AndyLL

My wife got lucky. She works for Walgreens and her boss was in a nursing home giving vaccines and they had 2 extra doses that were drawn and had to be used. So she got offered one and jumped at it.

The unemployment was fairly generous... 600/week at the beginning of the pandemic then 300/week after that. That was on top of what states already pay in unemployment. HOWEVER... 1) The industries hit hardest by COVID shutdowns are the ones where people tended to work multiple jobs with limited hours per week and changed jobs more often. Most states have rules that you have to work a a certain amount of time/hours at a job to collect unemployment. 2) Many people kept their job but had their hours cut. In many states you can collect partial unemployment in that case but in industries when hours are always flexible it's confusing and hard to prove what you should receive. 3) Many rely on tips to give them a living wage and with the limited indoor service they might be working but their wages are much lower. 4) State unemployment is funded by insurance the employers have to pay for and many claims will cause their rates to skyrocket. So many employers will do whatever they can to prevent employees from collecting unemployment. 5) A ton of people in the USA run sole proprietor businesses. No unemployment. In theory they could get PPP loans but if you don't have employees you are capped at ~20,000 which is nothing for 8-10 months. 6) Cut hours or being laid off means lost employer health insurance. Replacing it outside of employer subsidized insurance is real expensive. (plus you have to start over towards your deductible) Even if you do have insurance, if you got COVID and have to be treated you're looking at significant medical bills.

The technical issues were my server and not your router... at least in this case.

Yep. That's a different question.

For those still getting the security warning on some browsers. It's safe to go to 'Advanced' and continue on to the forums. The error is because Chrome thinks it should be https and it isn't always. The forums never access anything on your computer and do not request any sensitive information.

Yeah... my server crashed and seems to have corrupted itself. I have been working the last couple days to get everything back up and that has resulted in a couple of DNS changes that are having trouble fully propagating. Right now I can only see the forum on certain computers. Shawn is making a change today to direct forums.boxofficetheory.com straight here from GoDaddy and bypass my server completely which should be much more reliable.

Her? She just slept most of the time. I had to sit in a hospital waiting room for 10 hours.

This is not talked about enough My wife had Covid back in late March. She had outpatient surgery today. Shes had plenty of surgeries before and never had problems before. We are now on hour 7 in the recovery room. If shes not on oxygen her levels drop down to the low 80s. Luckily we have oxygen at home or she'd be spending the night. After the anasteologist found out she had had Covid they had to make sure there was a room available because its not unusual for former Covid patients to have issues like this

My Governor not mincing words

After 6 or so years I've decided to step down from my Admin role on the forums. In 2020 I have found it hard to be on the forums enough to do a proper job of moderating and after much deliberation I decided it would be better if I stepped down. I'd like to personally and publicly thank @Shawn for the opportunities he has provided me. As someone who was not an active forum poster and pretty quiet in general it was a honor to be asked to join the staff. @Water Bottle you have always been supportive, especially when it came to my Derby requests and @Plain Old Tele - I modeled my moderation style after you. The forums lost a great resource when you stepped down from the staff. I won't attempt to mention all the members and staff that I've enjoyed interacting with over the years. It's been great. I just hope that some of the old-timers will return to posting more often. I do want to mention that the one thing I learned about moderating here is how important different views are in a social setting such as the BOT forums. I hope the forums continue to contain a diverse and tolerant attitude towards both movies and life in general. I'll still be around as much as I can so this is not goodbye and the Derby will continue to operate with @ChipDerby's help.

Even though there are no government mandates Sweden has been social distancing/mask wearing on their own. And their deaths per million are 3rd highest.

4. Limited testing. In the early days you had to be already exhibiting moderate/sever symptoms to get a test so the positive to death was a lot higher 5. NY reports COVID death much like the CDC calculates flu deaths. In many states COVID has to be listed as the primary cause of death which can lead to a lot of leeway especially amount locally elected coroners. I'm guessing in a few years when the data is analysed outside of politics we'll find the death rate was significantly higher. It takes the CDC 2 years to officially calculate the official flu rate.

In the past I was hugely involved in the Disney community and was a member of just about every Disney Forum. There have always been 'insiders' on these forums that claim to have sources in high positions in Disney. One in particular claimed to have access to board members and years ago was insistent that the Disney board had an unannounced board meeting and had decided to sell off all the american parks. He'd write detailed post after post of insider information and enough of it came true that he and others like him developed a following. Fear mongering always generates traffic and people love to speculate on the worst events happening at companies. There is no doubt that Disney, like every other entertainment/travel company, has taken a severe hit on revenue and that will effect future plans. But I'd take with a grain of salt anyone on these forums claiming 'insider' info. People that do have detailed information on what's truly happening inside Disney Corporate are not posted it on Disney fan sites.

Real bad day all around. The hope that yesterday was just a big catch up from the holiday weekend is dashed. Tomorrow is going to brutal. We fucking suck so bad in the USA. 2 months of SAH wasted because people decided it was over and just can't take even the simple precautions.

Having opinions is fine. However... A single Dr claiming the virus is less prevalent (false based on recent trends) and less severe (zero evidence for this) is not facts. Anecdotal observations is not facts even when it comes from experts. I sense a bit of 'wishcasting' going on as people just want this to be over.