All things COVID-19

[Mike]

Yeah, the Russians can go as far as pushing people out windows. We're limited to just firing people. So far.

[Eliahad]

[akiva]

I shave my head, so haircuts is not a problem I have.

I have decided to let my beard grow, though. I normally keep it short. Maybe I'll end up looking like a Civil War general.

[Kyle]

[Phoebe]

Yeah, we're not pushing specific people out of windows, but we are definitely making deliberate choices that we absolutely, certainly know will result in the loss of more lives then the alternative choices would have. We just don't know specifically whose lives, though in some cases we can predictively narrow them down to particular locations or groups.

Meanwhile the conservative-Catholic-majority Supreme Court is going to decide a case about whether or not employers like large hospital systems have to cover contraception for their employees (the number one prescribed medication for women between the ages of 16 and 60, so obviously for things that don't include specifically just preventing conception!) in their health care systems, because Jesus apparently said something about contraception in the Bible that the rest of us missed.

I never want to hear one word from a Republican again about being pro-life. I have never seen such pro-death maniacs in my entire time alive in this country.

[akiva]

Maryland schools closed for the rest of the school year.

[Phoebe]

We have come to a place where the Treasury Secretary is successfully scorched on Twitter by Axl Rose, known intellectual, having stepped up and deliberately asked for it. Still feel like everything that has happened in the last few years might be a strange nightmare or sliding door situation where we stumbled into the wrong universe.

[Phoebe]

The stuff going on with the Postal Service plus the increasing likelihood that the Postal Service is needed in order to conduct an election safely in November...

There are just too many cognitive pitfalls in this whole region, and too many fears and too many extreme consequences, so I just can't even dwell there. The fact that those two things are intersecting is enough all by itself.

[FlameBlade]

We already wasted 16 weeks. First 8 weeks for containing, 2nd week for squandering citizen good will for quarantine and then doing nothing.

We are going to get that nasty 2nd wave.

[DMDarcs]

Trump's valet has COVID.

Pence's aide has COVID.

[Tahlvin]

And at this point, I'm sick of TV commercials that use the phrase or a variation of: "Now, more than ever, ..."

[Kyle]

I'm sick of hearing the phrase "the new normal."

[Phoebe]

[Mike]

Or we could have had widespread free testing, contact tracing, and targeted quarantines with job guarantees and compensation for lost wages.

Implemented in January, we'd be mostly open now with far less death, far less damage to the economy, and probably the same price tag or less than what we've already spent.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

[poorpete]

I want to tally all the "in these ______ times" I hear, especially on commercials where they are very careful with their words.

Rarely is it alarming, like "alarming", "scary", "unprecedented" (which it's not, if anything this is the old normal)
Rarely it's seemingly-positive, like "interesting" or "new".

[Tahlvin]

[Mike]