I wouldn't. They train for decontamination in nuclear war, not cleaning schools (I was in the Navy Medical Corps for 26 years--I never heard of any training for what they will be doing). And the idea seemed so remote to most of these young guys when they went through whatever training it was, I doubt they absorbed much of it. Probably rolled their eyes through most of it.

A package of Charmin handled maybe by four or five people between the time it leaves the distribution center to your front door or the panicked hordes sniffling, coughing and touching everything in their wake as they make their way around the store?

Yeah, but the idea is to get it NOW, when the guys handling it are likely to be uninfected (no matter where you choose to buy it).

Besides, Charmin? Really? I already said nothing but Quilted Northern touches my butt.

How do you abide by this exclusive preference in public places?

Old articles, but seem to support my belief that virus containment is very-much part of the National Guard's specialties.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/marylan...813-story.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/26...ational-guard/

https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/A...emic-response/

And so it begins:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/art...d-15118383.php

This is a nightmare waiting to happen:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...h-15115597.php

"Normally, the soldiers would wear tightly sealed protective suits. Given the near 100-degree heat, they chose to work in T-shirts . . . ."

These articles reference, in the first, case an instance of not-very-realistic or relevant training conducted years ago (the key thing in bio-decontamination is how to don and remove the protective suits which they apparently finessed--and this is the way military training too often goes), and in the other two it's about specific units (medical and "first response"), not regular guardsmen. I continue to argue that regular guardsmen from regular units don't know much about this activity even if they've had any kind of training in the last 5 years. They are being used as unpaid cleaning labor which is probably OK but if they find themselves in a genuinely "hot zone", one or more of them is likley to catch "it".

Do you know what type of National Guard units they deployed? Or are you just assuming, and then saying it's stupid based on that assumption? There is so much neither of us know, yet you were so quick to call it crazy. To me, THAT is crazy.

The article said they are being used to clean schools. They don't use medical units for that and I'd bet they don't use the special Homeland Security units for that either. But OK.

I admit it--as someone with a lot of time in the military I get very annoyed at using the military as cheap labor which is what I think is happening here.

Likewise. We're not cancelling our trip to Barcelona et al, until the ship or the airline cancel it for us. So far the rest of the family is holding steady, but the friend who was thinking of going with us has changed her mind.

Regular military absolutely has bio-weapons training, I'd think the National Guard would, too. Besides, as long as the people in charge know what they're doing, if there's one thing every soldier knows it's how to follow orders ...

Amazon is great for some things, but for other they have crap selection and insane prices. This is especially true for bulky consumer goods that are disporportionately expensive to ship (expensive for Amazon, even if not all that cost gets passed on to the consumer). I would never buy toilet paper from Amazon, as I expect it'd cost literally twice as much. Granted, it can be difficult to comparison shop for toilet paper because they have so many different sizes and "equivalents" (8 rolls = 24 rolls, 4 rolls = 16 rolls, etc, etc), but I just compared Target to Amazon and made sure they were exactly the same. $24 at Target without even any sale, $57 on Amazon. And often when I get it at Target, they have "but two, get a $5 card back" deals. Now, if I just went and tried to find the cheapest of the same roll size, or even went to the trouble of calculating a per-sheet price, I could probably find something on Amazon that's maybe only 25% more than Target. But it's really not worth it to work so hard just to spend more money anyway. For specialty things I can't find locally, and things where incredible volume means lowest prices I will use Amazon. Otherwise, I'm sticking to brick-and-mortar.

^ i agree. somethings are better bought from the store; household products being among them but I'm referring to people freaking out and buying enough TP to outfit the Sears Tower for 6 months because they're afraid to be out in public. if I got to that point, Amazon would be the way to go...

Household products are among the only things that aren’t better to buy from a store. They tend to be heavy, relatively cheap, well-packaged, undifferentiated from one batch to another, and non-perishable. All of those things lend themselves to online ordering rather than buying them in person.

Toilet paper is usually not heavy on this side of the Atlantic. That's what makes it kind of silly to buy online. You end up getting a giant box that weighs hardly anything--more pakcaging than product. The environment cries.

I've had bags of cat litter, laundry detergent and other household stuff arrive split open. I since stopped ordering these online. Amazon really offers no other incentive other than you can order crap sent to your house. It's not any cheaper from my experience and most of us are in proximity of a grocery store or Target anyway. I order just about everything online except for clothing, groceries and household items.

Ever been in the military? If so, you'd realize that the chances for error in having soldiers do this work are huge. Yeah, they get some rudimentary biowar training--maybe a few years ago. And as that article that was posted--the one where they finessed the protective clothing--shows, the quality of the training varies from decent to useless. Besides, the applicability to this situation strikes me as minimal.

And yes, if there's somebody who knows what they are doing standing over them every minute supervising, it might go OK. But in that case, why not let the people who know what they are doing do it?

fewer people on my L line

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxne....jpg?ve=1&tl=1
Credit: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/amid...hand-sanitizer

Yeah, extremely rudimentary.

Replace “heavy” with “heavy or bulky”. Same idea... not something my wife wants to carry home (on foot, because we don’t live in the suburbs).

That sounds like a local problem. I couldn’t imagine it happening here. And if it did you’d get a refund.

You also live in a place where you drive to the store. You’re not walking home from the subway with a gallon of Tide and whatever else.

Yeah, toilet paper and heavy dog food are like the two things we exclusively buy online. And this is coming from a person who tries to buy local as much as possible. I am done carrying around heavy and bulky shit.

well here is a snapshot of ny this morning on public transit.

the L train is a ghost train. obviously because the wealthy young move in's dont have to come into manhattan to work if they dont want to. they are always pilot fish.

the A train was regular heading uptown. it did cross my mind i am on a train with a ton of hospital workers who get out at 168st/presbyterian hospital tho, which i never think much about -- and that was a bit disconcerting.

:whistle:

Morning commute in NYC today was one of the lightest I've ever experienced. Not a ghost town yet, but it was a breeze and normally it's very stressful shoving yourself into a sardine can subway.

Not sure if I'm nervous about this virus yet, but I feel like a lot of people decided to stay home today versus yesterday.

We have our first confirmed case at the City University of New York.

I wasn't until I listened to renknowned infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm on the Joe Rogan podcast yesterday. He basically said nobody is worried ENOUGH, that this is going to get worse before it gets better, and we need to prepare for, conservatively, 500,000 deaths and millions of infections (many of which require intensive care, putting massive strain on those resources).

The way he put it, "we're treating this like a coronavirus blizzard, but what we're facing is a coronavrius winter."

A lot of offices are closing.

Angela Merkel said that Germany's infected rate could reach 70%. Let that sink in.

The WHO just officially declared Covid-19 a global pandemic

edit: Houston Rodeo cancelled after 1st community spread in Houston area.

Well I do lots of hand shaking and baby kissing for my job and Its gotten a little awkward.

People shake hands and immediately offer sanitize, or literally try to bump your elbow, also people cancelling meetings day of over a small cold or just until this all blows over.

Still hasnt changed anything about the city but people are hyper aware.

Other than that I know people friends and family that have been put under home quarantine due to travel recently to and from Italy as well as people who have had planned activities, business and pleasure to Europe completely scrapped for the foreseeable future.

Also I got 150$ round trip ticket to Phoenix-NYC so thats pretty swell.

**** is hitting the fan in my neck of the woods...

So you prefer to kill more trees for the box than for the product.

It would be helpful if your profile or your post actually identified where on the plant your neck of the woods is located.

C. stands for "Coronavirusville"

I ordered a headband from North Face and it came in a huge box. It was small enough that they could have put it in an envelope...

That sunk in weeks ago when many epidemiologists were predicting that more than half of the world’s population would acquire the virus.

They were also saying, and still are, that the vast majority of people (and basically anyone who isn’t old with underlying health conditions) would be fine. This is why some of us believe the response is overblown, economically damaging, and that the better response would be for those vulnerable people to instead avoid public places (as well as younger relatives).

That wouldn't be enough. The vulnerable old lady's niece will visit twice a week, and bring it with her because she's been in public.

Reduced gatherings and "social distance" are about making sure the niece is less likely to get it and carry it to the old lady.

It's also about slowing the spread so that the health system and maybe a vaccine can catch up before it gets too big.

What they're also saying is that you can be young and healthy enough to lick the toilet seat in an airport bathroom and be fine but you can still pass something on to anyone older or immunocompromised. There's a reason why they're shutting down schools and universities...

Traffic during off peak hours here is usually still bad but lately it's been a breeze imo.

Ive been working from home and via skype but I had to go into The City yesterday to get some files and around 11ish in the morning it seemed a lot less busy.

That would put the death toll in the US at around 6.7 million people.

EDIT: Yes. But I will say the amount of plastic in these packages is actually concerning me. Almost enough for me to stop...eventually.

And this is coming from someone who isn't an environmentalist really.

Locally, Royal Caribbean was in the process of building a new HQ office, now started layoffs.

^ yeah, the cruise industry is in for one hell of a beat-down.

who the fuck is ever gonna wanna take a cruise again after this shit?

you couldn't pay me to get on one of those floating petri dishes.

and i highly doubt i'm the only one thinking that way.

I've never been on a cruise but I know several people who love them. One of these people is currently on an extensive cruise to Antarctica and South America. I can't see them giving it up. Cruisers are really hooked.

And by the way. MGM Resorts today announced somebody tested positive at one of its Las Vegas hotels. I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg--bet there are lots of people who are positive who've stayed in Las Vegas and certainly in other hotels. You think hotels are land-based petri dishes? They have many of the same issues as cruise ships though not all but especially in Vegas, where people tend to stay in the hotel for gambling, dining, shows and everything like on cruise ships. By the way, MGM is also temporarily eliminating buffets at their hotels. And I haven't seen any announcement about shows but I'd bet they go next.

A lot of people. They're still going on them right now despite the horror stores with the two Princess ships and a dozen or so people here in Houston were infected on a Nile river cruise recently.

if i never set foot in vegas again for the rest of my days, you won't see any tears in my eyes.

So many younger people don't seem to understand that just by getting the virus, whether they get sick or not, in fact especially if they don't get sick, they are facilitating its further spread. They also don't get that they may not even know they're infected, but Granny will know it when they visit her and she dies 3 weeks later.

The Rodeo has been shut down here.

And we house the headquarters of the worlds 2 largest cruise lines. Carnival and Royal Caribbean. RCL stock is down from 134.1 on Jan 17th to 41.2 at one point today.