What was your COVID news for the day?

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jim584672 said:
The great paper towel / TP run may be ending. Spotted several people with Scott and Bounty packs leaving Walmart. They may have just got a shipment in.
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I just returned from an unplanned trip to Walmart. Things are looking up for the moment. In my last report, easily 90% of the store was empty across most categories, 100% empty in TP and PT. Today some areas are slowly filling back up. No TP still, but one small section of Bounty PT. People don't seem to be going crazy over it, or anything, just shopping normally.

Lots of ground beef, some fresh and frozen chicken, pork sausage, some eggs, ham section was full a couple of days ago, but now is half empty, plenty of 2% and whole milk with a limit of 1 per customer. Flour and sugar is now completely out. Bread aisle was about half full, still no fresh stock on peanut butter or jelly, but some lunchmeat is still available. Some soups came in, but it's running pretty low. Canned fruits and veggies are still practically empty. Lots and lots of in-store bakery goods, bagged snacks, candy, refrigerated juices. Hopefully the improvement will continue.
 
DH had an emergency dental appointment this morning and was given antibiotics, hence our unplanned trip to Walmart this morning. Hopefully this will take care of the problem, otherwise he has to have more work done. The dentist has reduced his hours to 10 AM to 1 PM to take care of urgent matters. The hygienist was not present, of course. Only the dentist and receptionist.

DH's employer has sent out updated guidelines on when employees have to stay home. As I'd hoped, due to the lack of available testing, they aren't requiring employees to test negative to be able to come back to work. They also aren't requiring employees to stay home if other household members are sick, though they have encouraged employees to stay home if needed to care for sick household members.

Fewer people are in the building each day, literally a handful out of over 500. DH thinks it won't be long before they decide to close down, even if the governor doesn't eventually mandate it. He was eyeing some cookies to take back to work, then decided against it. The few others there might be afraid to take one in case someone else brushed up against an adjoining cookie, you know?
 
Stopped by my local Walmart this morning, I would say the shelves in the grocery dry good sections were about 60% empty, the bread shelves 95% empty, meat section 95% empty, produce section mostly stocked. Still plenty of beer :). When I got to checkout the entire store was completely out of plastic bags. They did offer to sell cloth bags for $.85/each. Probably not a bad idea to start bringing your own bags just in case.
 
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After returning early from an out of town trip, went shopping this morning to stock up since we had emptied everything out before leaving. Mostly for fresh items, still had some cans in the pantry and some things in the freezer.

Was at a small local grocery store as opposed to a big chain. Fairly well stocked, some limited items.

Observations:
Wanted to pick up some regular Coke Zero, but none available. They did have small quantities of a few of those off flavors, Orange Vanilla, Cherry, etc. Not very much in demand.

Pasta aisle. You could get lasagna noodles and manicotti, but the spaghetti/linquini and other types were gone. Except for the gluten free pasta, which had all varieties.

Since my wife is part Italian, we routinely have pasta. And with a family member who insists she is celiac (undiagnosed) and must eat gluten free, we've eaten it. Don't care much for it.

Marketers could do some studies here, just how desperate do people have to be before they will take items when nothing else is available?
 
oldphd said:
Except for the gluten free pasta, which had all varieties.... Marketers could do some studies here, just how desperate do people have to be before they will take items when nothing else is available?
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Noticed the same thing - no real pasta, plenty of gluten free. Same with all the vegan products - no ground beef, plenty of Beyond Meat. If I were invested in BYND, I'd reconsider. People may do it for virtue signalling, but nobody really wants to eat that stuff.
 
We live in relatively new CCRC in the So Puget Sound area. We have about 125 residents in the Independent Living section. All healthy thanks to some tight control on visitors and vendors.
We have never had any issues with Amazon deliveries until today. Prior to Covid-19, all delivery drivers were free to enter the building through the main entrance and leave packages at our doors. With Covid-19, Management has tighten down entry for all non-residents, so deliveries are left with receptionist at entry. We have big signs in the door warning anyone with a temp, cough, etc not to enter. Temps are taken on all staff before they start their day.
I got a text message this around noon that Amazon could not complete delivery for a package they had previously indicated would deliver today. So, I get on chat with AMZ to find out what happened and they assure me they will have it delivered by end of the day, Someone from their "Delivery Liaison" dept calls me late this afternoon to assure me my package along with 4 others (news to me) would be sent out with another driver. I inquired what the difficulty was earlier in the day and was told "the driver was not comfortable making a delivery". No other details would be shared by the Liaison.
Apparently, AMZ leaves it up to their drivers to decide if they are "comfortable" with a location.
Just guessing here but with the rampant Covid-19 at the elder-care property in Kirkland,WA which local media have reported on extensively, it appears that this particular driver felt one elder care community was same as all others
 
Third person died from COVID in our county yesterday. Another gentleman in his 70's I think.

I did my usual weekly grocery shopping trip today. Plenty of produce, except for iceberg (head) lettuce. Not sure why that was the only produce missing. Substituted romaine instead. Canned goods and pasta were really low on stock, but there was still a variety if you needed something. I picked up some egg noodles. I was really surprised to see the tortillas were completely gone. No flour or corn tortillas of any size. Rice and Beans all gone.

I was going to make some pepperoni bread to go with a salad tomorrow, but all the yeast was gone! Weird. Guess I'll thaw out some bread and have toast instead. I didn't make it over to the bakery or bread aisle to see if they had any.

Bottled water was very low stock, but juices, teas, and colas were fully stocked. Of course, toilet paper and cleaners were completely empty shelves. We're probably good for a few weeks, so I'm not panicking yet. :)

Another surprise, all hamburger and chicken breasts were "behind glass" at the butchers counter. They had a limit of one each and you had to ask for it.

The gal at the register said some lady tried to return bags of flour and sugar she bought too much of. Weird. Obviously they denied it.

Thankfully, the store wasn't as busy as last week, and everyone was still being pleasant and courteous to one another. I did see several people wearing masks this time, as well as a few that were wearing rubber gloves (especially the check-out clerks). They had a new policy that only every other register could be open to prevent customers from getting to close to the checkers.

I ran over to Walmart to see if they might have the few items my store was out of. No luck, they had even less in stock. Virtually every aisle had empty shelves.

We're good for another week...
 
Went to store to get ice cream, Rum Raisin. Usually on sale 3 for $10, not today. 4.99 each. Yeah, and limit of one loaf of bread. Zero eggs.
 
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Los Angeles County with its 85 cities, Los Angeles City included, will be in a "Safer At Home" order beginning tonight till 4/19.

This is similar if not the same as the Bay Area "Shelter in Place" order.
 
Still 0 deaths in MN of 89 confirmed/3038 tested still 4 of the total 7 hospitalized.

So > 10% hospitalized and 0% death rate for our state. Looks like by the time I wake tomorrow the total deaths from COVID-19 will surpass 10,000 of a total of 243k confirmed cases globally. Data is not accurate and sampling is not analogical, symmetrical or really sensible at this stage. Good news no known vertical transmission from mom to baby, or in breast milk yet...


The first published study described nine mothers in their third (final) trimester who developed COVID-19 and gave birth to healthy infants via cesarean section. Not only did the babies test negative for coronavirus, but so did the mother’s breast milk and fluid that surrounds infants in the womb.

The most recent report of infants born to mothers with COVID-19 was released yesterday. Again, it suggests that infants may do well in spite of maternal illness.
 
fh2000 said:
Los Angeles County with its 85 cities, Los Angeles City included, will be in a "Safer At Home" order beginning tonight till 4/19.

This is similar if not the same as the Bay Area "Shelter in Place" order.
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The entire state is 'shelter at home' now beginning tonite.

Edited to add: I expect the TP shortage to last a while longer. Newsom was asked more than once how long he expected this to last and he said it was 'open ended.' Those who thought life would go back to normal after April 7 were in for a rude surprise. My expectation = a couple of months.
 
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The next county over will have a drive thru testing center for 1 day to collect tests from high risk individuals, first responders, healthcare workers, at risk elders. To date only 26 tests have been performed in the two area counties and they're trying to determine how wide spread it is in this remote area.

Hopefully this is an indication more testing is becoming available.
 
Just MORE Doom and Gloom by the media. How can these so call people ask so many DUMB questions again and again.

How long is it going to LAST. Like anyone knows.
When we going to get more test kits. I am sure someone should be able to wave a magic wand and get 7.7 BILLION so the world can all be tested tomorrow.
 
daylatedollarshort said:
Governor Newsom of California -"We project that roughly 56% of our state's population -- 25.5 million people -- will be infected with the virus over an eight-week period"


https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/us/california-coronavirus-stay-home-order/index.html
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He qualified that number as valid ONLY if "we were along for the ride". Since state-wide Sheter-In-Place and Social-Distancing has been implemented immediately, along with other proactive actions, the number would hopefully be a lot less.
 
I was thinking about the vitamin D issue and how I should get more sunlight. I Googled sunlight viruses.

First result:
"Sunlight or, more specifically, solar UV radiation (UV) acts as the principal natural virucide in the environment. UV radiation kills viruses by chemically modifying their genetic material, DNA and RNA."

Second result:
"Exposure to UV radiation is recognized to suppress cell-mediated immunity and therefore could adversely affect the course of a viral infection."

So I feel that dietary vitamin D is the way to go. If I'd known that yesterday I would have ordered more milk from Amazon.

In other news, my local Amazon warehouse is being cleaned because they just found a worker who has the virus.
 
We are due to travel back home on Sunday to Yorkshire from Scotland where we have been looking my SIL who is recovering from open heart surgery. Our son reported a shortage of milk so yesterday I texted our milkman to resume milk deliveries and was delighted to see from our doorbell camera that he delivered in the early hours. I texted my son to tell him that 2 bottles of milk were waiting for him, but he needed to walk over soon because it was like 2 bars of gold sitting on the doorstep :)

He picked them up by 8:30 and was very grateful. He had met a couple of friends who were on their back from “senior hour” shopping and they reported no milk or bread.
 
Yesterday:
- DW and I went for a walk/hike along a trail. Interesting to see everyone on the trail keeping "physical distance" (I much prefer that term than "social distance") from each other.
- Our local bank where we have our safe deposit box called. They were stopping "walk in" business at the end of the day, we can get to our box by appointment only.
- Stopped in to the local Walmart, interestingly microwave popcorn section was bare, but still lots of other snacks.
- Played golf again, course still seemed surprisingly light of golfers on a nice day.
 
jollystomper said:
Yesterday:
- DW and I went for a walk/hike along a trail. Interesting to see everyone on the trail keeping "physical distance" (I much prefer that term than "social distance") from each other.
- Our local bank where we have our safe deposit box called. They were stopping "walk in" business at the end of the day, we can get to our box by appointment only.
- Stopped in to the local Walmart, interestingly microwave popcorn section was bare, but still lots of other snacks.
- Played golf again, course still seemed surprisingly light of golfers on a nice day.
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Do you use hand sanitizer every time you touch a flag pole? Seems like one fo the worst things to do. A lot of other people touch that pole.
 
jollystomper said:
Yesterday:
- Played golf again, course still seemed surprisingly light of golfers on a nice day.
Click to expand...


Surprisingly our golf course has been busier than usual, warmer weather may have something to do with it. The golf course did send out a noticed to members that all events at the course will be cancelled until further notice.
 
As of yesterday, we have a drive through testing center 2 miles from our house. Grateful. We're still fine, not sure about everyone else. My DB thinks they'll reopen all restaurants and bars on March 31. He goes out to eat 4 times a week, at least. And visits his local watering holes. He's so upset.
 
Yesterday I went to a medical testing walkin type clinic, to pick up some testing equipment.
I brought gloves with me and wore one on my hand that I write with, thinking I don't want to touch the pen etc.
No customers at all in the place ....
They gave me a mask to wear (FREE MASK)
I got my supplies and left wearing my FREE MASK that I had used for all of 8 minutes.
I hung my mask up in the car , to let any virus die, and will reuse it in the future.
 
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