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The Chatterbox => Random Chat => Topic started by: Bobbias on March 24, 2020, 12:57:49 AM

Title: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 24, 2020, 12:57:49 AM
So, I've been laid off because the big 3 automakers shut down. Initially it's supposed to be for a week, but ontario and quebec just ordered all non-essential businesses to close, and I fully expected the layoff to last longer than a week. Already applied for employment insurance, and ordered an oz of weed to help pass the time.

Gotta say, getting laid off due to a global pandemic was not exactly on my list of life goals, but at least it's gonna be one crazy story years in the future. Still, shit is fucked up.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 24, 2020, 10:17:30 AM
Man, sorry to hear that. I hope everything works out for you.

I'm fortunate enough to work in an essential business (eyeglass manufacturing) and in a position where I can work from home, so things have been relatively normal for me (aside from working from a recliner instead of a desk).

Not to say that things have felt normal, of course. The combination of suddenly working from home and staying indoors has more or less caused the days to blur together, not to mention that whenever I do go out to grab food/groceries, the area just feels like a ghost town. I went out yesterday and one of the busiest roads in the area had fairly sparse traffic during what would normally be rush hour. Everything about it just feels kind of surreal.

I also worry about what's going to come after all of this passes. I think we're headed toward a far worse recession than what we dealt with post-9/11.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 24, 2020, 02:53:08 PM
Yeah, I'm expecting a pretty deep recession after this passes too.

Technically speaking I work at a business considered essential according to ontario's definition of essential businesses, but since the big 3 shut down my company basically had no choice since they are more or less our only customers. Fortunately I have savings (well, 10k from my grandmother because my brother and I weren't on her will and she decided against changing it, and just gave us our inheritance early), so I'm not in as bad a financial situation as many of the people I work with.

Oddly my city doesn't feel as dead as it really should. Like, plenty of businesses are either closed, or working in some modified way (take out only, reduced hours, etc.) but there's still more traffic than I would have expected.

Also, my girlfriend works for a VERY essential company. She actually makes the face shields you see all over the place: http://southmedic.ca/bettershield/
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: vladgd on March 24, 2020, 03:27:49 PM
It's no good. Buisness is slow, and slow is boring. At least my hours are fine (for now), but still, not enjoying the longer feeling days.

Not to mention my birthday is on Friday, and well, what even can I do? Probably get take out somewhere and immediately come back home, not like I need anything, but I still like going out for breakfast/lunch and shopping for beers, but that aint happening.

Lame stuff all around, and you can't exactly put your head in the sand to ignore it either since it's everywhere. Even my phone with NO SOCIAL MEDIA AT ALL gave me a forced to see notification explaining what Michigan is doing for the crisis.

Gonna be a long year. If only this happened when I was an unemployed bum who never left the house, but no, it had to wait till I was a relatively active adult with a more than full time job. I'm being optimistic, but it aint easy when things change by the day. I'm ultimately shocked at how totally 100% incompetent we as a human species are in 2020. I thought we were better than this.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 24, 2020, 07:23:20 PM
This is far from a normal situation, though. This is probably the worst pandemic we've had in just over 100 years. When you really look at the numbers, though, most people are handling this well. The people who are breaking the stay at home orders and hoarding supplies are very much on the fringes. You're always going to have Karens and Chads.

Beyond that, this is a new pathogen with a particularly long incubation period. It takes some time to develop the

On that note, I'm going to break my usual non-politics stance for a sec: my main complaint (and concern) about all of this is that the face of the US government during this crisis is a narcissistic, incompetent imbecile. He's done nothing to reassure the American people (which is likely what led to the shortages of critical supplies) and has handled it in such a nonchalant way ("oh, we'll be back up and running by Easter, yuk yuk yuk!") that it's obvious to me that he's completely ignoring the advice and guidance of medical professionals and, per usual, acting like a goddamned know-it-all like he always fucking does.

On a brighter note, I am very pleased with Ohio's handling of all this. I think that if the measures that Ohio took were applied on a national level, far sooner, this wouldn't have spread as far or as quickly in the US.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 25, 2020, 03:55:07 AM
I legitimately feel bad for how things have been handled in the US at the national level. It should not be left up to state and city government to try to handle something like this.

As for canada, I feel like we've done a fairly decent job overall, and I'm actually impressed with my premier, Doug Ford's handling of this, even though I dislike him for more or less everything else he's done.

But yeah, this is pretty insane. Events like this are rare enough I honestly didn't expect to live through such a crazy global pandemic.

It's good to hear that you guys are doing relatively well.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 25, 2020, 11:15:19 AM
Yeah, normally I'm not too opposed to letting the states handle certain things as long as they don't go too far off the rails, but in cases like this you simply need to lay down a cohesive strategy and make damn sure that it gets executed everywhere. As it stands, we have some states that handles this well (Ohio, California, Indiana, etc) and some that drug their feet far too long (Texas, Florida).

Like, the Spring break gatherings (and it's documented that those selfish numbskulls did cause the virus to spread) should have never been allowed to happen in the first place.

I don't know too much about how Canada's government is run. Are incidents like this generally handled by the national government, by the province, or a mix of both?
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 25, 2020, 05:44:12 PM
A mix. Closing borders, handling modifying employment insurance to deal with the massive influx of job losses, and plenty of other stuff is done on the federal level. On the provincial level we have things like ordering non-essential businesses closed, which Ontario and Quebec have done. Nationally we just made a 14 day isolation period for anyone re-entering the country (as our borders are closed to anyone other than commercial traffic and returning citizens and permanent residents) mandatory (and that they can't isolate with anyone considered at risk too), and we'll probably be enforcing it with police or something.

It's really been a bit of a collaborative effort between provinces and the federal govenment here. There's also a noticeable difference between case numbers in each province at this point: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection.html#a1 (also note that these numbers still highly underreport the actual number of cases)

Generally speaking provinces have less overall power than states generally do, but they do still have a lot of independence. But we also have a less polarized relationship between our politicians than the states, so we have more cooperation between provincial leaders and the federal government at the moment.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 26, 2020, 12:56:01 PM
That split in responsibility pretty much mirrors what we have here, at least in this circumstance. I'm sure having a fifth of the number of governing bodies probably helps quite a bit with keeping things feeling relatively consistent, too.

As far as the politics behind it are concerned, I think the fact that Canada's model is working that well is pretty solid evidence against the bipartisan system. I remember visiting Canada during the run up to the federal elections one year and was amazed at the amount and variety of parties that run up there. Even with only four or five of them having a decent slice of power at any given time there's bound to be a lot more natural overlap than there is here, where the Democrats and Republicans almost seem to go out of their way to be polar opposites.

Sadly, I don't think we're ever going to know the true spread of this virus. Testing kits are still in limited supply, and some people end up getting symptoms so mild that it's hard to tell if they have COVID-19 or simply influenza.

When you look at it, it's conceptually the perfect virus. It takes a long time to spot symptoms, by which point you could have interacted with hundreds of people (especially in more crowded areas like New York and Toronto). The symptoms are generally rather benign for younger people ("oh, it's just a cold"), which would allow it to spread even further. While it's already a pretty nasty specimen, I'm just glad that it isn't worse. Imagine if something like ebola would have spread this quickly and quietly.

I suspect that when also played a pretty big factor in the speed of its spread, particularly in northern climates. We're far more likely to overlook cold and flu symptoms this time of year than we would during Summer.

It's going to be weird looking back at this mess.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 26, 2020, 04:08:26 PM
Yeah, best we'll be able to do is extrapolate numbers.

As for our politics, federally speaking, the Conservatives and the Liberals are most often the biggest 2 parties while the NDP is usually 3rd place. There are other parties, but the only other really notable ones would be the Greens (currently having only 3 MPs, so almost no power) and the Bloc Quebecois, who actually currently have more than the NDP, but are only able to be voted for within Quebec, meaning they'll never be more than a minor player federally.

Provincially there tend to be more minor parties involved in things, but the top 3 here in Ontario are almost exclusively Liberal, Conservative, and NDP, anything else tends to be like maybe 1 seat somewhere.

All in all I'm actually impressed at how much cooperation there's been during all this. Usually they're at least bitching about each other a bit louder than they have been, even during emergencies like this. NDP complained that the spending bill we just passed doesn't do enough to help people like me, but all in all there's been much less squabbling than I expected. Still enough debate to delay votes into the night here and there, but people seem to be willing to at least push some kind of legislation through even if they don't particularly like it.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 27, 2020, 09:43:19 AM
As opposed to here, where you only see independents/third-parties in smaller city or town governments (and even that's a long shot). :x

Even if the other parties are considered minor players it's still good that they can at least make their voices heard (not to mention that they feasibly can gain power as they win over voters). The only influence that independents bring to, say, the presidential elections is swaying votes away from one candidate or the other.

We've had some instances of cooperation here, but then you look at issues like the recent impeachment trial and you see how ugly the bipartisan system can be. How is it that 50% firmly believe that someone is guilty of crimes while the other 50% believe that he's completely innocent, and why would such a thing be so conveniently split along party lines like that? Whether Trump is truly guilty or not (not even going to get into that particular quagmire), I find it appalling that our lawmakers are voting purely by color instead of their beliefs. It really puts their true allegiance into perspective.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Zephlar on March 27, 2020, 12:52:47 PM
Sorry to hear that Bobbias. That really sucks. Silver lining at least it's not permanent.

How long does an oz of weed last you? Just curious.

My work life is business as usual. Georgia hasn't really been very strict. Law firms are largely working from home but we're a small firm so it's just same shit different day at the moment.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: NewF on March 28, 2020, 08:55:54 AM
I'm currently working in sanitation (Yeah, lowest of the low and especially susceptible to this shit going around) and I also traveled to the states (secondary work), and am having symptoms (Dry cough, stuffy, etc). Called ministry of health and am forced to quarantine. They're on a shortage of supplies so I have to wait for them to call me for testing. Filed for the EI, but now playing the waiting game with them as well. Hoping I get everything going as soon as possible cause I got bills to pay and unable to work to pay them. :-/
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Bobbias on March 28, 2020, 05:44:52 PM
Honestly, not sure how long an oz will last. This is the first time I've ordered an oz at once. I only really started smoking again (apart from when someone offered to smoke me up) was when the local legal pot shop opened up, and I was just picking up 3.5g at a time (or various prerolls, GF only likes to smoke joints and I never have papers). 3.5g would last me somewhere around a week, but that was also considering I was working, and generally tried not to be high at work.

And yeah, I've got enough seniority there now that once things start picking up I should get back in without much trouble, but that also depends on how quickly things ramp up, since there are a bunch of people with like 15-20 years seniority there too, and they could feasibly run a skeleton crew with basically just all the old farts that are still around.

That's rough Newf. Hopefully it's just some dumb cold that didn't get the coronavirus memo.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 29, 2020, 12:26:17 AM
Best wishes, NewF. Please keep us posted. <3
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Zephlar on March 30, 2020, 04:24:16 PM
It's also allergy season which doesn't help. I'm sneezing/coughing/runny nose like crazy right now but I can tell it's just my usually annual allergies. Hopefully that has something to do with it Newf because yeah...that would suck.

3.5g would last me somewhere around a week, but that was also considering I was working, and generally tried not to be high at work.

I agree. I don't condone working high. People that do typically don't care about their job at all in my experience. That being said, and this is pretty bad, wife and I go through a half a week. It's the backwoods we're kind of addicted to the tobacco leaf I think.
Title: Re: How's this coronavirus affecting everyone?
Post by: Spectere on March 30, 2020, 08:08:33 PM
Yeah, that's one of the points my mom brought up. We're at the tail end of cold/flu season, so she suspects that a big reason it spread so quickly in certain areas is due to people thinking they might have caught something far more benign.