As usual, these announcements never come with any promise or a plan of economic relief (or at least reference to plans already made) for businesses force closed, creating more panic. I don't understand why it's so hard to just say: "We will take care of the businesses affected by this policy and more details are forthcoming." Shutting them down is the right move. Taking care of small businessowners running on thin ma…
Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
51–60 of 568 posts
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#52As usual, these announcements never come with any promise or a plan of economic relief (or at least reference to plans already made) for businesses force closed, creating more panic. I don't understand why it's so hard to just say: "We will take care of the businesses affected by this policy and more details are forthcoming." Shutting them down is the right move. Taking care of small businessowners running on thin ma…
Can't restaurants still offer takeout/delivery?
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#53As usual, these announcements never come with any promise or a plan of economic relief (or at least reference to plans already made) for businesses force closed, creating more panic. I don't understand why it's so hard to just say: "We will take care of the businesses affected by this policy and more details are forthcoming." Shutting them down is the right move. Taking care of small businessowners running on thin ma…
This is acknowledged in the announcement. "These are very difficult decisions, but hours count here and very strong measures are necessary to slow the spread of the disease. I know there will be significant economic impacts to all our communities and we are looking at steps to help address those challenges."
Given that the Fed cut their interest rate to 0% and that treasury bills are under 1%, credit is approximately free to governments, so a well-run small business support program could end up costing much less than doing nothing.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#54Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#55“Restaurants will be allowed to provide take-out and delivery services but no in-person dining will be permitted. I live an SRO. I don't have a kitchen. I currently don't have a fridge. I have a small grill and some shelving to store stuff. I eat a lot of takeout. I'm glad to see I can still get takeout. But, wow. This is beginning to look pretty scary. I was homeless for a few years. The quarantine/containment measu…
Grocery stores offer a lot of ready to eat food options. Though I guess salad bars are probably a bad idea at this point.
I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my oldest son. My younger son is a carrier.
People with CF typically require up to a quarter of a million dollars in medical treatment annually. With two people in the family who have it, that's a half million dollars annually.
I've supported all three of us on well under $20k annually for like more than 8 years or something. And I can do that because we've done a metric fuckton of research and made a lot of dietary changes and gotten off all the boat loads of drugs we used to take.
So having my food supply cut into like this potentially does enormous harm to me. And I will get zero sympathy from a world that didn't give a flying fuck about me when I was homeless and has spent years telling me to my face I'm a lunatic making up the whole thing about having CF and getting well when that's not supposed to be possible.
For me, this is very scary stuff. I literally am better off not eating than eating the wrong things.
A silver lining of the past decade of horrifying shittiness is that poverty and social callousness taught me this: My condition actually benefits from semi-fasting and I can live for several days at this point on almost no food. It no longer even causes nose bleeds and fun stuff like that.
I'm a good bit stressed out and suggestions that I'm too dumb to be aware that ready to eat options exist are in no way comforting to me.
A lot of them are things I absolutely cannot eat for fear of being immediately sick and beginning to undo nearly two decades of extremely hard won, painful progress against a Dread Disease that should have already killed me and I often wish it had. This is a shitty life in a shitty world full of amazingly callous people and I'm really not happy to still be here at this point.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#56It scares me how many Americans welcome authoritarianism the moment that something scary happens. I remember when, following the tragedy of 9/11, the PATRIOT act was passed. This is another shameful moment in American history.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#57Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#58This is going to be an economic catastrophe unless there's somehow a nationwide bailout to literally all brick and mortar businesses. I know of several local bar/restaurants that are considering shutting down for good, and a colleague near Melbourne told me of 4 that already have (I'm eastern US). Even if this all blows over in 3 months, we'll have a huge surge in homelessness and folks needing social assistance acro…
Oh and by the way the timetable on the retail apocalypse just got pushed up to this week.
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#59IMO the only question now is how long it takes the rest of the country to follow suite. Here in NC our governor announced the closing of all public schools on Friday, but I've heard from several friends that in my city (Raleigh) the downtown bars and restaurants were pretty much at normal capacity this weekend. I don't think the general public is going to truly take this seriously until they're told that they have to…
I also live in the Raleigh area, and it has just been baffling how care-free everyone is...
Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars
#60California Governor has just done the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589365