Erik88

I honestly think that money is the number one thing that most people are lacking for this pandemic. I'm not going to discourage anyone from stacking food and supplies since that's not a bad idea, but the reality is that this situation isn't likely going to deteriorate to the point where stores are not selling food.

I recognize that is bad but I am starting to wonder if we've done more harm to the economy than was necessary. 50% of all COVID deaths have been in NY and NJ. There has to be a better way to handle this if it pops back up in the fall. Other countries did a lot more testing and isolated people rather than shut down the entire country. It worked. Some of the US states that were not hit that hard might have been able to remain open for business.

I highly doubt the Knox County Sheriff is that concerned about calling it terrorism. This isn't CA. The sheriff departments around here are not that PC. The guy apparently screamed about hating women so I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than him being Muslim.

Agreed. Knox News published an interactive map one year that showed all the murders in the county. I'd guess around 80% of them were clustered in the roughest hoods of east Knoxville. The rest were mostly domestic type murders scattered around. The last time we had a crime of this magnitude was probably the church shooting around 2009.

Does anyone know any charities or other organizations that are especially in need right now? I heard 2nd Harvest was seeing record demand right now.

I had some really bad views on Memphis until I went there last year for that wedding I told you about. Midtown is great and I would have no issues living there if a job fell in my lap.

Are there any good reasons why someone wouldn't want to take the vaccine? They aren't going to release an unsafe vaccine so I'll take it once it becomes available.

Yep. And I know it feels like we've been quarantined forever but we're still in the early stages. We have 333k cases. 6 days ago it was half that. We could be over a million in the next 7-10 days. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

You guys are onto something. It's not just sneezing though. Even talking. Check this out. https://www.lavision.de/en/news/2020/4302/

COVID-19 has killed 8k people in 12 days and we're just getting started. The flu doesn't do that. And that's with 42 out of 50 states being on some sort of quarentine. If we had not done that the deaths would be substantially higher. I'm fine with that too. Apparently they didn't think he could do a nationwide shut down even if he wanted to. And I think Lee has done the best he could given the circumstances. The people complaining about him now will line up to vote for him again. I have my doubts on Trump surviving this but Biden is such a poor choice anything is possible.

Is it possible the shortcomings came from from both the system and the administration? This one and the last? We have a lot of people that will just refuse to admit how badly Trump screwed this up. I don't even like saying that because screw up implies it was unintentional. He knew exactly what he was doing. January 30th- "we have this very well under control. This is going to have a happy ending" March 4th- Trump calls WHO estimates false. Suggests that those infected can get better and "going to work". Yes he said that. March 7th- "No, I'm not concerned at all". March 9th- Trump bashes Democrats for sounding the alarm "far beyond what the facts would warrant". Keeps comparing it to the common Flu which the puppets on Fox repeated over and over. This tweet from March 9th had 300k likes. You know how many people ONLY watch Fox news? Hell, the evidence was obvious on this forum. This is why even today we have people who don't even care about the virus. Hannity in particular just lies to his viewers and he can get away with it because his viewers don't care. We lost 5-6 weeks to prepare for this while Trump called it fake news. Trump is extremely popular among Republicans and what he says does matter, despite what many try to claim. I dont fault him for the fact that we don't have masks but his complete lack of accountability for his words is a new low for him.

My dogs don't seem to understand social distancing... It's a great day to be outside. I hope everyone can at least enjoy their back yard.

I hear ya. You're not able to do your job from home I assume? My wife and I are both "essential" but we're able to work from home. I'll say this, I know Lee's actions seem extreme to many but there are currently only 8 states not on some sort of madate to stay home. Lee actually waited a lot longer than many. At one point this week we had the 10th highest rate of new COVID cases per day so I'm guessing that caught their attention.

Good to see you post again. As for Lee, I just don't see what other option he had. Option 1, he asks people to stay home and isolate. We know people are already ignoring this and not taking it seriously. Option 2, he makes us. He had a few thousand doctors begging him to shut it down. Let's say he does nothing and all hell breaks loose here. Thousands of people die and the hospitals are overwhelmed. I really don't know what else he could have done. This is a no win situation.

I know where you live. I don't mind to drop some stuff off at your door step if you don't want to leave. I'll be living closer to you in a few weeks.

I honestly feel for all the governors right now. They are being put in an impossible spot. I know most of us are in the small government crowd. None of us are fond of being told what to do, especially by government. But I honestly think this might be an example of where government intervention is needed. It wasn't that long ago that bar owners in downtown Nashville were refusing to close. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. As someone who leans libertarian on a lot of topics, maybe this makes me a hypocrite right now but I'm on board with what Lee is doing and frankly I won't be too upset if he has to do more. We have seen it work in other countries and I'm afraid the states that implement the least amount of measures will get hit the hardest.

If you want to feel better about your life then I recommend Tiger King on Netflix. It's one of the wildest shows I've ever seen.

This hasn't been my experience at all. Each time I have to venture out I've encountered a lot of people. Traffic has been a lighter, but certainly not what I would expect it to be. I mentioned in the other thread that every park was full last Saturday. People were even throwing tailgate cookouts in the parking lots. I drove through Sequoyah hills and landscaping crews were putting new mulch down at the mansions. Apparently that is "essential" work.

I'm trying to understand what exactly has changed. It sounds like this still only applies to non-essential workers and the list of essential is huge. Essential: Health care and public health operations Human services operations Essential infrastructure operations Essential government operations, functions Food and medicine stores Food and beverage productions and agriculture Organizations that provide charitable and social services Religious and ceremonial functions Media Gas stations and businesses needed for transportation Financial institutions and insurance facilities Hardware and supply stores Critical trades Mail, post, shipping, logistics, delivery and pick-up services Educational institutions (consistent with Exec. Order nos. 17 & 21) Laundry services Restaurants for off-premises consumption Supplies to work from home Supplies for essential business operations Transportation Home-based care and services Residential facilities and shelters Professional services Manufacturing, distribution and supply chain for critical products and industries Hotels and motels Funeral services

I agree. But I also think people that hoard like this are complete jerks. I donated my masks to my local hospital last week and they were happy to have them.

3.7 million NICS background checks last month. An all time high. https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nics_firearm_checks_-_month_year.pdf/view

Trump made a good point about this being a good time with interest rates being so low. But holy sh*t guys. Can we take a pause for a minute? We've not even seen what the first $2T is gonna do. It's like saying, well we've already screwed up the budget, we might as well go on a shopping spree... Toss in some new bridges here, a few dams there, maybe a new aircraft carrier. And the dems with sprinkle it with student loan forgiveness during checkout.

I gotcha. I heard about all that. He mentioned the Patriot Act so I thought it had something to do with losing freedom/liberty. @No_0ne had a good summary on that funding in another thread.