COVID-19 Check-In Thread Part III

[LynnInDenver]

Ottawa itself is doing okay, but Toronto and cities around it are going through the roof. Since Toronto is where the Ontario government lives, and where its spiritual home is, you'd think all of Ontario was going down in flaming wreckage because of this. They are facing full lockdown, or something very much like it soon, but I think we might avoid it this Christmas. It'll still be a weird holiday season of zoom calls and staying at home, regardless.

What worries me right this second is the looming American Thanksgiving. We had ours the first weekend in October. But with Americans celebrating next weekend, that brings up the ugly duck in the room - Black Friday.

I'm honestly expecting that it will be more the "I have to SEE my family for a change" than the sales that will be the superspreaders here. Many of the stores, last I knew, were planning on way scaling back the in-person sales and doing a week-long online event instead. In fact, we bought a television today as part of that (contactless pickup via website order, we aren't stepping into retail environments right now because it's not worth the risk, 1 in 49 may be infected in Colorado right now) to replace one downstairs on the four-player MAME cabinet... which we moved over to serve double duty as our video conference screen from the gaming table. We were already planning on doing the weird holiday season of zoom calls and staying at home.

Assuming the madness happens again, I fully expect Black Friday to really live up to its name this year, and kick off a superpsreader event like no one has seen yet. What worries me is that if the people put the mad need to spend money before health, America might well wind up celebrating Christmas with a plague event which looks like the Black Death Pt 2.

Yeah, I'm still expecting something of a temporary plateau followed by another week or two of increases, but based specifically on the family gatherings as people insist they can't be sick and wind up bringing COVID-19 to Grandma.