Iuz the Evil

Sure, essential activities. Makes sense

They are exempt under the original State order as well, in California. You do not need to wear a mask if you have a medical condition which impairs your ability to breathe... what are you doing out in public though?!

Meh. I have plenty of material from 2.5, 3.0, and Pathfinder 1.0 to last the rest of my life. They can do whatever makes them happy.

This past week California initiated a Statewide masks as a requirement (not a recommendation). Numbers continue to rise, and still within margins for ER/ICU/respirator quantity for now.

Not the County Sheriff jurisdiction, it's a municipality. It will be interesting to see what the County does given the decisions made at the city level. I haven't heard much about that, or the State level response. The City can absolutely disband their police, I don't know enough about Minnesota law enforcement regulation to know whether they in fact have jurisdictional authority to do the other things cited in the article. In California they would not. Behavioral Health services are County operated, not municipal, for example. 911 is regional jurisdiction and they'd effectively just be opting out for whatever was left. State police like CHP, County Sheriff, etc if they had the ability to respond. It's an interesting concept, hopefully they are executing it thoughtfully. Public safety is actually a thing in major metropolitan areas, simply turning off emergency response strikes me as extremely problematic. I'll be interested to see how this goes, and whether it's supported at the other levels of local government.

The Best Buy at the mall 15 miles from me was broken into using construction equipment. There was gunfire and the looting expanded into surrounding neighborhoods. Police response predictably escalated. Then a helicopter went down and took out the power to 23k people for a day. Sigh. I'm glad I took this week off. This is looking like yet another set of bad choices. I am not sure what we're even supposed to do that's a winning strategy locally. Law Enforcement will enforce the laws, that's inevitable and actually appropriate. And the training is "overwhelming force" if needed and go home to your family at the end of the day. I understand that perspective as well. This isn't going to go well. I retreated to nature and am camping with my kiddo. I'll be back next week, but this isn't my issue for another 4 days. I can't even.

Yeah, I really didn't like Man of Steel aside from a couple scenes... but thought Cavill was great. I'd welcome him back in the role.

Shazam was pretty fantastic in my opinion. Otherwise pretty much totally agreed.

I love this so much. If anyone has a problem with that, come at me bro.

Almost certainly.

I would literally rather die than live in that world. We absolutely must recover what we have lost, or as much as we can. Edit: as soon as vaccination or resistance allows us.

That isn't helping me anymore. I started to write how I felt but it was so despondent. Here is a message of hope instead.

I walked down to the local hot dog eatery today, decent foot traffic in the place. Hot dog with kraut & mustard, and a Racer 5. Everything was very weird, plastic barriers and a laminated hot dog placard that said "clean me" to leave on my table after. Masks and gloves all around, and you can only take off your mask when eating. Everyone standing on floor markings, and they'd pulled half the tables out so social distancing was in full effect. Hand sanitizer required before completing your order. The workers were just happy to be at work again. Was a good hot dog. It reminded me of better times than this. I want this to be finished, I miss fear not being a constant element in every human interaction I see around me. This may be the most depressing thing I've ever witnessed, and I want to be able to hug my friends again. And go to parties, and hang out with folks listening to good music. To be able to travel, and not have to constantly track where my mask is before I go out. To be able to see my mom without worrying about her maybe getting sick accidentally. And none of that is going to happen any time soon. This disease is taking so much from us, and this is time we will never get back. The world is on pause, full of terror and danger, and it's appalling, for going on months now... with probably more than a year to go. God, this is awful. Tastes like despair.

I've started raking my hair back with my hands. I'll be up for a pony tail or stylish man bun by end of summer

We are testing dead bodies for Covid-19 through the Coroner's office, and even funeral homes. There isn't under reporting happening there in CA. Edit: realized I was maybe being pretty identifiable on here. Crazy people out there these days Suicide, alcohol related illness, and the like are chronic. You will see those carry over a long time.

Just called around a bit. Most restaurants I'm talking to have reservations only for seating, starting Friday with reduced internal capacity (50%). Staff wear face masks and gloves. 6' distancing for dining. This will be interesting. No stand alone bars, but if you serve alcohol and food you still can.

Um. I'm the government too? That's actually what I'm talking about. I don't understand this place sometimes.

Likely true. Nothing I can personally do about that with the choices I'm having to make now, man. It is a true dilemma here, we cannot create a full public safety net system with local money. I am doing the best I can.

Oh I absolutely agree that would be a HUGE help. Unfortunately we don't have that as a feature of our society. So the choices are extremely grim. I'm not being flippant. The choice is expose yourself to possible infection and risk, or face economic ruin in a society with very limited safety net resources. And local government gets to make the call on which road we hop towards, because the Feds deferred to the State. And the State is deferring to local health officials. Gee, thanks. So you do the best you can. Infection control matters. Suicide, health issues, and abuse matter. Economics matter. It's all important and you just try to be prudent and careful.

That's definitely not the case locally. We are facing considerable community pressure to open up so that business can open. State unemployment at 22% and higher locally. And folks starting to just say "heck with it" more and more. Traffic congestion returning, more folks moving around the community. By moving into "deep stage 2" the hope is it will buy another couple months of time and give people hope. We want to be very careful about this. Nobody's wanting to go too fast. Child abuse emergency report numbers are up over double last year, with half the reporting. Domestic violence through the roof. Nobody getting preventative care or dental care. Had a spike in suicide already. Emergency food assistance up 287%. You can argue it's not related to economic stressors, social isolation, increased liquor sales, and growing frustration at the situation. I don't think I'll believe that though. This is really bad. People are not handling the situation well at all, and there's some hope that this may mitigate the secondary effects of our intervention. I think it'll be some time before we take another step in this process, and we are monitoring like crazy. Testing almost double the State requirement, doing probes of nursing homes, compliance response for business, all that. We will see how it goes.

California starting to move into "deep phase 2". County by County posting of variance attestation on the DPH website. Deep phase 2 allows retail, restaurants (with modification such as restricted seating and employee masks), and similar modified activities. Placer and San Luis Obispo are cleared for that, among others. No Bay Area County on that list that I've seen. https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7news.com/amp/phase-two-california-bay-area-stage-when-can-restaurants-reopen-in/6186330/

Food access is a serious problem in the United States right now. We are as of this week pushing out food assistance to about 10k youth (from 2700 normally) daily through student meals with closed schools. Just to pick one source. It's all connected, parental unemployment is massively increasing the need. For the general population the food bank had to ask for the National Guard to expand their mission for support because of the amount of folks needing assistance. CalFresh applications alone went up 78% in April. We will not be able to maintain that with existing resources. There's a desire to do it obviously, but we're going to hit some hard limitations pretty quick. Don't think that people having no food access is off the table in the United States. It is a matter of resources and timeline, with enough funding and major policy changes maybe... it's hard to say if this could be achieved beyond a month or two. The secondary impacts are starting to stack up in a pretty unnerving way. Rental issues are the next big one. Currently eviction is suspended, but it will drop back into place sometime, maybe the next phase, maybe later. Then we will have huge problems with housing. That stuff is coming in several waves as we move along.

So we have begun reopening in California today. State guidelines are in place, and several Counties are moving forward. It'll be interesting to see how "we are establishing 'guidelines' but not certifying your local plan' works in practice. Deferring to local health officers cuts both ways, they ultimately work for a Board of Supervisors. I'm guessing this will lead to much local variation in response.

We refer to it as "the 'Rona" here in California when I've heard it referenced by folks so inclined. "Frank looks like he got the 'Rona"

Oh it ain't over yet. Pretty predictable modeling we will be having an increase in spread over time given any level of reduction in current measures until we hit a yet unknown level of exposure (unknown because current infection rate is unknown due to asymptomatic and non reported numbers) or get a vaccine. That last option will probably be a while. I get the arguments, we are just picking bad options though. More people die or generational poverty is created. So then you get into arguments about personal preference in response. I think folks are largely doing the best they can. It makes me sad to see the level of vitriol directed at people about the decisions being made. I am living in a very locked down, shelter at home, social distancing enforced and masks required location. I think it's the right choice we are making. I do not think the people who are upset at the impact of those decisions do not have a right to be very angry when we have little local spread and they lose their business, home and all the implications from those impacts. That happened directly from those local and state decisions we made. It was the choice made at the time, and seems like it worked. But being mad at that choice and the people who made it is inevitable. Such is government service. I'm tired. Have been off 3 days in last 50, but I remain grateful for the opportunity. Rambling now, going to bed.