How is Coronavirus affecting you?

I’d be interested in reading what a person well-versed in the legality of that might have to offer. It’s a federal highway, right? What authority would a state or county or municipal government have to reroute traffic off that road? I really have no idea.

 

I'm not so sure our council does either. Most of them are a bit, to be charitable, numb. One of them acknowledged that they'd "have to check with the state," but as you say, it's actually a federal road and not a state one.

It is possible to cut around downtown and pick up Route 1 on the other side, but those side roads are all dense residential areas, and I don't imagine householders will be overjoyed by the idea of cars and tractor-trailers parading thru their neighborhoods at all hours of the day and night.

There's an awful lot of this random and ill-considered flailing around, which I guess you have to expect. Nothing like this has happened in the living memory of anyone under the age of 107 or so.

 

^^^^^
Which reminds me of what I’ve seen when roads carrying motor vehicle traffic get converted to pedestrian use.

You’re looking at a temporary conversion, if it comes to pass, and not a permanent change. But I can cite several examples of roads converted to pedestrian malls that became the favorite hangouts for vagrants and panhandlers and our scruffier brothers and sisters of whatever other description. Such folks don’t trouble me much, but I hear that other people with money to spend and (legal) things to sell often feel otherwise.

 

As of today, Australia has 6764 total cases of the virus confirmed, with 5728 recovered. There have been 94 deaths. Yesterday there were 11 new cases reported country-wide; it appears that the government's quick response in locking down all but essential services have been effective, as has been the case in New Zealand. They are looking at easing restrictions gradually; I hope that's very gradually, as no one wants a second wave of the disease to occur.

 

I know just enough to know that some roads are better capable than others of carrying heavy truck traffic. We have weight restrictions on residential streets around here, with signs saying so. Those signs don’t stop moving vans and garbage trucks weighing in excess of those limits from traveling up and down my street. There’s really no reasonable way of avoiding that, though, seeing how people move in and out and how the garbage has to get picked up. But they do seem effective at keeping commercial trucks from cutting through the neighborhood.

 

The reason it's that bad is because they let 2,700 passengers disembark from a knowingly infected cruise ship, wander around our most heavily populated city and then fly to their homes in every state and territory in the country. That and a nurse with symptoms going to work at three or four different nursing home, 44 people have died in nursing homes so far.

 

Interesting--how will you do a drive-in operation downtown, or would you rent a space elsewhere?

 

We're looking at possibilities out of town. The main issue isn't going to be location so much as it is equipment -- we'd need to get a way to send the sound to the cars, and the sort of FM transmitter we'd need is very hard to get right now, with churches buying up pretty much all the stock. All that's out there now are dubious imported transmitters that aren't FCC certified, and thus aren't legal to use in the US.

 

Do you have live music at your venue?

 

Am I the only one nervous that a possible vaccine could be coming from a company named "Gilead"?

 

We usually do two live shows a month, but those are completely off the table until fall. Nobody's touring.

This is an unprecedented time for the entertainment business. Even if we were told we could reopen tomorrow we wouldn't be able to do it because the entire system of film distribution is shut down -- there are no films to book except for library titles. And there's no live talent available to book at least well into the summer. We're resigned to the fact that we'll be the last class of businesses allowed to reopen, but given the fragility of our core audience here it's probably for the best. A room full of elderly people would be asking for trouble.

 

It really is an unprecedented time. I work for a media company. Print ad revenue, which has been decreasing with the increase of digital content, is continuing to fail. Film production has stalled and live performances have ground to a halt. Very lucky to have a job right now.

 

@Feraud

I'm 35 and my generation, in general, doesn't need any printed newspapers, telling us only superficial stuff. So, the printing presses will be dead in let us say twenty years.

 

Up until about 5 years ago I was a newspaper junkie......subscribing to 3 papers delivered to my house each day.

I tired of all the clutter, tired of the diminishing content of any value, tired of the dubious news being reported, tired of the shoddy journalism. So I cancelled them all and now read the news each morning on my tablet. There is so much free content available now and then I subscribe to a few online mags/journals for more trustable content. Do not miss my newspaper habit at all. And my wife loves that there are no more black smudges on the wall switches and bannisters.

 

SEven weeks into lockdown now. I'm lucky on the job front that my teaching just rolls on online, thoughthe University sector will be hit hard from September. Since the "run education as a business" cult took over the university sector twenty odd years ago, the pressure to keep on expanding has never let up. Quite quickly this meant an exhaustion of the available pool of potential students in the UK, and a strong reliance on overseas students. China is one of the main suppliers of undergraduates into the UK; if they choose not to come, some places (especially those which have over-relied on overseasstudents as they pay double) will undoubtedly go to the wall. I work for a very significant name University in London, and in the unlikely event that we had *no* students enrolling in September (whether online or in person), we'd be bankrupt by Christmas.

The media sector is an interesting one. Newspaper will inevitably become a thing of the past sooner or later, but newspapers will live on in digital form. The idea that "the meedja" will be killed off by plucky independents online is as much misplaced nonsense as when various hippies used to gleefully predict the end of the music business at the hands of the internet. It was no less than Rupert Murdoch himself who said nearlyh twenty years ago that newspapers will not be killed by the web as long as they evolve with it. I do suspect we may well see a situation in which there will be fewer print papers and more of them go to digital distribution - probably more of them will then be pay-for than is currently the case. I will miss the physical, myself - the fact that I now have to read almost everything, ten hours a day, five to six days a week on a screen is undoubtedly the reason I'm going to need bifocals within the next couple of years. I'd welcome less use of 'disposable' printed items, but while ebooks are great for travel and 'read-once, then pass on' type books, I would choose a physical book every tiem by preference when it's something I want to keep and enjoy long-term.

 

Our corporate offices will open back up on Monday. Fortunately it will be in stages and I'm not scheduled back in for another month. Hopefully the powers-that-be will see that working remotely is a good thing and I can continue that way going forward.

 

Here on the west coast of Canada with a significant Asian population and strong ties to mainland China as well as Taiwan our school system in the high school/pre university level relies on Asian students as cash cows. Not sure how much they pay but it is a significant source of fund raising for our publicly run school system.

 

I am not inclined to keep books once read except on the odd occasion where the book is so outstanding but that doesn't happen too often. But the real downside for me is I can't give away an ebook. I have friends and we swap books regularly and it is frustrating when I have purchased an ebook (usually as a travel item or one where I don't want to wait for delivery and want to begin the read right away) that is a great read and I cannot share with a friend and then discuss.

 

A Maine restaurant operator with a history of threatening behavior and litigation against officials in his town, who went on a cable "news" program this week to proclaim he would be opening in defiance of the Governor's order closing restaurants to inside dining -- and gave out her private phone number on the air, horrifying even the puffy-haired stooge who was interviewing him -- followed thru on his threat today, and for doing so, has had his health department certificate and his liquor licenses revoked. The governor refrained from giving out this gentleman's private phone number in making the announcement.

 

A perfect case of stupid is as stupid does.