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curious to hear how people in severely affected areas are doing? Spain and Italy, etc. now that shit is real in the states the news cycle has no room to spare with regards to updating on how y'all are doing.
Reporting in from Northern Italy... Still much the same here. Our "lockdown" or whatever you want to call it was extended from it's previous end date of April 3 until April 13 now. We're not allowed to enter stores (food stores, pharmacies, y'know, the stores that are allowed to be open) without masks and gloves now. It's mandatory whereas before it was only recommended.
There are still people dying daily but numbers are decreasing finally, we're now under 600/day, still bad obviously. Honestly, it seems the worst has passed for us, I'm more worried about my family and friends in the USA, many of them in New York.
Here in Italy we never had shortages of groceries or people stocking up on guns or any other bullshit like that. There have been reports that various organized crime families will profit heavily from the average italians' misery, but that's normal for Italy.
Anyway, not a lot to report honestly. Everything is closed. We are all staying inside. People who can work from home are doing so, people who can't are fucked and on some kind of minimal unemployment since all non-essential industry is stopped. People are still dying, but not as much as before. Our lockdown is scheduled to end next week. We'll see.
So does the government give everyone gloves & masks since you're not allowed to enter stores without them?
Here in Germany each district is handling things differently - you can think of them like States in the US. But in Berlin you can still go out for walks/grocery shopping but pretty much everything else is still closed.
The most perplexing thing to me is that grocery stores seem to be arbitrarily implementing whatever procedures the - I guess - managers think is best. Some make you wait in line to go in which usually turns into chaos. They don't tell people which way to line up or have distance markers outside for the lines. Then when you get in the store it's still a free for all.
But the one that pisses me off is that some stores won't let you enter without a buggy. They don't give you gloves so they're just making everyone have unnecessary indirect contact with probably 1000's of people. I don't even know where you can buy gloves here anymore - or face-masks or hand sanitizer. I never even saw them around before this tbh. Also, to get a buggy you have to put a one euro coin in most of them but then some of the major grocery stores say they only accept contactless payment for now. I think the logic must be that it will force people to keep a certain distance but it's riddled with so many contradictions. Oh, and the German grocery stores basically lock you in once you go inside through the turnstile. So if you go in and don't need anything you have to squeeze your way out through the checkout line. So dumb.
The Veneto (northern italian state) sent each resident a paper mask that hooks around the ears. It's basically useless. We have a lot of colleagues in Hong Kong that have been able to get masks and send them to us, and prior to that a Japanese colleague left an entire box of surgical masks in our office that we've been using, but I don't think most people are so lucky.
As for gloves, I wore dishwashing gloves to the supermarket yesterday. My girlfriend wore jogging gloves to the aqua-sapone (basically like a CVS or Duane Reade in the USA but without the pharmacy in the back) today. We were unable to buy the correct latex medical style gloves at either place. So, for us, this is idiotic because our hands are much cleaner than whatever gloves we're wearing. And we cannot buy the gloves anywhere because they are sold out. My friends were able to buy gloves when they went to the supermarket on Saturday (which was the first day the gloves rule was enforced) but now we can't get them. So, yes, it's pretty fucking stupid.
The line up at our supermarkets work by taking a number when you first arrive and then waiting to enter until your number is called. And there are constant reminders in the store to keep distance from other shoppers. People are pretty good about it.
We're not supposed to travel 200meters from our house without a valid excuse (going to the supermarket or pharmacy, or some other emergency) so going for a walk or jog or bikeride is pretty much out of the question. And if you do go out, you need to go alone, unless you're with small kids. Even only one member of a family is allowed to enter a store. There has been a carabinieri (national italian police) stationed in front of my apartment almost daily pulling over cars to check their paperwork which states where they are going and where they are coming from and their reason for travel, so they are checking.
Everyone is playing by the rules as best they can, and there is a decline in cases, so maybe it's a good thing. But things will not be the same as they were, that's 100% for sure. And nobody knows what will happen, so everyone is just doing things day-to-day I guess.
It's a tough time for everyone, globally.
Topic: Corona Virus. What's going on where you live? (Read 93435 times)