More importantly, a helluva lot of businesses that have a live, public customer base can unlock all the doors they want, careful, sentient people still aren’t walking in. Miss Kitty would skin my ass if I went to a ball game or concert, or did anything else around strangers I had no idea whether they were asymptomatic or not. Go to a mall? Ha! Trump’s prediction (and expectations) of the economy taking off soon is lunacy. MAGA knuckle-draggers will be the only people out and about, creating all the more reason for everyone else to stay home.
As far as restaurants there’s an issue I never see addressed. Say you’re the owner and go to all the measures needed to have a “safe” dining room. Spaced tables. Staff in PPE. Plexiglass shields. No reusable menus. All the stuff we read they’re doing. So now your dining room is full. Diners can’t wear masks. Someone eating has a sneezing fit, followed by a bout of coughing. I’m sure as hell leaving right then and there. Is the restaurant evacuated? Doesn’t it have to be, and then fully sanitized?
I’m not so sure that the " privately " part of the headline is needed. It’s obvious in every announcement that has come out that Abbott knows damn well that opening things back up will result in more deaths. He doesn’t care and he doesn’t care who knows it. He got the result he wanted, an invitation to the White House. where he’ll be patted on the head and given some form of Scoobie Snack
Entirely possible he realizes he’s almost certainly going to lose, and feels we deserve his walking away and letting us die. What’d we ever do for him?
I do agree with this statement of his. The stay at home orders, the goal of flattening the curve was all about not overwhelming the hospitals.
And this a question that I too would like answered.
Somehow the plain talk of how we are going to deal with this virus in our daily lives has not been explored. The pleas for going back to normal is stupid, this is the new normal. The understanding that we can not gather in large groups for concerts, sporting events, long lines to vote is, and will continue to be, dangerous to our health.
What I find callus and cold is that Trump, Abbott, and any other Republican that speaks of the “economy” as being the goal to protect. No mention of the “economy” can’t vote, the “economy” can’t serve in the military, the “economy” is not people. This is going to be create the greatest shift in how we live our lives, how will we sustain our lives, and what will we be willing to sacrifice to sustain our lives.
Trump is OK will 100,000 US citizens dying so that the “economy” will be saved, and to save his re-election chances. But when the virus has killed off the worker drones what will the “middle class” and the uber wealthy have sacrifice to continue on with their standard of living?
Even more, they are pro death as long as they think other people are making the sacrifice while they make money (but as soon as it affects themselves or someone close to them, then it will be “why didn’t anyone do something!”).
At least Biden is getting in the news by coming out on the right side of the killing/murder of a black jogger in Georgia.
Joe Biden sent out a tweet saying: “The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood. My heart goes out to his family, who deserve justice and deserve it now. It is time for a swift, full, and transparent investigation into his murder.”
Even Boris fucking Johnson abandoned that idea when the cost became apparent, and went with guaranteed income for say-at-home workers, something the fucks in Washington don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around.
With the late change of policy, England was leading Europe with its national death rate, the last time I checked.
It all fits into place. The GOP used to pose as the champions of the working man. The real Americans. Of course that was bullshit. Hard to keep it undercover though when you refer to people as "hard working Americans " when you need to then schleps that just want to get on unemployment compensation so they don’t have to work. But there was never a doubt that they prefer folks in the higher socioeconomic groups that those at the bottom. They love rich guys and rich guys love them.
If you “open the economy” rich guys get their slaves back and it’s those slaves that take the risk of getting COVID. The rich guys are not wielding a knife 12 inches from another guy in a packing plant or filling boxes 12 inches from another guy in an Amazon warehouse. They’re safe.
Consider that and cruel policy like that of Gov. Abbott or Trump is easy to understand.
Trump has always conflated the stock market and the economy. If the market goes up 5 percent he’ll trumpet that he fixed the economy. He would anyway, but you get the idea. The actual worldwide economy that trades good and services is opaque to him and he doesn’t seem to know one blessed thing about it.
We do have to reopen businesses at some point, but if only there was a evidence-based method endorsed by public health experts that we could use as a guideline. What’s that, you say? There is? And they announced one, but are now ignoring it? Never mind then.
This is what Trump wanted from the get-go, the strategy behind doing nothing for months. I can’t remember his phrasing: “let it burn out,” or something to that effect.
