Coronavirus Updates

[Pamela]

Please read and sign petition ASAP. We need mandatory lockdown.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

Rundown for Brits on the various forms of financial help available, updated in the light of the Chancellor's announcements today:

Coronavirus Finance & Bills Help

Many are worried about the UK impact of the coronavirus on their ability to pay bills and even stay in their home. This guide tells you what help's out there if you can't pay bills or pay loans or credit cards back.

www.moneysavingexpert.com

There seems to be a lot of anger online that the self employed aren't getting enough work to pay their bills just now and the government are only offering sick pay and more time to pay taxes. Folk suddenly realising quite how self-sufficient and resourceful you need to be at times. I've been self employed for ages so I'm used to the lack of a safety net, but I know I'm more able to get income from elsewhere because I've done it when I needed to in the past. Others aren't able to switch jobs and have much higher outgoings than we do, but they're really going to struggle if the distancing continues for a year or more. We'll all be out picking fruit and veg by summer

 

[Fionalein]

Were they? If I still drank, I think I'd be buying a lot more gin and vodka for home consumption than normal (and considerably more than is healthy, come to that).

There are different kinds of alcohol overconsumption. Many folks around here are so called "social drinkers", they loose all of those.

 

[Cristiano]

Miami-Dade will shut down hotels, Miami Beach to set a curfew amid coronavirus spread

 

[Kara Spengler]

Coronavirus deniers and hoaxers persist despite dire warnings, claiming ‘it’s mass hysteria’​

Coronavirus deniers insist outbreak is a hoax to hurt Trump - The Washington Post

Coronavirus deniers insist outbreak is a hoax to hurt Trump As he often does, Crist found a meme online that amplified his feelings and posted it to his Facebook page. “Does anyone know anyone who has...

www.evernote.com

This reminds me of the exchange between Dr Faustus and the devil Mephistopheles that takes place immediately after Faustus has sold his soul:

Scene V - Collection at Bartleby.com

Scene V FAUSTUS in his StudyFaust.Now, Faustus, mustThou needs be damn’d, and canst thou not be sav’d:What boots it then to think of God or

www.bartleby.com

ETA: The reason I quote it at such length is that I've always thought it tells you something about Faustus that, having sold his soul to the devil not five minutes ago, and asked him where hell is, and Mephistopheles tells him, he just says, "Get away. There's no such place. You're having me on."

Probably today he'd say that he's seen something on YouTube proving that hell's fake news, and Mephistopheles is a crisis actor.

No, today he would not know any of the references. Meanwhile it was required reading when I was in HS.

 

[Kara Spengler]

For those in the US, a bit of a reprieve, especially on the money side if you have to pay. You'll need to keep on the lookout at your state and local tax authorities for their deadlines though.

Anyone wanting to take advantage of that check on it. When I heard it on the news they specified several times you still had to file on time but you could pay late.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Please read and sign petition ASAP. We need mandatory lockdown.

We can’t, unless we put in a safety net. I predict we’re going to have an explosion of homelessness, and the shelter system doesn’t have nearly enough capacity as it is.

Also, shelters, jails and tent cities are the opposite of social distancing and will be scenes of contagion and death.

And if the nonsense coming from Arizona Republicans is typical for the party, we can’t allow people to stop working, or guarantee housing, because it goes against the core ideology - almost everyone must be forced to work, no matter the personal cost: and pandemic be damned.

We’re incapable of following even any of the European examples. Our entire society runs on coercion and poverty.

Authoritarian abuse doesn’t work, but traitors are in charge.

 

[Clara D.]

We can’t, unless we put in a safety net. I predict we’re going to have an explosion of homelessness, and the shelter system doesn’t have nearly enough capacity as it is.

Also, shelters, jails and tent cities are the opposite of social distancing and will be scenes of contagion and death.

And if the nonsense coming from Arizona Republicans is typical for the party, we can’t allow people to stop working, or guarantee housing, because it goes against the core ideology - almost everyone must be forced to work, no matter the personal cost: and pandemic be damned.

We’re incapable of following even any of the European examples. Our entire society runs on coercion and poverty.

Authoritarian abuse doesn’t work, but traitors are in charge.

But surely the Free Market will sort it out!

</sarcasm>

 

[Brenda Archer]

But surely the Free Market will sort it out!

</sarcasm>

That’s the excuse they use.

I put it to a kind of authoritarian psychology, “I grew up abused, so you have to too,” and a willingness to undergo privation if it means other races are also being denied.

Authoritarian families and religions are sites of abuse, this gets replicated in the workplace and in politics.

People are really attached to it. It you’re not coming from that miasma of abuse, the people who are still in it might even try to push you into it.

No surprise we have a malignant NPD for a President, and a party of enablers. One disease feeding another, all of it too wound up in dysfunction and trauma until it’s much too late.

Hopefully all this authoritarian crap will finally be discredited forever.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I put it to a kind of authoritarian psychology, “I grew up abused, so you have to too,”

I ran into that at a union meeting about vacation allotments. I had an idea to present for a more equitable improvement and someone with a lot of seniority said “I had to deal with it this way.” And I replied, “It’s kind of like a hazing ritual, then?”

The negotiator shot me down and at the next meeting brought it up again as the brilliant idea he had and recommended it. It went through. No matter, I still got nothing but passive aggressive bullshit from some staff after that. lulz.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I ran into that at a union meeting about vacation allotments. I had an idea to present for a more equitable improvement and someone with a lot of seniority said “I had to deal with it this way.” And I replied, “It’s kind of like a hazing ritual, then?”

The negotiator shot me down and at the next meeting brought it up again as the brilliant idea he had and recommended it. It went through. No matter, I still got nothing but passive aggressive bullshit from some staff after that. lulz.

Oh gosh this is EXACTLY how it works.

 

[Anya Ristow]

The coronavirus pandemic began in China. Today, it reported no new local infections for the first time

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

 

[Fionalein]

But surely the Free Market will sort it out!

</sarcasm>

It kinda will, but not in a way they expect it to. The rest of the world is part of the "free market" too, and guess which societies will recover faster? Those damn Euro-Commies will ...

 

[Spirits Rising]

Yeah sorry but .... fuck off with the mandatory lockdown.

Not all of us have the means, capability or even fucking storage room for such a thing. and that's just food, maybe cleaning/similar supplies. I sure as fuck couldn't afford to stockpile my blood pressure meds.

So again, the mandatory lockdown can fuck right off.

 

[Beebo Brink]

A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients

“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube.”

www.propublica.org

 

[Anya Ristow]

The company I work for is barely making payroll, and now our production facility has been ordered shut down.

 

[Anya Ristow]

In a hopeful sign, one person in Japan, which had a run on toilet paper about a week before the USA did, is reporting that there is so much toilet paper that nobody is buying it anymore.

 

[Isabeau]

 

[Kara Spengler]

Yeah sorry but .... fuck off with the mandatory lockdown.

Not all of us have the means, capability or even fucking storage room for such a thing. and that's just food, maybe cleaning/similar supplies. I sure as fuck couldn't afford to stockpile my blood pressure meds.

So again, the mandatory lockdown can fuck right off.

Yeah, if I was living in the house I grew up in I could swing it. Multiple rooms. Basement unfinished but good for storage of some things. A heating system that uses multiple fuel systems. Lots of room around it so you could go outside without worrying about other people around. Compared to an appartment right now.