mikemc
Friar Fanatic
Posts: 3,241
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Post by mikemc on Mar 28, 2020 12:58:26 GMT -5
"With respect to our current coronavirus pandemic, the disease is labeled COVID-19 (shorthand for corona virus disease, discovered in 2019); it results from exposure to the virus called SARS-CoV-2. The latter label, the World Health Organization explains, stands for “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2.” The “2,” as you might suspect, reflects genetic linkage between the novel Chinese coronavirus and SARS, which caused a frightening outbreak in 2002–03." " According to the Centers for Disease Control, the test that is being administered “is designed to detect the virus that causes COVID-19” — viz., SARS-CoV-2. Does a positive test indicate that the person has the virus but may not have the disease? Not clear. The CDC elaborates, “If you have a positive test result, it is very likely that you have COVID-19” (emphasis added). Meaning: The CDC (at least in the statistics that are being shared publicly) assumes that if you have the virus, you have the disease." So, not everyone who tests positive will end up with COVID-19. So are the numbers being presented skewed? www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-fatality-rate-computing-difficult/#slide-1....gotta love friartown...
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Post by drairf on Mar 28, 2020 15:26:56 GMT -5
I have zero interest in politicizing this. In fact, I think it’s shameful to do so. Our governor is doing a very good job handling this issue. I would rather she put more emphasis on our public areas as I still see kids playing basketball in playgrounds and football in parks. People coming from NY to Westerly will shelter in place at a far more consistent basis than adolescents and young adults do. As for China, we’re about to issue another 2 trillion of debt. We will be at 25 trillion in debt very soon. If we want it to remain affordable, we’re gonna need China because they already own close to 8% of our outstanding debt....and oh by the way, China is working now and we aren’t...China is a necessary evil. Without cooperation between us and them, we will see a global depression. It’s that simple. Good friend of mine left his lower Manhattan apartment with his wife and three kids and they are now at their Westerly beach house. They did this over a week ago before RI announced the restrictions. I’m sure his Tesla SUV with NY plates is going over well.
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Post by thewalk on Mar 28, 2020 16:46:20 GMT -5
Poor guy
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Post by drairf on Mar 28, 2020 17:17:21 GMT -5
My post was definitely not coming from a place of sympathy.
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Post by drairf on Mar 28, 2020 17:17:45 GMT -5
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pcdad
Friar Fanatic
Posts: 3,708
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Post by pcdad on Mar 28, 2020 22:08:16 GMT -5
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Post by Free Weyinmi on Mar 28, 2020 22:17:25 GMT -5
I got in three rounds of golf this past week, including a round on Monday at my home course (Swansea CC) just before Massachusetts locked down, and then Tuesday and Thursday on Rhode Island courses. There was an air of desperation among my foursome to get in as many as possible prior to things clamping down. No rakes, and raised cups, at which you just bounce your putts off of, so no need to reach into the hole or touch the flag stick. We're all dedicated walkers, so no need to employ the one-rider-per-cart rule. But now Rhode Island has locked down. No mention of golf courses on the attached critical/non-critical businesses list, but just driving to a course would violate the stay-at-home order. My wife is a front line health care worker, so I've got a fair amount of risk exposure as it is; guess I'll actually read books during the upcoming rainy stretch. Stay safe. Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted
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pcdad
Friar Fanatic
Posts: 3,708
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Post by pcdad on Mar 28, 2020 23:57:47 GMT -5
One Shop Became a Lifeline for Rhode Island’s Solitary Clam Fishermen Restaurant closings have devastated the market for quahoggers, who are prohibited from selling directly to consumers.
C. J. Chivers By C. J. Chivers March 27, 2020
BRISTOL, R.I. — Lou Frattarelli eased his flatbed truck into the loading zone at Andrade’s Catch, a small seafood shop in this town on Narragansett Bay. He had just tied his 24-foot clam skiff to the marina beside the firehouse and offloaded his catch. He had four sacks of quahogs to sell, raked on the still-running tide from the bottom of the bay.
Davy Andrade, one of the shop owners, met him at the door. Mr. Andrade was buying, one of the few shellfish dealers in the state still employing clammers and bringing a local seafood staple to residents.
“What do you want me doing tomorrow?” Mr. Frattarelli asked, hoping for one more day’s pay.
“Another 500, if you can,” Mr. Andrade answered.
Five hundred littlenecks is far fewer clams than an experienced quahogger can rake in a day from the rich waters around Prudence Island, where Mr. Frattarelli had been working. But in the age of the coronavirus, it amounted to a boon.
An experienced quahog fisherman can catch 1,000 or more clams a day, but with widespread restaurant closures, they are lucky to sell half that.Credit...C.J. Chivers for The New York Times Many fishing ports across the United States, long imperiled and struggling under strict regulations and the declines of valuable fish and shellfish stocks, have fallen even quieter in the pandemic.
For Rhode Island’s quahoggers, as the harvesters of wild hard-shelled clams are known, the circumstances have gone past difficult to bizarre. While their neighbors struggled to buy food during surges of panic shopping that emptied grocery store shelves, quahoggers found the market for fresh clams — a food rich in protein and minerals — abruptly shut down.
(Full disclosure: I have a commercial fishing license and sell clams most weeks. I have no business relationship with Andrade’s Catch and have never sold clams to this shop.)
Until two weeks ago, much of the East Coast’s daily harvest of wild clams was channeled through wholesale buyers to restaurants and raw bars, many of them in New York City. When bars and restaurants were closed, wholesalers stopped buying.
In Rhode Island, where state regulations forbid quahoggers from selling clams directly to consumers, the result is that the fleet has all but stopped working — even though catches were high and people, wary of going into crowded and picked-over grocery stores, are eager for healthy meals.
The situation is even more confounding because quahogging was a quintessential form of social distancing before social distancing was a public mandate. A lone quahogger on a skiff, away from everyone else while rhythmically scratching a bull rake over the bay floor, just happens to align with the world’s new prescription for living — all while producing food.
Andrade’s Catch has managed to support quahog sales, at least at a small scale. While the shop does a robust wholesale business, it also runs a retail shop out front. By shifting operations almost entirely to retail, it has kept a few boats on the water.
“I’ve got about six guys I am buying from,” Mr. Andrade said, and he rotates their days. “We want to keep the guys going.”
On a typical winter day, the shop would buy from 12 to 15 boats, he said. In the summer, it often buys from 25. On Tuesday, three boats went out, each told to catch the shop limit. Andrade’s Catch was paying 20 cents a littleneck, down from 30 cents earlier this month. Quahoggers fortunate enough to get an order could gross $100 a day.
That pay was something but not enough, said David Andrade, Davy’s father and a co-founder of the shop with his wife. “I’ve been telling the diggers, take it easy, wait for the restaurants to come back,” he said. “But in all reality, you’ve got to make $200 a day to pay for the boat.”
Even these small orders have been helped, Davy Andrade said, by an unexpected form of local generosity: A town resident donated $600 to provide free clams to Andrade’s Catch customers. The donation became the impetus for a retail special: Anyone spending $24 or more on seafood this week received 24 free clams, enough for a pot of chowder. (The donor asked to remain anonymous.)
Even without the special, the shop has still remained busy with sales of other seafood.
Mr. Andrade’s fiancée, Victoria Young, runs an Instagram account that posts daily lists of available seafood, much of which comes from the trawler fleet working in nearby New Bedford, Mass. She also encourages shoppers to place orders by phone and to collect purchases curbside — reducing traffic in the store and potential dangers to the customers and staff.
Between customers, Ms. Young sprays and wipes anything they might touch — the counters, the A.T.M. and the frame, glass and handles of the front door.
Like most everyone else, Ms. Young has faced deep personal disruption. She is from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and has family there she is worried about. Her people were expected to be gathering soon for her wedding, not living in indefinite and escalating isolation, uncertainty and fear.
“We were supposed to get married next week,” she said, looking at Davy. “We’ve postponed it.”
The shop, meanwhile, has commanded their full attention, in part because supermarkets have been overwhelmed, and a small shop, with fewer customers, can feel safer than a big store. Andrade’s Catch, the couple said, has been drawing about 35 customers a day, and sometimes more. “Last weekend we got mobbed,” Mr. Andrade said.
Mr. Frattarelli, the quahogger who offloaded his catch, is grateful for the shop’s continued orders. But he expressed grave worry.
“I’ve fished through hurricane closures before,” he said. “It would be one week, two weeks, maybe a month and you’d be back. The thing that scares me about this is there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”
P.J. Russo, another quahogger who fished Tuesday, suggested that the tunnel would get darker for many diggers fast. As independent skiff owners, quahoggers earn cash essentially by piecework. They have no salary. Many lack backup employment or cash reserves, he said.
Tuesday was the only day Mr. Russo had worked in the last two weeks. The rent money he owed his landlord for March is gone. “That was the last of our cash, and we have now spent it on food,” he said. “When you run out of money and you run out of food, that’s when things get crazy.”
He said he was shucking some of the catch he could not sell, then freezing the meat, figuring that he might have to live off it soon.
C.J. Chivers is a long-form writer and reporter for the Investigations Desk and The New York Times Magazine. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, and is also the author of “The Gun,” a history of automatic weapons.
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friar82
Administrator
BCC Member
Posts: 8,160
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Post by friar82 on Mar 29, 2020 17:09:31 GMT -5
Really bad optics...
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"Keep Calm, Wash Your Hands & Carry On"
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Post by thumper on Mar 29, 2020 18:01:04 GMT -5
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Post by drairf on Mar 31, 2020 5:32:30 GMT -5
Drairf jr. decided to get staples to the back of the cranium last night. Perfect timing young man.
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Post by drairf on Mar 31, 2020 5:43:44 GMT -5
Sad news. I saw Lee Green play in HS. He dunked on my friend’s older brother twice in that game. That team also had Jamal Faulkner (Arizona State/Alabama) and JoJo Outlaw (St. Peters MAAC).
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Post by petert on Mar 31, 2020 8:19:26 GMT -5
Praying for doctors; scientists, Pharma cos to come up with a treatment then a vaccine as soon as possible.
Peter
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Post by dex on Mar 31, 2020 9:50:59 GMT -5
Drairf jr. decided to get staples to the back of the cranium last night. Perfect timing young man. Cripes it seems like yesterday the last time you took Jr in for some work...I think it was on his noggin back then too? OMG lousy timing Doc
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Post by drairf on Mar 31, 2020 10:22:24 GMT -5
Yup, almost identical spot. He’s a pain in the ass.
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