Third Week of Plague

[aggienaut]

4/07 3313 active cases in Australia, 113 new in last 24 hours
4/08 3150 active cases in Australia, 105 new in last 24 hours
4/09 3066 active cases in Australia, 90 new in last 24 hours
4/10 3009 active cases in Australia, 100 new in last 24 hours

   Well it's official, we're over the hump here. I'm still waiting for the day when there's actually hand sanitizer on grocery store shelves.

   Cristina went with her motercycle-taxi-driver today to get him fuel so she can get to work. I think I mentioned her doing this last week, at that point the military controlled the gas stations. She couldn't get any gas at the first one but was finally able to persuade the officers at a second one that she needed and had a right to fuel as a doctor. This morning when she went for fuel the gas stations were controlled by "collectivos" -- pro-government militia, and she was unable to persuade them to give her any fuel.


   I drove into the bigger town of Geelong the other day for the first time in a month. There was a noticeably larger number of people out walking than I've ever seen before. I suppose even if they're limited to one walk per day, most of these people probably did not formerly take one walk a day.
   My purpose was to try to find more places to sell honey since the tourist-driven places have all closed up shop and gone into hibernation. I didn't really have high hopes but I sold honey to both of the small organic/whole foods places I went into. In both of them I asked if they were interested in carrying my local honey (one had no honey, the other hand "organic honey" but it was from somewhere across the state. Its funny the honey they had was crystalized in layers, which to me looks kinda janky, but to the whole/organic food crowd maybe that looks more authentic), and their principal question was just if I really was local. Then, conversationally, I mentioned that I'd been driven into the city because my usual outlets on the Great Ocean Road had dried up, and they both very earnestly said "oh, we definitely want to help you out." Very sweet of them.
   I've been afraid to even venture into the metropolis of Melbourne, but given this reception, I might try to use the google to identify specifically similar small organic/whole-foods places and hit them up. If I can line up a few it might be worth going down there periodically to make deliveries. For the months that remain to me ::sigh::


The United States now has over a third of all deaths (37%). Yes, I know there's probably a lot of deaths going unreported in underdeveloped countries (Apparently at-home-deaths of undetermined cause are up 8x in NYC), but it's not good. A number of countries are either over the hump or flattening the curve (Italy looks like it's nearly there, Spain looks very close to the hump), but the US is still on the same upward trajectory its been on with no sign of flattening.

Comments

[cazzicles.livejournal.com]

We may just about be over THIS hump, but I'm not sure how much faith I have in the general public to behave and keep it that way. There's no point in all staying home to get beyond this peak, only to then loosen up and cause a whole new one! Ugh.

I'm glad businesses are trying to support you through this. What did you mean by being afraid of venturing into Melbourne?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah I realize that's a bit unclear. It's not actually about the virus at all. It's because I hate driving in cities/traffic, Melbourne particularly freaks me out with its J-turns and frequently lines of cars parallel parks by the lane you're driving in liable to pull out or open a door at any moment, plus the work turk, a Navarro, is very wide and turns like a boat, so I really really hate driving it in the city. Oh and at least Geelong I'm a bit familiar with but in Melbourne I'll have to be closely following the GPS to get around, and if I want to stop in somewhere then I have to find PARKING. The truck is so big and unmaneouverable I pretty much can't parallel park unless there's three empty slots in a row OR get into a spot in a parking lot unless there's side-by-side empty slots. Sooo yeah I've been afraid to drive into Melbourne on account of these things (: