Fun read, Dave.
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Thanks for the laugh. I needed that!
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I haven’t had a cat in over a decade, so I don’t know if pelletized litter from newspapers is still available, but I liked it. One of the brands was Yesterday’s News. It weighs less than clay litter, but you also use less because once “moisture” is added, the pellets swell and partly disintegrate. They are the size of rabbit food pellets, and don’t track around the way clay does. Somehow, the unscented paper has some deodorizing ability. Most often, everything dumps out with a single thump. Once upon a time, I got wood shavings and sawdust for almost no money. Very absorbent and deodorizing but tracks all over, and unless the litter pan was set into a deep carton with a cut-out side, it was so light that a cat could tip it on its side by perching on the edge.
I’d never have predicted that in a widespread emergency, stuff like toilet paper and cat litter would be the shortages. A friend of mine who’s a mail carrier told me she had a huge carton of TP from Amazon to deliver. She’s very petite, and joked to her supervisor that she might need an armed escort on her route.
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According to City Hall, there are 8,115 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in New York City as of last night - that’s almost one quarter of all the confirmed cases in the USA. I have seen some shortages in smaller local chain groceries (I don’t do Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joes or anything like them myself so I don’t know about them firsthand), but every single bodega and corner grocery or ethnic grocery I’ve been in has toilet paper, beer, cat litter, etc. The butchers have meat, the fishmongers have seafood. Liquor stores are open. The hours are reduced for most places and the buses and subways are not very full - but not empty either. All the bars and restaurants are empty of course but people are still walking around, going to stores, keeping some distance but making a lot of jokes. One big one being that not even a month after the plastic bag ban - boy a lot of plastic and latex is being used and presumedly discarded.
A lot of people hanging out on the porch or the stoop (that I assume are family or the kind of neighbors who are always in and out of each others’ apartments anyway), but not in groups on the sidewalk or out in front of the pizzeria or the bodega.
Give it time, I know, but I still don’t have the kind of raw fear I felt after 9/11, or get it from others.
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It seems to me that way too many people don’t get social distancing as a concept. The distribution of airborne droplets is real, especially as we enter hay fever season. How many times have you (big you, not @ratgirlagogo) noticed the smell of a cigarette and not been able to pin down the source. People should stay inside except when shopping for food and other necessary tasks.
<< designated rule-bound butthead.
We have three cafes in the village. One a national chain, the other two are independents. Of those two, one is favoured by wrinklies like me, the other by the “young mums”, etc. All are closed. Sort of. The one favoured by the younger group had, yesterday, closed its door (as required) but had set up a serving table outside. It was popular - folk gathered round, chatting, etc, just as they would have done inside. This is not the social distancing the government intends with the closure order. Short sighted, inconsiderate, bastards!
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“Social distancing” has become anachronistic in a bad way. The term had significance during the 1918 flu epidemic, when it was more feasible. In the digital age, it’s as if people think it means defriending someone on Facebook or not responding to a text within 5 minutes. We need consistent physical distancing, and it’s not happening. The daily scrum of doctors and politicians that is the White House coronavirus briefing sets a terrible example. They touch the same equipment repeatedly. It unnecessarily endangers medical experts whose time could be much more productively spent.
Actually, i think the opposite is true. We are already “socially distanced” far more than we were in the early 20th century simply by virtue of having much more technology of all sorts to replace human labor and the resulting comparatively-close interaction that necessarily entailed
It’s true that a greater percentage of the population now lives closer together in urban/suburban areas, but even as to that, unless you lived in a truly rural area, it was necessarily harder to avoid frequent close interaction with other people, if only to obtain food and other daily necessities. All else aside, no mechanical refrigeration at all (at least in homes) and the infancy of “shelf stable” commercial goods meant that “stocking up” had a very different meaning that it does now (even if you had a literal “icebox”), and the comparative absence of cars meant little to no real “isolation” any time you set foot outside your door. True, delivery of some things was much more common (especially the higher up the socio-economic ladder one rose), but medical/scientific knowledge of, and the routine practices of “disinfection” among the general population, was in its infancy, and the regular delivery routes also had the converse affect of potentially exposing people to everything everyone earlier on the delivery route was exposed to… Not to mention that “most people” lived in households with a lot more people than they do now - whether families or places like boarding houses, which increases the exposure of everyone involved in various ways, vicarious as well as direct (meaning, not only are you exposed to all the people in your household, everyone in the household is automatically exposed to anyone any single member of the household has been exposed to…)
What I think is differentin a potentially negative way (or not, depending one’s perspective) is the power of governmental authority and its enforcement (and maybe to some extent, “respect” for, or at least acknowledgment of, that authority). Governments could and did impose sometimes-draconian restrictions, and those would be enforced by police without question, and usually without a great deal of kickback from the populace at large almost no matter what the impact the restrictions had on their behavior/activities, even if they grumbled. These days, for a variety of reasons most of us heartily applaud, governments (at least in “developed” countries) have to rely more on the “cooperation” rather than coercion of their constituents - at least individuals - except in really (truly) extreme circumstances, though of course they still wield a great deal of power over businesses and services within their direct control (like public transportation)…
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Plus the “nuclear” family came into being. Intergenerational households with lots of kids and grandparents are the exception now, not the norm.
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I suppose this is true, but where I live such households are very common. And mostly in small or smallish apartments, too.
At the risk of straying too political/off topic…
Our discussions about what to stock up on, and how our cooking has changed, etc. are going to seem ridiculously naive and irrelevant and in a few weeks or months when this virus has exploded out of control, hospitals are completely overwhelmed, and our neighbors, friends, and family are gravely ill or dead.
I love food discussion as much as the next person, but we have to act now everywhere in the US or shit is going to get REAL - as it has in California, New York City, Seattle, and New Orleans. Our hospitals do not have capacity for the coming pandemic.
PLEASE lobby your state and county executives and legislators to take swift action to lock down and strictly enforce mandatory social distancing and school and business closures right now. This is by far the most important thing we can do, and this is the critical moment. Right now. Send an email, make a call. Make several.
Your state’s tipping point/point of no return (most likely a matter of days or weeks, not months) https://covidactnow.org/
"Controls need to be put in place immediately, and everywhere," according to public health and infectious disease experts:
http://ww.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/20/us/coronavirus-model-us-outbreak.html
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Thank you. We are there with the hammer idea in NJ (our government shut nearly everything short of shelter in place) but I am still nervous as I see people’s obviously not respecting it, paying attention, think it doesn’t impact them, etc etc etc etc. This couldn’t be more simple. Stay home.
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Where I am the wholesalers and restaurant suppliers announced they would open their businesses to the general public, shortly after the government announced much of the country would be shut down.
Also, today on the news they say the food advertising sector is on the verge of collapse and they are laying off personnel.
I think what you’re missing is the compliance issue. Too many people talking about sitting on stoops and going for a walk because they are bored. Go food shopping and go home. Stay inside. Avoid personal contact.
I still can’t get over the entitled letter to the editor in the Washington Post by a Diamond Princess passenger who broke quarantine to go for a walk in public because she was bored.
<< rulebound butthead.
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Indeed. We have seen photos in the UK of folk acting completely without thought or consideration. It’s been reported that, on Saturday, the Snowdonia National Park (in North Wales) had “its busiest visitor day in living memory”. The UK government needs to act quickly and decisively to enforce the social distancing - much as several other European countries have done. Like Christina, I don’t want to cross the “no politics” line (well, at least , not by much) but I cannot help feeling that the reluctance to make things compulsory is a matter of dogma, not science.
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From everything I’ve read, going for a walk by yourself or with the immediate family that you’re isolating with, or sitting outside on your porch, does not pose a risk to others. Maintain 6 feet of distance from others. Obviously, if you are sneezing and have a hacking cough, it’s better not to potentially spread those germs airborne. But except for in a hospital setting, aerosolized viruses are not thought to be a big of a mode of transmission. It’s primarily through respiratory droplets, and there is good airflow outside. Plus exercise and fresh air are good for maintaining health to fight off the virus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/health/coronavirus-surfaces-aerosols.html
To me the bottom line is that we need a strong message from the top that this is not business as usual. Social distancing is a must, and a temporary shut down will save lives and our healthcare system.
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We Americans have a libertarian/rebel streak, but I don’t think there’s any shame in publicly calling out people who are not distancing. Social pressure is powerful. They do it all the time in Germany and Austria to protect public health and safety, in my experience. Just try to cross the street against the signal or break a rule on a streetcar, and someone will shoot you down immediately - and loudly.
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As a foreigner, I also see Americans have a strong sense of compliance with the social norms, that I don’t think is mirrored in Europe. I cite the various tipping threads that used to be very common on Chowhound.
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Fair enough! We also love to queue/line up 
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