My father-in-law is 78 and in poor health. Right in the coronavirus’ wheelhouse, IOW. So I’m very worried about him.
But we could still be looking at a wave of sickness and death that swamps our ability to treat people. There’s no leadership from the White House, and the GOP-controlled Senate is following its non-lead. Some states are doing the right thing, others are doing nothing. This is fucking scary at a national level. We’re two weeks behind Italy, and the Senate’s talking about waiting until a week and a half from now, when they get back from recess, before doing anything.
The first suggestion I heard was tax breaks. Which is pointless, because if your income is $0, a tax break won’t help. I’ve heard more money for SNAP, but what if you don’t use it? Do you have to sign up now?
My husband and I are both hourly workers in the local public schools. The schools announced this afternoon they were closing until April 13. My husband is custodial staff, and they will be CLEANING (as he put it) so he will still have an income. There is a rumor that other hourly workers will still be paid but no confirmation.
I worry about our finances because we have been a deep hole for almost a year, it looked like we might be getting out, then all this happens.
I also worry about the idiocy of government. I don’t know if it was city or state government, but someone decided that schools had to come up with a plan to keep all children at least 6 feet apart. :smack:
Loach, take the results with a grain of salt because most of us are worried about more than one of the options. I marked I was more concerned about the health of others because if it came down to it, I’d rather die than have my son, who has fairly severe asthma, die from it. But he’s very worried about me, as I’m over 60 and immune-compromised. So the poll may tell you more about human loyalties than it does anything else.
What he said. I’ve told both sets of parents to huddle in, watch Netflix, and bomb their deliveries with Lysol, until this burns out.
Other than that, I’m concerned about the markets taking a giant shit. That should end in about a month or so as China starts sending goods out again. But still.
My concern is that people will panic and act irrationally. Sometimes bad things happen under those circumstances; stupid things. Easily avoidable things that no one wants.
In my immediate family (my family, my parents, my sister and her family - total of 10), we have five with underlying health issues that put them at serious risk. My parents are taking it very seriously, which is good. They’re both around 80. My sister and her family are “waiting to see what happens”, which unfortunate.
I’m wondering about the economy after the latest news from around my area. One neighboring county has cancelled all schools for the next month, and demands are coming in that our county do the same thing. Never mind neither county has one single person who has tested positive.
But who are going to take care of the kids while the parents work? Some may have day care or a babysitter, but what if the day cares close? Or the baby sitters don’t want to take a chance of getting sick.
Some folks are saying that employers should pay the employees full pay and let them stay home and care for their kids, while employees without kids should pick up the slack. To me that’s not fair.
And others are complaining because Spectrum is going to install high-speed access to families whose kids are in school and who don’t have internet so they can do their school from home. They are complaining that it puts Spectrum workers at risk. And others are saying that if those needy families get free internet for a few months, current subscribers should also.
And folks are saying it’s not fair for store employees (especially cashiers) are at risk, and if everyone else is staying home, they should too and the stores should close.
Seems to me that there are no answers. You try to one thing, and folks bitch and complain. You try to help one group, and the other complains.
Is there any way to please everyone? And do people really expect employers to just throw money away?
Also-many children are on school breakfast and lunch programs. How are they going to eat those meals if schools are closed? Some want the schools to deliver meals to the homes regardless of the cost.
This is bringing into stark relief how totally and completely fucked up the government is right now. We’re on our own, and rich people are exploiting this to get even richer and certain politicians are using it to further break democracy down.
That I’m more concerned about this more than the well-being of my elderly parents is pretty fucking infuriating.
The panic buying is my main concern at the moment. I’m reminded of the .22 ammo shortage of a couple years ago. I remember thinking things would settle down fairly quickly but it went on for a year or more. For NO reason.
My main concern is economic. From a death-toll perspective, I don’t think this is going to be anything close to something like the Spanish flu, both in terms of % of the world population killed and in absolute numbers. I could be wrong about that of course.
But economically, a recession is an absolute certainty at this point. And i think the probability of us going into a global depression is greater than .500. But I don’t blame the virus for this. This colossal hyper debt bubble was just looking for a pin to pop it. Even if the corona virus gets cured and eradicated tomorrow, we’d still be in very big trouble economically.
Toilet Paper should have been a poll option. We actually need toilet paper (as in, we are very low- unlike other crazy Americans, I am not stocking up for the zombie apocalypse), so I went to the store yesterday and they were completely out (and I visited several stores). No prob though because I have Amazon Prime. Got online last night and Amazon is OUT OF TOILET PAPER. The end is near.
The Los Angeles county school district just announced closure for at least two weeks. LAUSD is far and away the largest school district in the nation. The full announcement is at the link, but here is an excerpt:
“The Family Resource Centers will open on Wednesday, March 18 and will be staffed weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. with trained professionals. Children will be able to have a warm meal, engage with their peers and pursue their different studies. And they’ll be safe.”
Of course, California is practically a People’s Republic now, so they have an unfair advantage when it comes to rationality and compassion.
Yup. I work in a preschool, which has closed, and even if we could use vacation and sick leave for this, which we can’t (because if everyone did, they’d go broke), it wouldn’t be enough to cover everything I’m missing. So for a month, our income is reduced by about 30%, which is better than 80%, like some people, and we do have savings, but it still sucks.
At least gas consumption will be reduced by a significant amount, and the weather predictions are that we won’t be using much in the way of heat or AC while we are all home. We’re going to crack windows during the day if it gets too warm, and run floor fans we already own, and it it gets cold at night, we have two old-filled space heaters for the bedrooms. We can turn the heat in the apartment all the way off, and just have the space heaters on, because we are in a basement apartment will only two outside walls, E & W, so it holds heat exceptionally well, since the windows get the sunlight.
Also, no one will be buying food out. Everything will be prepared in, and we have lots of reserves, so we will need one trip, or delivery every 10 days or so, spending around $30 for fresh fruit, milk & eggs.
We buy in bulk, so we are backstocked on TP, detergent, toothpaste, flour, oil, frozen veggies, canned goods, even some boxed cereal for the boychik to snack on. We have lots of pet food, too, because we just got a Chewy delivery. Seriously, we have cleaning products, OTC meds, and just about anything you could think of to last more than a month. I even have yeast infection medication in reserve, because I bought some here to take to Costa Rica last summer, in case it wasn’t OTC there, and didn’t use it. The date says it’s good for another 18 months.
Except that we are very neat and organized about things, you could accuse us of being hoarders. But seriously, we did the math. We are saving almost $2000 every year buy buying non-perishables in bulk. That’s almost 5% of our income. Basically, we pay for half of what we spend on utilities (including internet and cable) by buying in bulk.
We don’t really have bills besides rent, utilities, and a couple of credit cards plus a store card that usually have about $100-200 on them, and we could pay the minimum if we had to (although I hate to do that).
What’s tough, though, is that in addition to the income we lose because I’m not working, we pulled everything out of the stock market about a year ago. I wasn’t exactly day-trading, but I was doing some short-term investments (like, 2-3 months), plus, we got dividends, and it used to bring in about $300 a month. We never did make up that gap, so we’ve been putting less into savings and retirement. And, of course, it’s not an option now, which would be a really easy thing for me to do with all the free time I will have.
I keep going over all of this in my head to convince myself that we will be OK, but I’m still worried. And if I don’t go back to work right after Passover, which is when we are scheduled to reopen, things we get worse.
We will put nothing into savings, and eventually will run through everything we have backstocked, and will either have to begin buying smaller amounts, or use savings to continue to buy in bulk.
We have stuff we can sell, but I have a feeling that until this is over, everything is a buyer’s market.
**
I am also worried a little about my stepfather**. He lives alone now, and that’s good on one point, in that he is somewhat isolated, so that his exposure to other people is limited, but that’s also bad in that is he becomes ill, there is no one to help him immediately.
He is almost 80, and while his general health is good for his age, he has lost a lot of weight since my mother died, and did not have much to spare.
I’m baking up a care package for him this week-- bagels and pastries.
Everyone I talk to says that we need to live in the moment. Do we have a place to live, food, water and clean clothes for today? Heat if we need it? Transportation, or access to transportation for emergencies? Working phone? Is everyone healthy today?
I dunno. I’m a planner. I feel better after I make a plan, even if we don’t follow it exactly.
But I guess I can’t really ask for more than knowing that we can pay April rent, and utilities, I’m scheduled to go back on April 15, and we have food until then even if we don’t buy anything more. That means that for the last couple of weeks, meals will be boring.
Passover is another worry. Technically, I am supposed to shut away or throw away all food that is not kosher for Passover, and then go out and buy all new kosher for Passover stuff.
I have a feeling that is not happening this year. I’m actually OK with that. People during the Depression often did not keep strictly kosher for Passover, if they used public kitchens. During the Holocaust, there was no kosher for Passover. You ate what you could find. There have been other times I didn’t keep kosher for Passover. When I was pregnant, and had no appetite right around Passover, I ate anything I could manage. The thought of matzah made me sick. In the middle of the holiday, I got a sudden craving for a sandwich from Subway, and DH went out and got me one.
So, TL;DR: money, my stepfather, keeping kosher for Passover.
Ah, but G-d holds life to be more precious than keeping kosher - if G-d wants you to keep kosher for Passover He will aid you in that, and if not, He will want you to keep healthy and alive. As you well know.
I think I read once of a time when a community of Jews were living in a time of plague of some sort and their rabbi told them that they must eat on Yom Kippur instead of fasting in order to preserve their health and strength but I can’t find it again. But that would be a case where breaking the rules is not only justified but arguably mandatory, wouldn’t it?
If you can’t do a perfect Passover then do the best you can, but when movement is restricted and/or food may be in short supply it might be better to be less than perfect.
Of course, you will have to make these decisions, not me. Good health in either case!
My dad had cancer, and he also had the flu, as did my mom. She survived, he didn’t. They were both in their mid 60s at the time, and this was just the seasonal flu. So, for what it is worth, having cancer does weaken a person’s ability to recover.
Now that I am over 60, I know many people who are vulnerable. I am healthy, myself, but…I was very sick in my 20s with flu complications that landed me in the hospital. So I do not assume anything, even with myself