Coronavirus prep

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  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,454 Member
    edited June 2020
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    Our state has directed no reusable grocey bags and all the stores have large signs reflecting this guidance. Going through the store a couple had their entire cart filled with stuff in reusable bags..

    Hopefully cashier tells them sorry can't check out.
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,365 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    But yesterday I shopped at a Whole Foods in an urbanized retail area where I had to park in a garage in the next block so I had to use the paper bags they require customers to use instead of reusable bags for now. I lost about five dollars worth of cut fruit when I got home and lifted the paper bags out of the car, splitting open the plastic container of fruit and spilling it on the street.

    Keep some elastic bands in your purse or vehicle to wrap around the container. One of our big grocery chains here (where we have always bagged our own purchases) will secure plastic clamshell packaging with an elastic to prevent accidental opening.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    Since we can not control the actions of others because there is nothing that can be said that will numerically change the minds of the pro and con mask people I try to make sure I act in a way that decreases my personal chance of even getting infected by the corona virus in the first place and that does not require others to wear a mask or not wear a mask by focusing on what I ingest.

    After coming to realization eating low carb or keto improved my health while eating the same number of calories it became clear to me there had to be more than ketone "magic" going on inside of my body. I found the below article concerning COVID-19 interesting since the microbiome creates the lions share of our immunity resources per some papers on the subject.

    https://theconversation.com/gut-reaction-how-the-gut-microbiome-may-influence-the-severity-of-covid-19-139094

    Trillions of micro-organisms that call your gastrointestinal tract home

    "The gut microbiome is the community of micro-organisms living inside the gastrointestinal tract, mostly in the large bowel. The microbiome contains bacteria, fungi (yeast), viruses and protozoa, all of which contribute to maintaining a balanced ecosystem and human health. These microbes collectively perform many beneficial functions, including educating the immune system......"

  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,454 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    Our state has directed no reusable grocey bags and all the stores have large signs reflecting this guidance. Going through the store a couple had their entire cart filled with stuff in reusable bags..

    Hopefully cashier tells them sorry can't check out.

    From a practical standpoint I don't see how that would help anything if the goods were already in the reusable bags (I'm assuming this is a store with scanners that customers use, since they had already put the food their bags -- I've never seen anybody packing the stuff into their bags if they're going to have to take them out to be rung up.)

    Tramsferring the goods to disposable bags just forces the store staff to handle them, increasing the risk of transferring germs. And if you're suggesting the customers be told to empty their bags and not buy them at all, how does that help anything? Not everything is packaged in a way that it could be disinfected to be resold, so the store would have to toss it, forcing the store to lose inventory and increase prices to make up for it. And for what could be disinfected, that also increases the store's costs (disinfecting solutions and staff time), so prices go up there as well for no practical benefit.

    There's no government mandate on reusable bags in my area, and stores are taking different approaches. Some say no reusable bags, others don't. I can't see the practical benefit of banning them, since the stores are disinfecting the carts between customers anyway.

    I use reusable bags where I'm allowed, for improved general food safety, since I have insulated reusable bags. No point of surviving COVID if I've died of food poisoning because my food is at room temperature (and summer heat) too long. Where they don't allow reusable bags, I usually just wheel the cart with the unbagged groceries out to the lot and put them into the reusable bags that I keep in my car.

    But yesterday I shopped at a Whole Foods in an urbanized retail area where I had to park in a garage in the next block so I had to use the paper bags they require customers to use instead of reusable bags for now. I lost about five dollars worth of cut fruit when I got home and lifted the paper bags out of the car, splitting open the plastic container of fruit and spilling it on the street.

    Nope these clowns had the items in tbe cloth bags pushing them around in s cart through the store. The store doesn't have a scan as you shop technology and they had way too many items for the 20 itme limit self checkput. They were going to have to take everything out of the bags place.on the conceyor cashier scan and put back in bags.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,055 Member
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    T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »
    corinasue1143 wrote: »
    About Trump, Tulsa, and corona.
    On June 19th, Tulsa county had reported 2070 corona cases since the pandemic started. Tulsa town spills out into other counties, but we report by county, and Tulsa town is mainly in Tulsa county. 721 of those cases were reported within the last 2 weeks, so an average of 51.5 people per day. 125 of those were reported on June 19th, 136 more were reported on June 20.

    6 people who came to Tulsa early to set up for the Trump rally tested positive for corona.

    How many Trump people took the virus home with them, and how many Tulsa people caught it from Trump people.

    Pictures show many people without masks and very little social distancing.

    Why shut down so many businesses to keep people from coming into direct contact with each other, then get together a group
    Of several thousand people in one building, sitting next to each other?

    Social distancing or not? If so, why? If not, why shut down business? Please help me understand.

    I say the same thing about a lot of gathering I'm seeing. Wearing masks helps, but it isn't 100%. All my races were cancelled or re-scheduled... that helps, but it needs to be everything. We did 2 months of a few things getting closed, called it a "shutdown" and then went on with "re-opening" a lot of things that were never really closed anyway. It's a half-way approach with some benefits to slow the spread, but not even close to enough to stop the virus. When I expressed this point months ago, many reminded me that the point never was to stop the spread. It was to slow the spread / flatten the curve to give the healthcare system sufficient time to prepare. Except our healthcare system is no better prepared than it was in Feb. and Mar. In fact, we see Florida has just about run out of ICU beds and they are seeing more new cases each day than the prior day. So flattening the curve failed and we really should have instead gone further to actually try to stop the spread.

    Without disagreeing in the slightest with what you're observing (just intending to continue the line of conversation), I feel like what I'm seeing here (Michigan) is a little more encouraging, in terms of overall trends.

    Here, greater Detroit was devastated and overwhelmed, but this began early in the US spread, so they were afflicted by many of the general supply problems, and the novelty was a big factor (i.e., public confusion, complete lack of medical experience with the disease locally and limited experience anywhere to draw on). To our collective shame, the impact in Michigan has been overwhelmingly greater for black and other minority Michiganders, partly but not exclusively because Detroit is majority minority.

    Things have calmed there, somewhat, now. Other big-ish Michigan cities had very challenging experience with the same factors (supplies, medical knowledge), but I don't believe other places were literally overwhelmed to the degree Detroit was.

    The governor acted fast and hard, relative to many others, and has stayed steady on the course. She's not perfect (who is?), but I appreciate the way she's been using coalitions of experts from various injuries to formulate industry-specific opening-up strategies, among other good moves. (For transparency: I'm not a member of her political party, or of its big opposite party. I'm normally a split-ticket voter, based on individual candidates/policies.)

    Individual humans reacted in various ways (including some (pick your own adjective) anti-shelter-in-place protestors).

    But there was a pretty big, visible positive response from individuals and business. The local hospital system (Lansing) made it super-easy to understand what they needed, and how to get it to them, and that included home-made reusable masks. Many people I know started making washable masks, by dozens and hundreds, and donating them. The high school robotics clubs quickly collaborated to start 3-D printing or otherwise contructing parts for respirators, face shields, and anything else they could get specs for. They made alliances with small manufacturers, in some cases, to make parts for the manufacturers to use in assembly. The robotics clubs, too, made it easy for the community to donate supplies they needed. Small manufacturing companies that make clothing or similar sewn products started making protective clothing very quickly. The auto industry (big here), in a variety of ways, was out ahead of any government entity requiring them to help All of this was happening in just the first few weeks.

    In total, I do feel that so far, with the exception of tragic early-victim greater Detroit, the "flattening the curve" approach has had some success here. I also feel like - despite a moderately high population of uncooperative individuals - most people were relatively compliant, and many people pitched in to help in a variety of ways, essentially however they could.

    On the economic front, there was relatively quick action, too.

    Though it took frustratingly long to get unemployment benefits flowing, especially to the newly eligible categories like independent contractors and such, it still seemed to happen earlier here than in some other states. Workers from other state departments were reallocated to help in some of those peaking functions. Community organizations geared up, and started forming new partnerships. Here in Lansing, the schools and the food bank worked together to use both's supply channels, the schools' kitchens, both's staffs, and the schools' buses to start delivering meals along with teaching material to students, and the food bank added grocery bags to the same buses for families. The YMCA started fund-raising specifically for food/meals that they put onto their buses and took out to distribution points: Many thousands of meals.

    All of that stuff gelled fast after things shut down, very soon after the schools closed. People dived in and just started doing. To me, that was heartening.

    These days, it's looking like the hospitals' supply chains are in better shape. Perfect? No. The businesses are starting to open up, which should deliver some economic benefits. Is it all logical, consistent across business categories, consistent compliance? No. But things are better organized than they were, by far.

    I'd also observe that "flattening the curve" has allowed more time for identifying treatment strategies, and for better science to emerge about risk scenarios and prevention strategies, which should also be a help moving forward. (When I talk about treatment strategies, I don't just mean drugs. I also mean practical knowledge about how and when to use oxygen, how and when to use ventilators, and I'm sure bunches of medical-practice matters I know nothing about personally. It seemed like chaos at first, but from how my medical-career friends are acting, it sounds like it's getting to the point where there are at least some general practice guidelines, even though far from perfect. Research will continue, and they'll continue changing practices.)

    Will Michigan get a second wave? Quite possibly. But if that happens, I think the governor will at least try to do the right thing (the legislature has been oppositional, so there've been court battles, with some wins in both her and their cases). On top of all that official-dom, there are a lot of community organizations and individuals who now know better how to backstop another shut-down.

    Part of my point was to say that I think it's good to keep in mind that different states and even different cities/counties in the US have dealt with this crisis in different ways, and it's (so far) had different results as well. While things aren't perfect here, I'm happy to be here, rather than in some of the other states.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    ythannah wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    But yesterday I shopped at a Whole Foods in an urbanized retail area where I had to park in a garage in the next block so I had to use the paper bags they require customers to use instead of reusable bags for now. I lost about five dollars worth of cut fruit when I got home and lifted the paper bags out of the car, splitting open the plastic container of fruit and spilling it on the street.

    Keep some elastic bands in your purse or vehicle to wrap around the container. One of our big grocery chains here (where we have always bagged our own purchases) will secure plastic clamshell packaging with an elastic to prevent accidental opening.

    It wasn't a case of the lid popping open. The entire container split/cracked when it hit the pavement. Some of our stores around here have rubber bands for containers you fill yourself, but they don't normally do it for pre-filled containers that are sealed with an adhesive label with the weight and price. You can't do fill-it-yourself containers around here anymore, since COVID. No salad bars or olive bars or hot food bars, etc.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    Our state has directed no reusable grocey bags and all the stores have large signs reflecting this guidance. Going through the store a couple had their entire cart filled with stuff in reusable bags..

    Hopefully cashier tells them sorry can't check out.

    From a practical standpoint I don't see how that would help anything if the goods were already in the reusable bags (I'm assuming this is a store with scanners that customers use, since they had already put the food their bags -- I've never seen anybody packing the stuff into their bags if they're going to have to take them out to be rung up.)

    Tramsferring the goods to disposable bags just forces the store staff to handle them, increasing the risk of transferring germs. And if you're suggesting the customers be told to empty their bags and not buy them at all, how does that help anything? Not everything is packaged in a way that it could be disinfected to be resold, so the store would have to toss it, forcing the store to lose inventory and increase prices to make up for it. And for what could be disinfected, that also increases the store's costs (disinfecting solutions and staff time), so prices go up there as well for no practical benefit.

    There's no government mandate on reusable bags in my area, and stores are taking different approaches. Some say no reusable bags, others don't. I can't see the practical benefit of banning them, since the stores are disinfecting the carts between customers anyway.

    I use reusable bags where I'm allowed, for improved general food safety, since I have insulated reusable bags. No point of surviving COVID if I've died of food poisoning because my food is at room temperature (and summer heat) too long. Where they don't allow reusable bags, I usually just wheel the cart with the unbagged groceries out to the lot and put them into the reusable bags that I keep in my car.

    But yesterday I shopped at a Whole Foods in an urbanized retail area where I had to park in a garage in the next block so I had to use the paper bags they require customers to use instead of reusable bags for now. I lost about five dollars worth of cut fruit when I got home and lifted the paper bags out of the car, splitting open the plastic container of fruit and spilling it on the street.

    I just realized I left out an important element in that incident. When I lifted the paper bag out of the back of my car, the paper handle came away from the paper bag, which meant everything hit the street hard enough to crack the plastic container and spill pineapple onto the street. Sorry that wasn't clear.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,964 Member
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    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    Our state has directed no reusable grocey bags and all the stores have large signs reflecting this guidance. Going through the store a couple had their entire cart filled with stuff in reusable bags..

    Hopefully cashier tells them sorry can't check out.

    From a practical standpoint I don't see how that would help anything if the goods were already in the reusable bags (I'm assuming this is a store with scanners that customers use, since they had already put the food their bags -- I've never seen anybody packing the stuff into their bags if they're going to have to take them out to be rung up.)

    Tramsferring the goods to disposable bags just forces the store staff to handle them, increasing the risk of transferring germs. And if you're suggesting the customers be told to empty their bags and not buy them at all, how does that help anything? Not everything is packaged in a way that it could be disinfected to be resold, so the store would have to toss it, forcing the store to lose inventory and increase prices to make up for it. And for what could be disinfected, that also increases the store's costs (disinfecting solutions and staff time), so prices go up there as well for no practical benefit.

    There's no government mandate on reusable bags in my area, and stores are taking different approaches. Some say no reusable bags, others don't. I can't see the practical benefit of banning them, since the stores are disinfecting the carts between customers anyway.

    I use reusable bags where I'm allowed, for improved general food safety, since I have insulated reusable bags. No point of surviving COVID if I've died of food poisoning because my food is at room temperature (and summer heat) too long. Where they don't allow reusable bags, I usually just wheel the cart with the unbagged groceries out to the lot and put them into the reusable bags that I keep in my car.

    But yesterday I shopped at a Whole Foods in an urbanized retail area where I had to park in a garage in the next block so I had to use the paper bags they require customers to use instead of reusable bags for now. I lost about five dollars worth of cut fruit when I got home and lifted the paper bags out of the car, splitting open the plastic container of fruit and spilling it on the street.

    Nope these clowns had the items in tbe cloth bags pushing them around in s cart through the store. The store doesn't have a scan as you shop technology and they had way too many items for the 20 itme limit self checkput. They were going to have to take everything out of the bags place.on the conceyor cashier scan and put back in bags.

    Well, that's pretty stupid of them (the shoppers). It takes more time to take them back out of the bags at checkout then it would if the stuff was just loose in the car, and you shouldn't be asking cashiers to handle the bags you brought from home. I wouldn't use reusables under those circumstances even if the store allowed it; it's not considerate. But almost all the places I shop don't have a limit on the number of items for self-checkout, so I'm not really in that situation often.

    In any case, I would worry of being accused of shop-lifting if I put stuff directly in my bag if I weren't using a self-scanning device.

    I do remember being disturbed way back in early April -- my first grocery trip after things started shutting down around here, because I had held out for about three weeks between trips -- and my order was selected for a random audit when I got to checkout after using a scanner. The cashier, who was wearing gloves, opened my bags and re-scanned a few items, and it didn't bother me much even though I know gloves can transfer germs, because it at least made me feel like she was thinking about precautions. But she couldn't get it to work and had to call over a shift manager, who had no gloves, and was carrying a cellphone (which it's possible she had to do for work for some work-related app), which she looked at several times, touching the screen repeatedly.

    It kind of skeeved me out to have her pawing through my grocery bags. I know lots of customers, as well as the stocker, had probably touched all those items fairly recently, so realistically the added risk wasn't much. So I told myself I just needed to keep assuming that everyone, including myself, could have COVID-19, and washing my hands frequently, especially when dealing with food containers that had entered the house recently, and doing regular disinfection of frequently touched surfaces and kitchen counters.

  • Fuzzipeg
    Fuzzipeg Posts: 2,298 Member
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    Thank you Gale for the covid/microbiome link. Its long been known the state of one's microbiome is effected by the use of antibiotics and other medications. Mental health is another area which has seen benefits when the microbiome is repaired. It makes so much sense to me that stabilising ones digestive tract is key to achieving health benefits. My Hashimoto's has benefited from sorting my gut issues.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
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    kimny72 wrote: »
    T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »
    corinasue1143 wrote: »
    About Trump, Tulsa, and corona.
    On June 19th, Tulsa county had reported 2070 corona cases since the pandemic started. Tulsa town spills out into other counties, but we report by county, and Tulsa town is mainly in Tulsa county. 721 of those cases were reported within the last 2 weeks, so an average of 51.5 people per day. 125 of those were reported on June 19th, 136 more were reported on June 20.

    6 people who came to Tulsa early to set up for the Trump rally tested positive for corona.

    How many Trump people took the virus home with them, and how many Tulsa people caught it from Trump people.

    Pictures show many people without masks and very little social distancing.

    Why shut down so many businesses to keep people from coming into direct contact with each other, then get together a group
    Of several thousand people in one building, sitting next to each other?

    Social distancing or not? If so, why? If not, why shut down business? Please help me understand.

    When I expressed this point months ago, many reminded me that the point never was to stop the spread. It was to slow the spread / flatten the curve to give the healthcare system sufficient time to prepare. Except our healthcare system is no better prepared than it was in Feb. and Mar.

    This to me is the crux of the issue. The point of flattening the curve is to take pressure off the healthcare system AND to buy time to set up policies and procedures to deal better with the outbreak. Here in the US we did the first part and not the second. So other than some tennuous medical advances, FL TX and AZ are no better prepared for their first wave than NY was for theirs. And we have no strategy for how to handle a second wave in states that have successfully beaten back the first wave.

    We should've been developing national protocols for data collection, treatment, contact tracing, triggers for future local shutdowns, strict guidelines for nursing homes, medical pandemic committees, etc and instead we're still arguing about whether Walmart can force you to wear a mask inside their stores. It's tragic.

    Many of the people I know who were being careful are starting to lose their patience, mostly because they feel like theyre getting mixed messages and they don't personally know anyone whose gotten sick. Unfortunately this is another case where not knowing how to vet sources leaves smart people thinking there is no consensus, and there's no one trusted figure standing up and getting everyone rowing in the same direction.

    I cannot like this enough.

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