Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[monothingie]

I am not aware of any state where that was a restriction. Business restrictions were based on the products the store sold, not on it's side. NJ had pretty strict lockdown rules early on, but we had both large supermarkets and home improvement stores as well mom-and-pop convience and hardware stores open.

Correct, In NJ it was very short-lived and the governor reversed himself quite quickly. Initially only large box stores got exemptions, while mom and pop stores were unable to and had to close. I know at least 4 small shops in my neighborhood that were forced to closed due to an EO, when a comparable box store was not affected.

 

[Chomama]

I think that initially our leader ship thought it was only going to be a week or two or maybe three or four and so it wasn’t necessary to have all the nuance. Once it became evident that we were going to be doing this for quite some time most states leadership became more reasonable. A lot of the hard measures that were taken in the beginning were done in hopes that we could start this thing in its tracks. That didn’t happen and so we had to adjust and loosen things up. Some states were more willing to do that than others and has led to a lot of debate over who did it right and who did it wrong. I think they’ll be a lot to look at one day as we study what happened but I don’t think it’s fair to complain about what happened in the early days when everyone took for granted that this would be a hard and fast lock down

 

[FormerMember]

That is not clear at all. People keep promoting the idea that they were arbitrary by citing examples that just didn't happen. Yes, there were some problematic restrictions here and there, but for the most part they were based on some specific criteria.

I'll go back to my restaurant example. These places are less and a 1/2 a mile apart.

 

[mmascari]

And also ignoring, there is only a tiny difference between case reduction and virtual eradication.

I'm not knocking you, keep us honest, have a good goal. You just make an easy example as the "lowest possible value of values expressed by posters". Much like @GoofGoof gives us hope instead of just the negative.

Watching you and @GoofGoof debate some of the metrics is like watching two people debate if there should be a smoke alarm in every bedroom plus the hallway vs just one on every floor. It's a small nuanced difference that provides for what's a relatively small difference.

Then someone else comes along and says "If you can smell the smoke that's good enough. If some burn completely down, we just learn to live with it." It's not even in the same ballpark of comparison.

 

[Heppenheimer]

Good example.

Another fun example is a restaurant on the NJ side of the NY/NJ border has to operate at 50%, but if you walk 1/4 mile into New York State, it's 75%, and if you take a short jaunt over to Conn, it's 100%. Because, science?

No, because politics.

Mix politics with anything, science, religion, economics, sports, and the needs of politics will devour everything.

 

[disneygeek90]

We’re being asked to return to the office July 1st. Needless to say, I am not a happy camper right now

I've been going back in twice a week since February. They want everyone back 100% June 1. I quite like the hybrid model, I wish we could at least work partially (Fridays??) wfh going forward but it doesn't seem like they're wanting to encourage that.

 

[FormerMember]

No, because politics.

Mix politics with anything, science, religion, economics, sports, and the needs of politics will devour everything.

I agree!

 

[Jrb1979]

You'll forgive me if I don't really agree with or approve of Ontario's handling of Covid.

They have kept cases and hospitalizations low til now. It's worked.

 

[FormerMember]

They have kept cases and hospitalizations low til now. It's worked.

It worked till it didn't I guess.

 

[danlb_2000]

I'll go back to my restaurant example. These places are less and a 1/2 a mile apart.

They are in two different states, and for better or worse the way the US government is structured these decisions are up to each state.

 

[havoc315]

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he will announce changes to the county’s mask mandate during a news conference Wednesday morning.

The news conference is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

---
The changes are expected to reflect the CDC guidelines, but being Orlando, he will likely specifically discuss theme parks.
Yesterday, he alluded to an expectation that theme parks may start to change their outdoor policies.

Not sure I'm expecting any WDW change overnight. Demings and others have talked about waiting for 50% vaccination rates, and Orange county is FAR from there. (they are at 36% first shot). But, I'm becoming optimistic that outdoor masking will be done by mid summer.

 

[FormerMember]

They are in two different states, and for better or worse the way the US government is structured these decisions are up to each state.

Correct! So we agree then.

 

[Jrb1979]

It worked till it didn't I guess.

It would have kept working had they not opened up things as quick as they did in February. They should have kept all businesses to 25% capacity and enforced the hotel quarantine. Anyone flying into Canada is supposed to go to a quarantine hotel for 3 days on their dime and wait for a negative test. For some reason they really aren't enforcing it. Due to that it's why the variants have spread. People from other countries come here and nothing is done about it.

 

[DCBaker]

Coming shortly from Mayor Demings -

 

[yonafunu]

I really think things will be change quicker than we think.
Why? Imagine this hypothetic situation :

-We are in mid August (for example). Vaccination is still underway for the last 20%-30% people
-The number of cases is very low, and the R metric is way below 1 since several weeks. The mask policies and some of the restrictions are eased. People starts to live as before the pandemic.
-Then we are now mid October, R metric is lower than ever. Some states have below 5 deaths per day. CDC guideline continues to ask mask for indoor, but some states are alrealy eased this policy for outdoor show with large gathering.
-By the end of the year, no one will care about the pandemic anymore (in US of course, because of the vaccination rollout)

What i mean is : i remember last year, i lived in France and for the summer and there was not a lot of Covid case through European countries. I remember the fear of the disease was gone, really. The fear came back in late September with the second wave.
When, after 1 or 2 months with few cases, few deaths, R metric below 1 (which is easy with vaccination)... how will you explain to people to keep their mask ? Even if CDC will continues to warn us about the risk of transmission (even if we are vaccinated), the pandemic will be over for some countries.
I bet countries and states will get ahead of CDC guideline quickly, under pressure from people who won't understand why we have to keep the masks and certain restrictions.
It is hard to convince some to keep their mask in a pandemic situation, it will be harder to ask to keep the mask in a post pandemic situation. The kind of situation leading to more and more extremists reactions

For now the CDC guideline is more or less respected...for now...

 

[Chip Chipperson]

look I’m vaccinated. I have done my part. Followed all the rules. Masked up and even known people who have gotten sick and even died from this. It’s bad. I get it. No one wants it or to get sick in any way. I just feel the media fear factor and miscommunications from the beginning about this and understanding this has been very poor. Throw in making most of this a political thing moreso than a public health thing and now here we are.

no one has been able to explain why places like
Florida and Texas being wide open haven’t had people dying at exponentially higher rates than other major lockdown strict states like California who actually has the most cases at the moment. So being able to trust what they tell us is “the science” and not always adding up or it changing often leaves questions and lack of trust

We went from no need for masks to masks and 15 days to slow the spread to a year to double masking to now oh wait masks are basically pointless outdoors now because the risk is so low especially if you are vaccinated, but let’s keep wearing that mask around people anyways. I get erroring on the side of caution to try to keep people safe and I have done that as have many others which is great....but again...how long will this control of us not making our own decisions continue because the virus will always be around in some way and everyone will never be vaccinated and there will always be some risk. At some point mental health will become worse than covid

The death per capita in Texas is 11.3% higher than California. In Florida, it's about 4.6% higher. Maybe to you that's insignificant, but I'm sure the family and friends of those extra dead people wish they weren't among those extra deaths. In Texas, that works out to 5,106 extra deaths vs. what it would be if they had CA's death rate. In Florida, it's 1,530 extra deaths.

Also, saying that CA has the highest cases is a factually correct but intellectually dishonest argument because it ignores the size of the population. TX and FL both outpace CA in cases per million people. In fact, CA's cases per million is better than the national average while both TX and FL are worse than the national average.

United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

 

[disneygeek90]

Coming shortly from Mayor Demings -

View attachment 552646

I like that it's based on pure % of vaccines and positivity rate. A nice easy to read benchmark with clear "reward" that will hopefully push more to receive. These are the types of benchmarks the CDC needs to give everyone instead of "you can wear masks outside now."

 

[disneygeek90]

Coming shortly from Mayor Demings -

View attachment 552646

And the reason I don't see this impacting WDW at all is because most visiting the parks do not live in Orange County.

 

[GoofGoof]

California, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, NJ, Illinois.

I live in PA and the mom and pop hardware stores have been open since May 2020. Seems you are working off some very outdated information.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

The fact that you don't realize that we haven't dealt with a world-wide pandemic in 100 years and couldn't create a vaccine for the last one, nor had the testing ability or lab capacity (never mind the ability to develop tests so quickly), or the health care infrastructure that we do today and yet you still expect him to know an exact percentage with 100% certainty is beyond ridiculous.

Of course he's going to shoot for a higher percentage. Anyone with any common sense would because with a percentage that's not high enough, we run the risk of giving the virus an opportunity to mutate and render the vaccines ineffective and we're back at square one.

And then the people who hate him now and are demanding a specific goal to for this to end would all be claiming that he intentionally set the bar too low for the sole purpose seeing it not be good enough so he could extend the pandemic (for some nefarious reason that's never fully explained).