answer for every one of the points made, I just thought it was a decent(ish) summary of complaints and comments I've been seeing in various reddit forums and other places. Not saying it's all true or correct summaries being made, but given that it's pretty widely acknowledged that the USPS is an horrible place right now I think it's interesting to get a sense of what some of the employees are thinking (misguided as it might be).

anyway, sorry to focus in too much on that one tweet, jon/via/chi. i know you were just pointing to it as a clue toward the recent USPS dysfunction, not as some sort of court-ready affidavit. sometimes i do get a little irritated with the widespread sharing of the equivalent of gossip, but that's a twitter thing

whoops, xpost!

It's fair, I should have been a little less lazy and linked to some specific tweets instead of just the whole thread.

no worries, i do that all the time, and 100x worse. sorry to make you feel bad about it, it's not a big deal!

it does make me feel even worse for the employees, though. they're already walking in masks through covid hotspots on a daily basis, and on top of that their org is run by evil clowns and they have to deal with customers who are (justifiably) angry about the service but don't quite understand the underlying reasons driving the poor service. a lot of people end up just blaming the mail delivery person, because they're the most real and proximate thing to shake a fist at

sorry to make you feel bad about it, it's not a big deal!

(...and i shouldn't put "it's not a big deal!" at the end of that! it makes it sound like i'm telling you that you feeling bad about it is not a big deal, when in fact i meant "what you posted was not a big deal, i just made a big deal out of it.)

(can you tell i've been in several different arguments with friends and loved ones recently over the use of our language, our intentions, and listening? i feel like a fucking monster)

Everyone is simultaneously an emotional water balloon and a prickly pear atm, let us all recognize and accept, namaste

Not to get political but I would love and appreciate to hear (ahem) WHOEVER is president next year say, 'hey, let's make funding for mental health a priority now that literally everyone in this country is suffering trauma and maybe some degree of mental illness'.

https://i.imgur.com/YYPvpRI.jpg

Rumors bubbling up in Houston that Abbott is shutting Texas down for a month with an announcement coming Friday.

Rumors bubbling up in Houston that Abbott is shutting Texas down for a month with an announcement coming Friday.

Whatever bubbles up, bubbles up in Houston that Abbott is shutting Texas down for a month with an announcement coming Friday.

down for a month in Texas with the bubbles up for an announcement coming Friday, whatever Abbott's shutting down for a month in Texas with the bubbles up for an announcement coming Friday, whatever Abbott's shutting down

"sandlot montage"

"that was the greatest summer of my lahf"

wish we could shut Abbott down for a month

Extremely doubtful that Abbott is shutting down the state. He might loosen the reins for local authorities to do so.

whatever bubbles, bubbles up

bus driver's last words to you as you walk toward the river with his company's raft: "hey, and don't forget to look up!"

*gestures toward the beautiful sky framed by tall trees on both edges of the water*

i let it rain
let it rain
let it rain