22 Comments - Diver Down - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 2:44 pm: graph: https://bit.ly/3bGGnpX - Candy Dogood - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 3:01 pm: 19.7% positive test rate. The lack of ability to screen through testing is alarming. The number of tests waiting to be processed is also alarming. I know I don’t need to say this here, but we gotta all stay home. - Blue Dog Dem - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 3:04 pm: Candy. Just curious. When you say everybody’s gotta stay at home. Do you think the governors list should be expanded, and if so, whom? - Demoralized - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 3:14 pm: ==Do you think the governors list should be expanded, and if so, whom?== Restaurants are still open for carry out and delivery. I know I’ve been guilty of going to the drive thru. I’m not sure that restaurants are “essential.” I also saw Best Buy open. Not sure that is “essential” either. I’m assuming they are utilizing the “office supply” exemption. The list of “essential” is pretty long. Other countries have completely shut everything down except grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations. We could consider doing the same thing. - Six Feet of Separation (temporary name) - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 3:20 pm: Slowly making its presence felt in Downstate, with cases outside Cook and the collars representing about 8% of the total, up from 5% a week ago, and not too many untouched counties remaining. I personally know one downstater and one suburbanite who have been diagnosed and treated, one black male in 30s and one white male in 40s, both on road to recovery. - Responsa - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:02 pm: ==Restaurants open for carryout and delivery…not sure they are essential.== I grapple with this too and my immediate family has chosen not to use these services right now as much as we’d like to help out the businesses stay afloat. But truckers and delivery people and even skeleton crew office workers who are essential and whose cafeterias are closed do need these options for food, Even some elderly who are independent and live alone but do not have the ability to cook or are more infirm and compromised and therefore it is not safe for them to go out to grocery stores are helped a great deal by the prepared meals and deliveries from still open restaurants. - Titan - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:04 pm: The rate of increase seems to be lower (i.e. better) than many early projections. Any cases are too many, but it is spreading at a much less vigorous pace than it could have. - West Town TB - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:05 pm: The deaths happening today likely still contracted the virus before the stay at home order went into place. (assume 3 weeks-ish). Hopefully this will soon peak and we will see very positive effects of the stay-at home order. - Anyone Remember - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:08 pm: “I’m not sure that restaurants are ‘essential.’ ” Given the number of people who are essential (medical, public safety, utilities, etc.), some of whom are out of their home area for at least 1 meal a day (for example, my grocery store resupply trucks come out of St Louis), restaurants =are= essential. - Candy Dogood - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:09 pm: ===Do you think the governors list should be expanded, and if so, whom? === The list is fine — and I understand keeping some restaurants open for take out, etc, but in general there are still many folks that are out and about. I think taking a more aggressive stance would be politically difficult to accomplish in the United States. It also falls on local communities to step up and play their own role in enforcement for people that are blatantly ignoring our government’s stay at home advisement. We are making choices as consumers to do take out, delivery, going through the drive through, etc, that some of us don’t need to be making. There are folks going to Home Depot right now that are doing projects they don’t need to be doing right now. Folks picking up things at Wal-Mart or Target they don’t actually need right now. That’s on us. Our government can’t make those kinds of decisions for us — unless they decide to restrict the sale of specific kinds of goods rather than stores. The whole idea of our government is that it is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. That’s us. Some of us aren’t taking this very seriously, some of that is because we’ve been allowed to feed our antisocial monsters in the name of partisanship, some of that is because of convenience or laziness. I agree with Demoralized that there might be some room for clarification of what defines essential or redefines it. There are a lot of folks using those exemptions pretty liberally. - ZC - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:09 pm: For what it’s worth, my wife is a doctor in Chicago and the general sentiment on her conference calls right now is they think Chicago is -not- going to surge over its ICU / ventilator supplies. But, it’s all kinda guesswork. Fingers crossed. - Corn Desert - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:25 pm: ZC - central Illinois hospitals are running at about 60% capacity. They are still expecting a surge, but as each day passes that seems less and less likely. - thoughts matter - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:38 pm: I think it’s a lot less dangerous to go thru a drive thru or to stay 6-10 feet apart at a Home Depot than it is to gather at a party where everyone is within inches of each other. I will agree that lots of businesses cannot be open safely because of the need for the six feet rule and those should be closed. I’m not one that thinks we should open county by county, but I do think the square footage and number of patrons of a business should be considered. We also need to acknowledge that a) we are asking a lot of people to stay at home for weeks and b) people are adults and need to be able to decide for themselves if particular errands are essential. What’s essential for one might not be for another. That drive thru may be your main meal of the day. That Home Depot visit may be a home repair that saves the homeowner hundreds of dollars in potential damages. - The Most Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 4:55 pm: I can’t tell you how often I look for this post to track numbers in a hurry. Thank you for having the foresight to pull these out of the overall daily briefing post. - MyTwoCents - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 5:40 pm: Keep in mind with businesses like Home Depot tradesman are considered essential businesses and they need to be able to get supplies, same thing for DIYers because things going wrong at homes do not stop for COVID, nor do things like the grass growing or any of the numerous other things that maintaining a home entails. - Blue Dog Dem - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 6:08 pm: I could name ya 20 professions that are not essential but are open…. but IMO we are going to be open for business May 1. I pray we are. - RNUG - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 6:25 pm: == There are folks going to Home Depot right now that are doing projects they don’t need to be doing right now. == Aside from the obvious need for repair parts / appliance replacement, we also need to consider the mental health aspect of people cooped up too long at home. Don’t want the child abuse / domestic battery numbers to go up. I had to get out today to pick up some of our regular prescriptions; 90 day supplies were about out. But I took the long way to and from just to drive around a bit and shake off some of the closed in feeling. - Blue Dog Dem - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 6:54 pm: RNUG. How ya holding up and family. I have been a bit isolated but am itching to get this over. I dont think this country can survive without a lower and middle class if this thing doesnt get over in a couple weeks. - RNUG - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 8:19 pm: -Blue-, We’re doing OK. Had stockpiles of most everything before it hit; just SOP since growing up our dads had seasonal jobs and were usually laid off in the winter. Been mostly isolated for over 3 weeks now; wife has a couple of the high risk factors so trying to err on the side of caution. Do get to the grocery store once a week during senior time for perishables, pharmacy drive-thru a few times a month, and order takeout once or twice a week, usually from a neighborhood place a friend owns. The wife and I take solitary drives when the weather is decent like today … but we haven’t broken out the convertible yet like I see a lot of people have done. Family … grandkids are missing us but we video with them. Son still has a job (works in food service); he’s lost some hours but should be ok as it is a corporate owned place he works at; do see him when he needs to borrow tools, not too worried as he is a sanitation nut from being a food handler. Aren’t letting the grandkids down because one of the other adults there right now is a pediatric nurse, just minimizing exposure. Most worrisome thing is a good church friend couple have been confirmed with the virus. She’s recovering pretty well, he’s still in the middle of it but at home, so not ICU serious. I last saw him over 2 weeks ago, so I’m probably past anything. Yeah, small local businesses are hurting … and that includes the local owned franchises of the national chains. It’s been interesting which decided to close down hard for now and which are doing curbside. Hope they all survive. I’m more pessimistic than you; I don’t expect semi-normal until June at the earlyist. - West Side the Best Side - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 9:06 pm: RIP John Prine. - RNUG - Tuesday, Apr 7, 20 @ 10:26 pm: -blue- I don’t see the long response I wrote. Short version is we are ok, family ok, missing seeing grandkids in person. Worried about friends that are 2 of the confirmed cases here. - Blue Dog Dem - Wednesday, Apr 8, 20 @ 7:17 am: Good to hear RNUG. We too are good. My son the doctor is elbow deep in this COVID clinical testing, so he and the daughter in law are forbidden to see in person. I hope it’s not June, cause I forsee longterm unemployment numbers and foreclosures in unheard of numbers. Numbers so big that it will jeopardize entire school districts. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.