Actually I think you @DavidPF& @jcostiones are all kind of saying the same thing but differently.
You are correct accidents have increased 10 fold, that was a result of fewer people being on the roads etc. However, it’s still people aka “morons” who are driving at those higher speeds and causing the accidents. Bad driving, aggressive driving or flat out speeding is not a symptom of covid, so it can’t be blamed the disease itself, but it is an unintended consequence of the disease that is causing fewer drivers, higher speeds and more accidents. AKA morons!!
You would have been very upset at what I saw and have seen. This at a Houston BBQ restaurant before Covid. There were six HPD officers on a Saturday afternoon enjoying good BBQ fully armed and in tactical gear ready to take on the dregs of society and lay their lives on the line.
I went over and thanked them for their service.
I can only imagine the firepower in their cruisers.
It’s unfortunate but we can’t have law enforcement outgunned by criminals.
I apologize if I gave the wrong legal description.
If there’s a federal law saying judges must treat every discharge of a gun as if the registered owner had deliberately taken aim at who/what was actually hit, then I can withdraw my entire comment.
I’m certainly as guilty as the next person (probably more so) of making off topic comments. However I always try to remember the old family gathering adage:
“Never discuss politics or religion”.
We are walking a fine line here about a topic which there are passionate arguments on both sides of, however this is no where near the forum for those discussions.
So I’m going to ask that we refocus the discussion and we cease any further commentary on gun(s) et al.
Thank you for your understanding and as always your participation in HO!!
Interesting. The news is reporting that Texans are not masking up and are crowding bars and restaurants.
But I’ve lived most of my life in Philly. PA has often been described as Philly in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in between. In Philly and its collar counties everybody is masked up and I can honestly say I have not witnessed a single mask dispute. Will it last after a year? Who knows.
Fully vaccinated here, and so happy! Thus ends my 15 month (pretty damned strict) QT, and I’m going out for dinner Friday, maybe Saturday too! Sunday, if I should get the urge, haha! Our state is in phase 3, which for us means 50% capacity in all businesses, statewide for now. Hopefully, this is some light at the end of the tunnel. We shall see…
I’ve posted before that curbside pickup (called ‘click-and-collect’ in some parts of the world, and also POBIS (purchase online something in-store)) is the silver lining of COVID. There is hardly anything we need that isn’t available in our small city/large town (it’s a town with pretensions of being a city) by curbside. Even our library does curbside pickup.
In my opinion, curbside pickup is every bit as helpful as a mask in reducing the spread of COVID.
Analysis from a retail organization in the UK that showed up in my news feed this morning indicates an assessment that curbside/click-and-collect is “sticky” and is likely to continue after concerns about the pandemic fade. My experience up and down the US East Coast, in Bermuda, in the BVI, and in Puerto Rico is that curbside is available everywhere although in some places you have to hunt for it. Reporting is that it is available in some places in the UK although @Harters reports not in his village.
Even some of the larger farms that serve our County farmers’ market take orders for pickup at the farmers’ market or at the farm.
Outdoor pickup of produce and farm goods, either at the farm itself or at an outdoor pickup site, has been a staple for us during the pandemic. A couple farms near me are also doing home delivery for the first time.
Because we have had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share so much of this time, I haven’t gone to a farmers’ market for more than a year. The farmers’ market nearest me did introduce pre-ordering to avoid wait times and crowding.
All that said, I wish that it were easier/possible for more households to benefit from local food. My way of supplying our household with produce only works for those that can afford to prepay, as local farmers need to cover costs upfront.
Not sure how COVID related this is. The connection is tenuous. I’m thinking more people cooking, more people engaging on social media, and leakage of societal “norms” to the trade.
“Karen” and “Ken” have take a real beating in recent years as avatars for poorly behaved customers. That’s leaked into MSM. What I’m seeing on trade social media is the use of random names you have to figure out from context. Taking a beating this morning: Diane, Sara, and Bob.
I was reminded of this thread today . . . phone calls! It had been all e-mails and texts for years; catching up in person when we got together.
Months in of the pandemic my friends/siblings and I reverted to speaking on the phone. It was like high school all over again (in a good way). We have spent hours on the phone talking. laughing, crying.
Horses for courses. I live on email, text, and IM. Voice calls and video teleconference by appointment only. I find random calls intrusive and break up the flow of my life, work and personal. I check voicemail religiously - Sunday mornings. If there are too many I won’t get to them all.
Darling Gwenn, Today I will not call you and expect you will not call me. We can each take comfort in the assurance that at least two HO friends will not intrude on one another. hugs, dave
I very much appreciated curbside pickup when we were really trying to avoid going into a grocery. But I would never choose to shop that way. I’m a “sale” shopper, meaning unless I am desperate for something and run out completely. If I can’t see what’s discounted, then I don’t know which trip to skip something and which trip to buy 10 of them. Also, I like to pick my own produce. Also also, their substitutions - while you don’t have to accept them - are rarely what I would substitute. And you can’t just easily go back into the store and get what you would substitute, because that would defeat the purpose of curbside. As a bandaid, though, it’s great I agree with you.
We are having some very interesting neighborhood chats in my somewhat liberal enclave. Our governor effectively mimicked the CDC guidelines. So now, people are debating about whether they should still mask in a store if they are vaccinated. Some people are saying yes do, because lots of no vaccine/no mask people are walking around and either the vaxed want to (1) protect themselves or (2) not spread if they catch it or (3) virtue signal, frankly. Others say, if you are vaxed, you should stop masking. (1) you are safe, (2) if you insist that people “trust the science” then you have to stop masking when they say it’s ok equally as much as start masking when they say so. I can see both sides. Quite tricky argument.
