With the pandemic continuing to rage across the U.S. and around the world, the country’s hardest-hit areas are starting to open up.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1313466
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1313466
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Still hearing it’s just the flu comments. And good boy Josh Hawley is riling up his base by asking the DoJ to investigate 1st amendment violation of religious folk. “Hey they can protest but churches can’t open fully”!"
Isn’t there something in bible about praying at home?
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I still cannot fully wrap my mind around the fact that the “administration” is acting as if this does not exist, didn’t ever exist, and will not exist. It’s beyond obscene and half (or a third) of the country is fine with that, including more than half of the current U.S. senators.
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For the first time in three months, I walked with my walking/hiking partner. We were masked and stayed about 8-10 ft. apart. We were in the street but there are no sidewalks in my part of town so everyone walks in the street. Her spouse has a serious blood disorder is on chemo and immunocompromised. This is why we masked up for outside and had more than 6 ft. between us. It worked.
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They don’t give a flying fuck if we get sick or die.
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Well maybe there’s some help on the way. We can at least keep our fingers crossed.
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In Arizona, Gov. Ducey was mostly reasonable until after Trump came for a visit. Then he went full speed on re-opening, with the results mentioned in the article. For the moment, it’s worse in certain counties. I teach in a school district with a modified (i.e. almost year round) calendar and we are slated to return very soon: on July 10 (staff) and July 20 (students). Our two main zip codes have relatively few cases as of now (39, 42 each, both with about 27,000 residents). I haven’t been privy to the district discussions but have gotten some of the summaries from a colleague. Here’s her summary:
District will offer three choices: online school, at school or a hybrid (no ideas on who is developing lessons or what exactly that will look like. The goal is not to create something different for those kids but to expect them to complete classwork)
District office is washing surfaces, social distancing and using masks when with others. No talk of requiring masks at schools. They expect to be in Phase 2 with no more than 50 people in one place - eating in classrooms not the lunch area.
Minimize shared items
No temperature checks, will ask parents to do that
Classrooms will have portable sinks and/or hand sanitizer stations
New hand washing posters and towels will replace blowers in bathrooms
DO has ordered gloves and masks for those who wish to use them
Athletics talk for first quarter has been tabled at this time
No set protocol on what a classroom will look like physically or during lessons, passing periods, etc.
But what is it going to look like in a month here? Not everyone, but a lot of people act like re-opening means go back to whatever you used to do… (Sorry for the long-winded response, but I’m fairly wound up about this).
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As you should be. A second wave is coming. Many people I know believe it’s going to be worse than the first wave. I can’t speak to that. But I do believe it will be bad enough.
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My whole argument with Josh is 1) I don’t like him or trust him, 2) reading and seeing stories about how other churches managed to hold services; drive thru, parking lots, and why someone didn’t think to divide the congregation up into smaller numbers and have more services is baffling to me, and 3) I saw some pretty innovated ways to still get the collection monies.
Josh wants/ed churches to be consider essential like a grocery store, well grocery stores adapted their operations and made it work. I bet if any church had contacted the mayor or county executive with a well thought out plan they would let them open up. This all just pandering to his Evangelical base.
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It took me a minute to realize that you meant Josh Hawley, not Josh Kovensky whom I think does excellent work. My bad.
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My parents church does it’s services with zoom. josh is full of it
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Taxpayers after all pick up the tab.
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“The Rest Of Us.”
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Yes the 99.9 percent of us that don’t get special favors for the bribes paid.
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i think gops, even some old gops, have decided to just roll the dice. 80% I won’t have to go to the hospital. even then OK survival rate. let it flow. oops. better check my 401K.
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VP Pence deletes photo of himself meeting with scores of campaign staffers in Virginia - packed together, not wearing masks pic.twitter.com/VTESlwIN3y
— Bill Ritter (@billritter7) June 11, 2020
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Not even one mask. Not one. Just wait until early July, after the virus has had a chance to percolate through the rally crowds in Tulsa. And wherever else they congregate…
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I’m predicting that my town (Bullhead City, AZ) is going to turn into the next hotspot. Its already well on its way there – over the last weeks or so, our new cases per thousand residents has actually been higher that New York City at its worst. And that was before the Casinos opened up across the Colorado River in Laughlin.
Laughlin has 8 decent sized hotel casinos – total rooms around 10,000. And most everyone who works in those casinos lives in Bullhead City. And on opening weekend last week, those hotels were at 90% capacity.
Plus, this is a major Trumpster area – i,e, the kind of place where people don’t wear masks (or practice social distancing) as a political statement.
The weird thing is that on May 9th, there was a “test-a-palooza” – 492 people were tested, and only two tests came back positive. But in the last week, over 70 new cases of Covid have been confirmed in Bullhead.
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I guarantee you if the numbers start spiking in the next few weeks, the Trumpers will blame the protests, not the lax preventative measures that I see daily.
My husband and I are still wearing masks and gloves when we’re in public, grocery store shopping for instance. My last trip? Maybe 25% of the shoppers were masked while most (not all) employees had the masks on or hanging around their necks. On my single outing to Walmart (won’t be going back anytime soon), I’d say only 10% of the shoppers were wearing masks while every employee was masked and gloved.
That being said, I live in a Red State where Jesus is supposedly protecting our asses. If I bend my ear, I can almost hear the virus laughing. 
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