The lack of knowledge regarding the most basic safety precautiouns has been one of the scariest things about this whole scare.
Of course that's without know the true extent of the infections on our end since we are barely testing.
To talk about a slightly more lighthearted topic, what are y'all's bets on when restaurants will allow dine in again?
Speaking of being able to dine in at restaurants...have been thinking about our state's governor and his plan to give qualifying older people as much as $66/day to eat at selected restaurants.
Many of these older people will not have easy access to transportation. If they live in cities they may be able to take a bus or light rail. But there will be many who need to take taxis/Ubers/pay someone to take them places. Those people aren't going to be able to go out too often, if at all, to eat at these restaurants.
Another option could be to order the food and then have a delivery service bring the meal. Okay, the person has to pay the sales tax on the food, plus the delivery charge. Can you imagine doing that three times a day? Fuck, no! And even if a person can easily get to one of these restaurants, if the place is a sit-down restaurant, the diner will need to pay sales tax on the food, and a tip to the server. Not going to be able to do this three times a day, either. Many of the recipients of these vouchers/scrip/dog turds/whatever are on Social Security, which doesn't pay that much, or SSI, which pays even less.
There are some counties in the state that have been conducting a rather smaller version of this program. Intent is to provide "healthy food" for seniors. Yet the 19-page listing of the Los Angeles County eating establishments that take the vouchers/scrip contains a huge number of fast food/pizza places. Granted, these places may have some menu items considered "healthy food". Can you imagine someone going to one of these places, say, McDonald's (seriously) to eat, voucher in hand, and being told all they can get with their meal voucher is a McSalad? Or going to a Pizza Hut and being restricted to the salad bar only? And they can only have water or milk to drink?
For some reason don't believe the state will end up spending as much on these meals as they think. Many recipients will simply not be able to afford to participate. Better idea - just issue recipients debit cards so they can go wherever they want and eat as they please, or go to a store and buy the food. $66/day X 30 days = $1980/month to eat out on. Sweet!
The income cutoff is six times the national poverty level. Checked the 2020 national poverty levels. I qualify income-wise, and with my age and health background believe I have a good chance of getting those bucks.
Problem is people won't be dining in even if they are open because all of them are told to stay home. The degree of interaction in restaurant will be reduced to absolute zero and some restaurants will have to leave out tables for "spaces."
Some (most) restaurants need to fill those spaces to make ENDS MEET. This is going to fuck up the entire industry for so long.
We haven't even begun to see the economic fallout from all these house arrests. Could be terrible. But the people who impose and enforce these house arrests never miss a paycheck. They just don't give a flying fuck for anything or anyone except themselves and their personal power trips.
