Observations from my travels
Recently I have traveled throughout much of the Southeastern US, namely through Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. During that time I talked with medical staff, business owners, first responders, law enforcement personnel and many others. I want to share some of what I saw and heard.
My observations:
-Businesses through all of those states were shutting down in chunks as daily updates and dictates come down from their respective state governments. Some businesses in Tennessee were remaining open due to their normally low amount of foot traffic (like one art gallery I visited in the mountains that sells most of their products online), and at least a couple business owners told me they’d remain open until they were forced to close.
-Police in NW Florida are receiving updates slowly and are not getting much direction as far as what they need to do differently. LEOs are receiving personal protective equipment (PPE) directly from hospitals, sometimes on an individual, “drive-up and ask” basis. This includes masks, gloves and sanitizing wipes.
-RNs are being told N95 masks are only necessary if a COVID-19 patient is receiving some sort of “aerosolizing” treatment, such as nebulizer treatments or intubation. N95 masks are used for an entire 12 hour shift. It certainly seems that RNs around the SE are going to pick up the brunt of the workload. In COVID-19 patient rooms, lab techs, CNAs, even physicians are being encouraged to limit themselves on going in, and RNs are being asked to pick up some duties of these people, like drawing blood. And yes, I am well aware that in many hospitals the RN draw the blood anyway, but it’s not like that everywhere. One RN I know had to stay in one possible case’s room for the entire shift, and was the only one allowed in. This patient turned out to be negative, but just so you know, the nurses are going to be breaking their backs during this pandemic much more than anyone else. If housekeeping isn’t there, the nurse will clean the room. If lab isn’t there, the nurse will draw the blood. If a CNA isn’t there, the nurse will clean up the patient. If respiratory isn’t there, the nurse will give the treatment. Etc. See where I’m going? And your nurse will still be expected to martyr themselves even if there is no PPE. My rant is over.
-Gas prices in Tennessee were as low as $1.54 per gallon, and that price goes up as you continue south. NW Florida is around $2.00 right now.
-Visitation in hospitals and ERs is being limited or eliminated entirely. Minor patients will be able to have one parent or guardian with them, but that person will have to remain throughout the stay. This applies to the majority of hospitals.
-ER staff are spending a significant amount of time fielding phone calls from the public, and some callers are lying and making up symptoms in order to get tested.
-Interstate traffic seemed a little less than usual, but not significantly. In most towns things were definitely slowing down, especially in places in Alabama.
-All restaurants I came across in all four states were either closed, or reduced to take-out only. A few that were open to walk in had spacing requirements for people in line. One place would allow only one person inside at a time.
-COVID-19 was, of course, the main topic of conversation no matter where I was. People in grocery stores seem much more frantic. I was nearly elbowed out of the way at a Publix in Tennesse by a young woman wearing a respirator. She was the only one wearing a mask but she was not the only one with a frantic look in her eyes.
-All public restrooms in rest areas and gas stations had no-touch hand sanitizer machines installed.
-Store shelves were only empty at a few places in NW Florida, but got restocked quickly. Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia mostly had everything besides toilet paper (I saw none of that stocked), albeit in lighter amounts. The items that I saw disappearing the fastest aside from TP were rice, beans, canned corn, peas and green beans, bottled water, cleaners and detergents of all kinds and shampoo.
-Overall mood of everyone seemed to be friendly, but there still seemed to be a few who think this whole thing is being “blown out of proportion”. That’s their favorite phrase now. Not as many of them around though. This social distancing stuff seems to be taking hold quite slowly.
A few questions I’ve been asked:
-“What’s the big deal with this one versus the 500 other bugs that were supposed to kill us all?” ***Well, I assume most are talking about SARS, MERS and the flu. COVID-19 is MUCH more contagious than those, none of which average more than a 1:1 infection rate. That means for every SARS/MERS/Flu patient, they will infect only one other person on average. COVID-19 is between 3 and 4. On top of that, the mortality rate for COVID-19 is significantly higher than those illnesses right now. And besides, the exact differences are inconsequential since for now, the effect of the crashing economy and the panicking hordes are still probably more dangerous than the virus itself. When your retirement account is slammed, your job disappears and the neighbors start eyeballing your stored food you foolishly told them about, the “why” factor doesn’t quite matter as much in the moment.
-“Why is everyone buying toilet paper? COVID-19 doesn’t cause gastrointestinal issues.” ***Actually, it might, according to some reports out of China. But people are buying TP because they are preparing to be stuck in their homes for long periods of time without leaving. So yeah, I’m not surprised about the empty TP shelves.
-“Have you heard of the vaccine that the University of XYZ came up with?” ***Yeah, I heard about it. And I saw the last ten reports that other universities and companies have come up with vaccines. Most of these reports of near-completed vaccines so far seem to be nothing more than a pile of Facebook bunk (what else comes from FB?). But I will say that it sounds like this new combo of hydroxychloroquine and zithromax sounds promising. So I guess we will see. Until it’s proven and lands in your hands, keep preparing.
My personal predictions:
-Florida is likely to get a lockdown like Kalifornia and NY pretty soon.
-We are probably in for a gigantic uptick in confirmed cases simply due to our testing capabilities increasing. A couple weeks ago my hospital (a level II trauma center in a town of 55k people) had to get approval to do a test and mail the swabs to Jacksonville where they’d be sent to Atlanta. Now our local lab can do it themselves and all we need is for the physician to give the RN the order.
-I don’t think your kids are going to be back to school this school year. It’s time now to get online and look for a home-school curriculum. I recommend Abeka and Saxon materials. And please don’t beat your kids. ERs are seeing a slight uptick in child abuse cases over the last couple of weeks. Come on, people.
-The experts we listen to on the economy (the same ones who told us to buy the dip) are saying that we “might” be coming to a recession. My prediction is that we are already in a recession and our government is probably powerless to stop a depression.
-If a nationwide lockdown, or even a lockdown of a heavily populated state, occurs then the powers in charge will only be able to enforce it if the people choose to cooperate with it. Our military and police don’t have a quarter of the numbers it would take to enforce a lockdown if We the People decided not to play ball. I’m not going to tell you whether or not you should play ball. I’m just going to tell you to do what you need to do to survive and keep from getting sick.
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GUNS N GEAR
Area: North of Milwaukee
I know it’s all early in the quarantine process, but I will make this observation.
I serve on a volunteer fire/ems department. The bulk of our calls are EMS calls. We serve a relatively blue collar town of about 12,000 and also provide paramedic intercepts in the county, which I would guess to be in the 60,000 range of population.
On a typical day we would get around 6 calls for the ambulance.
In the last week, we’ve had no more than 4, and usually only 1-2 calls for EMS.
I chalk that up to people in my AO not moving around and staying close to home.
Taking my son for a walk on Saturday, the vehicle traffic was significantly reduced from what you’d expect to see. Almost as light as you’d see on a Sunday evening.
Gas prices have dropped from about $2.40 to $1.87 or so, but operators in this town have always been higher in price relative to the larger city 30 or so miles to our south.
I’m going to watch and see how this plays out over the next week. I may invite the neighbors for an impromptu bonfire and bourbon at social distances next week.
This is something we haven’t seen before, but I think we are all going to get through this.
Great report, especially about the RNs now pulling all duties. God Bless All Nurses.
Interesting update, Gray Man. We have recently returned from Iceland and are on self imposed quarantine. This is the last day of our 14 day quarantine. We just left Iceland a day before the travel ban was imposed and the Asian people on the flight were generally already in masks, gloves and sanitizers. We live on an island in south Alabama during the winter and little had changed since we left. There are few restaurants, NO fast food outlets and one grocery store. In the last two weeks of quarantine, the biggest issue the area dealt with was keeping the spring breakers off the beaches. They seem to refuse to abide by “self distancing” themselves, so the local .gov shut down the beaches and are patrolling with quads. Other than the typical hurricane warning shortages of milk, bread and TP life is the same on our Island. We have not traveled to Mobile but once since we arrived back in the states.
Our primary residence is in PA and they don’t seem to be faring as well as here. The Governor has made some unwarranted decisions that has the people confused and on edge. It is pretty close to martial law there. We are biding our time making masks for the local hospital which has none before our return. There are shortages as well as limits on many items if they are available at all. PA has many more cases than we have here, but the numbers are still minimal compared to Influenza-A. I suspect the damage to the economy will be much more severe than the virus itself. We preppers can take our tinfoil hats off now and rejoin society as normals.
Indeed interesting insight on nursing staffs. Thoughts and prayers out to all the nurses.
The job of nursing has been like this for my entire decade in the profession. The nurse is capable of doing the job of the housekeeper, the phlebotomist, the CNA, the respiratory tech, etc. when those people either are unavailable, are unable or unwilling to do their job. For my location, once we get a COVID-19 patient, the nurse is the only person allowed to enter the room (aside from the MD doing an assessment once per day). This means we do everything, with or without specific training or instruction, with or without PPE.
Yeah.
The Richmond, VA area is seeing gas prices drop from $2.40 to $1.87 as the lowest as of Saturday. Grocery stores are getting restocked better since the early runs a week ago. Still little to no hamburger, canned meats like tuna and chicken ( still lots of Vienna sausage!), paper products, OTC flu/cold related items. We are carefully hosting a returning young adult from a month’s missions trip in India. Took her a few days to get a flight out and was likely the last as her family heard they were shutting down air travel. Restaurant experience here similar to Gray man’s observation.
One of our rental homes is occupied by a couple that are both dentists. Their work has been reduced to two days per week each. My small business is gone since I am a reseller on Amazon and cannot get access to purchase further product. Wife’s income is greatly reduced with an uncertain future. Our economy is and will continue to be greatly affected. My concern is what a NWO will push as a solution to a financial “reset.” I am watching a lot of John Mark”s You Tube videos on Propertarianism. What are your thoughts on him and Propertarianism?
“John Mark” makes mildly amusing videos. Videos are for entertainment, nothing more, nothing less. “Propertarianism” is not a valid political or social philosophy due to its over-simplification of any and all economic theory.
Awesome dissertation. Thanks. THIS especially: -If a nationwide lockdown, or even a lockdown of a heavily populated state, occurs then the powers in charge will only be able to enforce it if the people choose to cooperate with it. Our military and police don’t have a quarter of the numbers it would take to enforce a lockdown if We the People decided not to play ball. I’m not going to tell you whether or not you should play ball. I’m just going to tell you to do what you need to do to survive and keep from getting sick.
I believe this is a large part of why Ron Desantis has not locked Florida down like Kalifornia, New York and New Jersey. I think it’s coming but he seems hesitant to do it based on the fact that some municipalities might tell him that they either can not enforce it or they are not ready to survive on lockdown. Florida is the third most populated state in the US and I do expect a dictate to come down restricting movement, but like I said, Desantis is waiting as of now.
Comments from different perspectives are these:
-from upper middle class N. Dallas suburb grocery store parking lot assaults have started; no ‘big deal’ but not the norm here.
-Some people are actually angry if one suggests corona was here months ago; “If it was THAT deadly ‘they’ would have told us!”
-One basic division is who trusts the system vs. those who don’t. Quite frankly I never did. Ever. On one hand I would get jealous because those who followed along had health care, retirement, vacation etc. Listen to them now, e.g.: ” WTF?!” or a paraphrase is trending. Non-trusters….expected it all along. Guess who has more rice in the closet? and TP?
I’ve been wondering when people are going to stop scrapping for items inside and start just taking it from unsuspecting shoppers on the way back to their vehicles. Open carry would be a benefit in this case. I still think the vast majority of people looking to grab someone’s stuff will move onto an easier target than one who is displaying a weapon and has their head on a swivel.
Another division is/was between those saying “this might be a big deal” and those who were saying “it’s just the flu”.
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