This is correct and much more elegantly put then the way I said it. The Chinese people deserve better leadership.

I think this thread is where the topic of college students & leases/fees/etc was discussed.

An article this morning kinda summarizes the good & bad news students are facing in/around Atlanta.

Georgia students plead to end lease agreements as campuses close

Like we've been talking about, the effects of this virus wasn't a secret. China and Italy were dealing with issues before we became serious about it. I can easily see a few financial analysts thinking this is going to be far worse than people are treating it in late February and adjusting their portfolios respectively.

Worst case seems more likely

I can't see us still scrambling a year from now to deal with the virus. I think the death numbers will be close to a million (so closer to worst case), but I think we will be in a good spot to recover by the summer. There will be massive damage to small businesses and higher unemployment, but I think we will be off lockdown and going about our lives again in June/July (albeit in a more careful manner). But I don't see any situation where we are still scrambling to deal with the virus in March of 2021 like the worst case says. That would be unprecedented in our current society for a flu situation.

Or a drop when the President does this....

PETER ALEXANDER: What do you say to Americans watching right now who are scared?

TRUMP: I say that you are a terrible reporter. That is what I say. I think you had a nasty question. pic.twitter.com/yw1T2HTnT3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2020

Per the article, best case is 1.1M deaths. Worse case is 2.2M deaths.

CDC estimates Oct 2019 to mid-Mar 2020, there have been 390K-710K hospitalizations and 23K-59K deaths.

2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates | CDC

So even in best case, far exceeds flu mortality.

I am somewhat optimistic we won't get near 1.1M deaths because of everything that has already been implemented and promised in near future (e.g. more testing and therefore more awareness).

Headed towards the same path as China. Things will be looking much better 1.5 months from now. A lot of bigger companies and states have taken HUGE steps to slow this down. I feel much more positive about things than I did just 3 days ago. A lot of the comparison stats look solid in comparison to countries that let it get out of control.

A school district about 45 minutes away from me cancelled school for the rest of this school year.

I think Kansas is closed for the school year.

It took 3 months to log the first 100,000 cases, 12 days for the next 100,000. Even with increased testing that is a massive jump

Not everyone jumping on the 'shelter in place' bandwagon; Gov. Whitmer says she currently has no plans for any such type of order. Also, Michigan has virtually no new confirmed cases (1 or 2) in the last 24 hours, which I'm taking as a sign we've run out of tests for the time being. And Italy's worst day yet, which is saying something. Meanwhile the global death rate for closed cases has risen 12 days in a row. That's not an indicator of overall mortality rate necessarily because of how long it takes someone to labeled as recovered, but I'm looking forward to the time when that stops rising. Even if we'll never have any real idea how many people in the developing world were knocked off by this.

I'll be shocked if we don't reach the point where we see that many daily.

That's what Cuomo said previously but he has effectively put PAUSE in place which is the same thing. I think there will be too much pressure on the many state pols to not do something similar if there are large concentrations (like in CA and NY).

What has surprised me some is I get big cities and surrounding suburbia, I'm not sure entire state needs to be shelter-in-place just as long as social distancing is practiced.

Good bet that Atlanta will shelter-in-place sooner or later though.

Boris Johnson has just ordered all pubs, bars, clubs, restaurants, cafes, leisure centres, theatres, etc to close. Previously we were asked not to go, now they are ordered to shut, immediately.

I’m sure I heard them include shops at one point, but it hasn’t been repeated and isn’t coming up on the news ticker

Edit: a journalist heard the same and clarified the same. Shops not on the list. Yet?

Do you know if the governor has the authority to put something in place which affects only cities and not the rest of the state? I honestly don't know how the law works on stuff like that or if it would be seen as stepping on the authority of local mayors or whatever. Just thinking that might be a possible reason, I agree that cities should in a perfect world be treated differently.

Confirmed cases in MO jumped from 28 to 47 overnight. Testing has just begun in earnest here.

The issue likely would be that people from cities may go just out of them and congregate and crowd those bars. And then making the decision would likely involve all sorts of headaches and would take time.

For example if you did that for the City of Atlanta, it likely wouldn't help much consider the population of Atlanta is 500k while the Atlanta Metro Area is 6mil. And if you do the metro area, there are definitely some very suburban and spread out areas in those counties.

Isn't that what happened in Italy? They tried to shut down one section and people just fled that area and spread it elsewhere?

Poor Dr. Fauci pic.twitter.com/BFwwE9XS0o

— Rogue Melania�������� (@RogueFirstLady) March 20, 2020

I don't want to give specifics, but Duracell has taken amazing measures to protect plant workers in the US. Hopefully all manufacturing companies are doing the same.

When I was in MD earlier in the week, I watched the MD governor talk about working with the governors from surrounding states, trying to get them all to do the same thing. His concern was if MD goes one thing to limit access to things like bars, etc. folks will just drive to Virginia to hit up bars.

So, if you locked down a metro area, folks in those areas are just going to go outside of those areas.

If they lock down metro Atlanta, I think it gives be the idea that other areas aren't as bad, therefore they'll go out more. We don't want that.

Our town just had its first verified case.

Didn't you get the memo to keep politics out of this thread? Jesus, who runs this place? :p

They seem to be putting health of the nation ahead of profits at the moment. I work for Verizon and they have been amazing at keeping exposure risk at a minimum while keeping enough employees staffed to help with emergency situations.

Its happening where I live right now. Lots of people fleeing NY and coming to their vacation homes on the Jersey Shore. Inevitably some of these people will get sick and the way things are now could be refused a test and likely care.

They are more doing it because things look to be getting worse in NYC, but same concept applies.

I don't think I can really blame those people. I think I would do the same thing, run from danger.

Not saying you are, btw. :D

Right, I'd probably flee from higher density to lower if I could and was in that scenario. Supposedly NYC is 2 - 3 weeks from being out of medical supplies.

I am.

Isiddiqui will tell you. Those of us native to the Jersey Shore absolutely despise the New Yorkers who take over our towns and roads then act like they own the place.

That is not what the article said. The worse case scenario projects a range of 1.1M to 2.2M.

Is this still going to happen? I feel like it needed to already happen with cases and deaths going up in the past few days outside of metro Atlanta. I originally thought the governor was doing a decent job (shockingly), but we need to lock this state down NOW

I'm curious why grocery stores haven't gone to 100% curbside. Seems if they shifted all their resources to that as opposed to cashiers, stockers, etc...it would be safer for all.

To do that, you have to have a pretty good system of inventory and ordering. Easy with something like boxes of cereal, less for for fruit and meat.

(I do not know if current online ordering allows for this. Target doesn't let you do meat with order pickup).

Not only that, but you'd need a LOT more employees to do what customers do now - grabbing what they need, filling the carts, self check-out, etc. When your currently employees are working extra hours and still sometimes can't keep up with the demand, scaling it up to that level isn't feasible in the short-term.

Illinois joining the 'shelter-in-place' brigade starting tomorrow. First midwest state to take that step afaik. Today I went inside my local bank for the last time; they're going to drive-up only, lobby restricted to appointments only. The dominoes continues to fall.

x100000

Not to mention what they do to the traffic.

I'm struggling dealing with a workgroup that is still being asked to enter the homes of customers for critical gas appliance relights and turn ons. They're frustrated that some of the workgroup is taking time off - per the company and union guidelines - with pay without having to spend their personally accrued paid time off while the rest of them are out here responding to emergencies and putting themselves at risk.

Been a rough few days trying to keep morale up in our workgroup.

Would you though? Reallocate the people who stock the shelves, collect the carts, sweep the floors, etc...

All of those things still have to happen when people are ordering online.

Plus most of these services are pretty new and don't have the capability of things like real-time info on what's in stock. It's basically just sending the store a list and having the employees do what you would do in the store, with the extra steps of taking it to your car or delivering it and the administrative tasks involved with opening and closing those requests (and responding to errors and complaints and IT issues). Edit: The role of "shopper" (the employee who goes around the shelves and fills your orders) has increased a ton and has strained overall staff. It's party why they're limiting hours. They need more time for people just to do their regular job like stocking the shelves, sweeping the floors, and the extra disinfecting they're doing.

Amazon is doing this stuff pretty efficiently with Whole Foods because that's their whole business, but most grocery stores just don't have that technology to make this run efficiently with fewer workers. Walmart ended up cancelling all pending online grocery orders a few days ago because it just couldn't fill them all with the stock and staff it had available.

Plus in my state, the stores that have been hit the hardest are the cheapest stores like WINCO. The people that are already food-insecure or more likely to shop there. Not everybody has internet or even a stable housing situation. The libraries closing cutoff internet access for many people. Going to online-only ordering would cut the food supply off for a lot of Americans.

Yep. I think there are some tasks that you could get rid off from your standard grocery store with a curbside model, but not very many - and you're absolutely right about the fact that Amazon is designed for this, grocery stores aren't (as in, physically designed with the systems and technology required). Also very true is the number of people who aren't online and would therefore be screwed.

I re-read the article again. The 2.2M worse case and the 1.1M best case were quoted under the "worst case" section (so see your point) but there was not # for the "best case" section so took/assumed 1.1M to apply there.

My understanding now is no. His original plan was to follow expert advice continue to move toward it. But special interest (ie. who got him elected) convince him not to.

wait, grdawg and GrantDawg are two different posters?

mindblown

With the uncertainty of job stuff and our original wedding being postponed, we are literally going to be scrambling tonight to find someone to sign our marriage license so I can get on her insurance before the shut down order. It's the Corona version of a shotgun wedding

No, I am talking to my split-personality.

I know no political talk and sorry, but I thought it was invalidating many votes, which got him elected. Anyway, this is going to cost lives. It's going to happen sooner than later so better be earlier.

I got some unintentional job security this afternoon. Working from home this week, I've been a little nervous about the construction/metal business potentially shutting down. They shut down and my metal forming controls company won't have a lot to do. However, the boss checked in with me today asking how I was doing and if I needed anything.

I have one customer that installed some of our equipment and it's not working properly. I'll have no choice but go in to the office to work with an engineer on it to figure out what the problem is. I thought she might say I might need you to take time off after that. Instead, she told me to get it taken care of and get back home. Take equipment with you so you can update the manual (of the specific equipment I install/troubleshoot). That'll give me plenty to do for the next week or two. I won't complain.

Ha, from now on I'll disagree with everything you post

Terrible Stat of the day, no link since (german podcast): right now Covid19 deaths are adding 20-25 % to the normal average of daily deaths during march in Italy as a whole.

My town in Germany just instituted a 2-person limit for 'assembling' outside, last ditch effort to break infection chains before it can truly gain steam ... Several friends of mine work in hospitals and they are doing drills for hours to be prepared, learning new procedures and handling equipment not usually part of their job.

And that is happening while there are currently only 2 in the hospital (roughly 100 positive tests) and nobody involved is in doubt they will be glad to have went that 'extra mile' early when is all said and done.

One crummy week (almost) behind us. At least a couple more to go through.

Corona was discovered in the USA a full week before it did in Italy. There was nothing to learn from them back then.

But listening to China might have been wise, the whole world knows the Trump administration is too stubborn to ask help from countries he likes to insult.

Beating a dead horse here, most countries have different population sizes, demographics, density and public discipline. It's always apples and oranges.

Also: Without at least semi-stringent social distancing Rules, the German health system would fill up completely within 10 days. And our System stacks up extremely well in terms of capacity (total and Intensive Care with Ventilators) and is adding more space every day, both new beds and clearing beds (postponing operations etc). Italy has 2.5 times fewer available intensive beds per capita. Which is still much more than other countries such as the UK.

So this should show how the Situation in Italy could happen. All it needed was missing the outbreak by a week and having it grow largely unnoticed for a week longer than everybody thought ... (And in reality all signs point to it being way more than one week). That's how terrible this virus is when combining easy spread and not-even-extreme fatality, because without cure or vaccine all it takes is to go slightly passed capacity to have a cascading effect

Everything after, including the lockdown, is basically trying to turn around an oil tanker and will take a long time to get back below the point where you are operating at capacity. Until then mild cases turn severe and severe cases turn into deaths.

Long story short: Take it seriously, please.

Yeah, the US social distancing effort has been paramount to getting through this. We just had a bunch of business owners petition the governor to re-open restaurants (got denied). The worst was this morning. My birthday is on Monday and one of my buddies decided to plan a cul de sac party across the street for tomorrow night. Ugh, I told him there was no chance of that and shut it down. Thankfully my wife hadn't found out or she would have lost it. Yes, let's have a part with 20-30 people and kids everywhere in the middle of this virus fiasco. I was feeling good about things until that point - now I'm back to being worried about our collective intelligence again.

I saw on the news we have like 53000 ICU beds in the country. Does that sound right?

If so, that could fill up next month.

I keep seeing all the kids around the neighborhood playing with each other. I dashed into Kroger for 2 minutes today because the pickup missed a couple of key ingredients we needed for meals in the upcoming week and people were acting like it's just business as usual, only busier in the grocery store because of the increased demand. At my work, they put us, people who could work remotely, at 30% shift. So there are 1/3rd as many people there but we still have to go in every third day, defeating the purpose of a quarantine.



SI

All depends on how you classify them, but it's really close. 54k is the best number I can find. And yeah, we're probably going to run out. The big thing is how long do we run out for, how quickly can we get more in place, and so on.

Seems close to what i found. There are higher estimates, but those often carry an asterisk (meaning they are called "ICU" but would not necessarily meet the criteria when looking what you need for a respiratory illness.

Which is still pretty good and not nearly the biggest issue for the US. The main issue seems getting Rules in place, thenlack of early testing and a generally 'unhealthy' relationship between people and the health system . You can propagate free tests or even treatment* as loud as you want but people will still be more reluctant to go see a doctor until it is already almost too late than they would with proper health insurance or a better social safety net. And the later you detect the average case, the more likely it turns from mild to moderate or moderate to severe from what i gather.

* Is it in this case ?

Here in the Netherlands, the provinces where the large infection rates are, the hospitals are expecting to see the intensive care completely full somewhere within a week. Additional IC beds are being created. Numbers of patients keep growing, they are already getting relocated all over the country. Shortage of supplies and personnel (number of infections keeps increasing there as well) is emerging.

Government is still optimistic, but the call for help from hospitals is clear. This semi lockdown started only 8 days ago, a week earlier if you include the hardest hit province, the current numbers are only suggesting things are getting worse every day. As to be expected, based on the incubation time, you'll need 4 weeks at minimum to see the effect of social distancing. The toughest part is yet to come, I suspect. :(

Yeah, personell being infected is a big issue ... In Italy about 8% of all positive tests were health personell. Which isnt only affecting people with Covid19, but has a ripple effect obviously for people with other serious injury currently in treatment.

Another factor is also that you can't exactly shift these patients around at will between hospitals/cities all that easily once they need to be on ventilators. So the total number is not really relevant for a city that gets a sudden influx of patients. And even if you could, 3 days later you might have an unexpected influx where you just moved some and face the same dilemma.

Yup, right approach. Assume same as the hospital ships, these will contain the non-coronavirus patients or less in need ones to help with the hospital capacity.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/polit...als/index.html

Should have happened weeks ago.

Netflix and Amazon accept reducing the bitrate of the streamings in Europe to reduce a 25% of the internet traffic here due to all the people watching TV at home.

Isnt it more them reducing their bitrate by 25% ?

In any case the default rate of the streams is overkill for 95% of devices used to stream them anyway. Unless you have a ginormous 4k capable TV, i doubt one would notice it.

L.A. County gives up on containing coronavirus, tells doctors to skip testing of some patients - Los Angeles Times



I suppose this just takes things that we've all been saying for awhile - that we are incapable of putting together a successful response as seen in South Korea and that isn't expected to change - so its just now official policy to severely ration testing.

I makes me wonder as we get deeper in to this how many people are going to start swinging to the "we just need to let this run it's course" camp. Between the governments inept response ( political, sorry), job losses, inability for the system to handle unemployment claims, schools closed, and the general disruption of daily life, I wonder in there is going to start being an attitude of "yeah, I know it will be bad but lets get it over with."

Tom Allen on The Last Leg:

“You know who I feel sorry for? Greta Thunberg. She can’t get the environment into the news right now can she?

And she can’t go back to school...”

There are some people already there that I know. I remain of the opinion that's inevitably the worst option.

1st death in St. Louis County

The second COVID-19 related death in Nevada was just reported, “a woman in her 60s with underlying medical conditions.” No other information on the victim was provided.

Well there was the first death in my city today.

Unfortunately the United States seems destined to take the top spot in at least reported confirmed cases eventually. Just a matter of time.

I think this article sums up where I am at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/o...istancing.html

Pretty sure my son has an ear infection, which of course became obvious at 4pm on a Friday. I'm not taking him to emergency in this environment, and walk-ins are going to be nuts. Figured I'd call our Health Links line where you can speak with a nurse, see if there are other options. System is being hammered with COVID questions. Spent 2 hours on hold, then my dog walked past my phone and accidentally hung up with his face! Now I can't even get the number to respond and get back in a queue. Good times!

We aren't there yet but logic does dictate ...

So we should let 1% of the population die instead of crashing the economy for everyone?

Current state long term (let's say 4-6 months) is untenable.

If we are clearly losing the war, then my preferred option first is to segregate the vulnerable+helpers from the general population.

If this fails for what ever reason, it's not "let 1% die" its really let everyone live as best as possible with social distancing and under the transparency that some will catch it and die.

So an update on Aviation.


The underlying infrastructure is beginning to falter. Nothing endangering safety, but keeping it from really working the way it's intended. First off, yesterday the government basically shut down all Americans leaving the country. The airlines are trying to figure out a way to operate while keeping options for foreign nationals to leave while getting americans home, but it's not going to be available for long. Eventually all international ops will shut down.


Domestic operations won't be far behind imo.



I'm sure you've heard about Chicago Midway shutting the tower down because someone tested positive. They've also shut down Las Vegas and JFK in NY. Last night, delays in JFK ran over 9 hours.


This morning Indy Center, which is the agency that controls airspace above local 'approach' controllers (who control areas around major cities and major airports up to 18,000 feet) had to shut down a large chunk of airspace between Indy, all the way in to Western PA. This resulted in more delays as planes couldn't be routed through their airspace. Again, because someone tested positive.



Compass airlines is shutting down in 2 weeks. Last night they notified their employees that they couldn't stay open. Compass was originally created by Northwest back in the early aughts, they flew for Delta and were most recently owned by Trans States Holdings (Trans States Airlines is also going out of business; leaving only GOJet Airlines as an operating airline for TSH).



This is just going to continue to get worse. There's no relief on the horizon.

I'm surprised that even this can't get the Pols to do what's needed and it would seem to have reached stasis in DC. Unfortunately, the only thing that might break the gridlock is pictures and videos of mass death I'm afraid.

This came up a day or two ago, and here's what I said in response:


That's still where I am. Maybe there's a path I haven't yet seen, but I don't think segregating the vulnerable is possible (we don't even have a good handle on exactly who the vulnerable even are yet) and the economy's crashing for everybody if the health system gets overwhelmed to the degree that it absolutely will if we don't try to arrest the spread of the virus. I'm not certain we haven't already largely lost that battle.

Testing is still lacking a lot in tons of countries. France just announced upping to 2500 and just had 1600 new positive tests. Granted that the turnaround will be closer to 3 days than 1 but even then this is a extremely high 'success rate' of somewhere around 30-40%. and indicates two equally horrifying facts: Most tests are done on already highly symptomatic patients (mainly in hospitals already) and there is no way they are being able to track contacts and test them with so few available. Considering a portion of tests should also be reserved for medical personel that number grows smaller the more you look at it. And no matter how you look at it, it is clear that there are a lot more people infected than positive results.

As a comparison, the labs in Berlin alone turn around about 1500 Tests every day and 'only' 4% of tests last week were positive. And nationwide capacity is about 25k and rising. (Not 25k seperate people obviously due to regular repeat testing of medical personel or quarantined persons).

Basically right now 4000 cases in Germany worries me a lot less than 1500 in France ...

Oh man, I'm sorry and good luck!

Just some quick notes for this thought exercise. The use cases fall under these broad categories:

1) Relatively healthy vulnerable(s) living by themselves in a home, apt
2) Sickly vulnerable(s), living by themselves, in nursing homes, or assisted living
3) Relatively healthy vulnerable(s) living with other family members

The overarching assumptions are:

a) Duration is 12-18 months, until a vaccine is developed
b) There are services that will help bring groceries, fix plumbing etc.
c) There are assisted living services to come into house/apt and check up or help the vulnerable or take them for their check-ups as needed

So of the 3 use cases above, #1 & #2 can be handled because they are already relatively segregated.

Its #3 that is problematic. The only option I see is to segregate them into a #1 or #2 scenario. Move them into a re-purposed Motel 6 or like. Finding segregated housing for this #3 population would very likely be cheaper than maintaining current status quo for an extended period of time.

I think this would be true if the rest of the population could be confident of only mild cases and therefore proceed with minimal disruption. The current data indicates this isn't the situation though, as demonstrated by the CDC report a couple days ago:

** 38% of hospitalizations were for those 20-54 years old.
** Almost half of ICU admissions were under 65.

You could further broaden the net of the transplanted/segregated to everyone with a serious underlying condition in addition to those vulnerable because of age. The problem with that is you're now talking about anywhere from a fifth to more than a third of the country, depending on what conditions end up qualifying and how you measure it. Almost 10% of the country are diabetics alone. I don't think that's reasonable and/or viable. The information presently out there indicates to me that there are simply too many wide swaths of the population that are in the vulnerable category.

Not sure if it came across, but it was meant in more of a jokey/facepalm vein, like Charlie Brown 'good grief'. Obviously a lot worse going on out there.


As it is, never could get through again, but an hour later one of my wife's random internet home remedies seemed to miraculously work (putting ice on his ear? I don't get it). But if he's happy, I'm happy!

This article does not bode much confidence.

Georgia in the coronavirus age: Chaos, bad news, mounting deaths

It’s says in the article there were people on the plane that were positive yet
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention screened the other passengers for coronavirus symptoms — and then let them leave and book flights home, despite their exposure to the virus.”

After this is all over I think we need to entirely revamp the CDC or at least get them the funding they need because this is a shit show

Coronavirus Dashboard (Live)

A good link a coworker shared with me.

Looking at the graphs, this is spreading quicker in the US than any where else. Granted, I can't get China to show up on the 20 day graph and I think a lot of this depends on how quickly people are being tested.

No idea if or how any of this could have been avoided.

Roughly 2/3 of the passengers on the docked cruise ship have not been tested.

I think people don't realize that casualties actually start increasing when hospitals run out of supplies and equipment, so that an initial 1% rate is pretty darn high. Put Sen Johnson's let 2-3% of the population die to preserve our economy in context.

Also, the really bad look is that reports are that the intel committee got reports of the impending doom in Jan/Feb and ignored. Worse so, a few of them sold off their stocks right away, but then fucked over the rest of the country.

There's only one thing I'm 100% sure of in the temporal world; the globe will not look the same when this has passed as it did before it showed up.

At the current rate of expansion in the US, we'll pass China in total cases in 5 days.

The reality is we are likely past them now.

Wonder what happens when the first big celebrity dies.

Reports out of NY seem to indicate they'll start having serious space/ventilator problems by the end of the weekend. Coming soon to a big city near you. Connecticut joins the 'stay at home' parade. Between a fifth and a quarter of the United States is now under some for of that.

It's weird out there in my neighborhood, everybody was outside and on their porches because there's nothing left to do, so there was seemingly twice as many people out, and everybody is all polite and saying hello.....but also like walking in the street to not get too close, it's like Stepford Wives kinda shit.

Same for us. Took a walk and lots of people out but at 5:30 on a Friday almost no cars.

I don't know about the other companies but Delta isn't helping themselves in this either. They claim that "that the value of your ticket won’t be lost" (right from a Facebook post) - yet their solution to me having to cancel flights is no rebooking fee...as long as I fly by Sept 4. Who is planning a trip now to fly before then?

I realize how bad the industry is screwed with this and I realize that them giving my money back is only going to make things worse so its not really an option but why on earth is that credit not good until like 12/31/21? I mean if you screw over the people now they're not going to be in any hurry to come back when things are better. I'm certainly more apt now (as much as I hate it) to pack the family in a van and drive for two days to go to Florida on a Disney trip rather than forking over $2500+ for us to fly there on Delta next time.

Over 8400 confirmed cases in NY.

Well NYC got one thing right

Liquor stores and coronavirus: New York says stores can stay open

So, I'm kinda new at this social distancing thing. But, let me see if I can get this right:

A. 40 people eating in a restaurant = bad
B. 50 people in line at Costco to get their 15th package of toilet paper = A-OK

:D

Yeah, I haven't exactly seen the kind of attention (or any attention at all) to the touchscreens/keypads at the grocery store checkouts that I imagine they need.

I think both Aldi & Kroger employees were all gloved up this week. Haven't seen WM since last Saturday morning & honestly don't remember one way or the other.