Well said @Bruce van-Schalkwyk !

Some of my nyc bike friends have been talking about various options for getting out of Manhattan/Brooklyn. One of the reasons for staying is that most of your know 100 different people who will get on a bike and bring you Tylenol at any hour of the night.

@Bruce van-Schalkwyk I'm in sunset park too so if you need TP let me know I'll drop you off some.anyone else let me know I'm a handyman in a residential building and have access to tons of TP if people need,I'm also on essential list and will be in and out of city daily if anyone needs anything at all.

Well said Bruce.

My brother works for a major truck manufacturer with clients that include large paper mills. He was talking to one of those mills on Wednesday who said that the demand for TP hit so hard they literally ran out of trees in the yard. More trees were coming in and production would continue but it shows how far up the supply chain a rush like this can reach. It's not like there are giant warehouses with billions of rolls.

FWIW, I've been out on my own lately.

Yesterday, I rode to Redbeard, just ahead of their closing.  They're limiting customers to two-at-a-time.  

I rode down on the west side bike path.  It was about the typical crowd for a cold-ish weekend day.  

the Brooklyn Bridge was as empty as I've ever seen it during daylight.  It was the kind of crowd I more typically see when commuting to a race early Saturday morning in the dark.  Maybe 20 people in total on the bridge.  And a hot dog guy on the brooklyn side.

The Manhattan Bridge was almost crowded in comparison.  No walkers, but kind of typical crowd for mid-day riding.  Something like 650 people had passed the counter from Midnight to 12:30pm.

First Avenue and the rest of the city streets were about as crowded as I might see them at 9am the morning after Daylight Savings.

Today, I rode over the GWB and hit a wormhole.  The bridge wasn't weekend mid-day crowded, a bit lighter.  

The weird thing is I saw lots of people driving solo with face masks.  And I don't think they were uber/lyft drivers.  Not sure what the masks are doing in that case.  People in delivery trucks also, though there, too, who else is in those trucks?

There was some road work going on.  There were also landscapers out in a few places.  

There is a bike counter on the Manhattan Bridge?

That's kind of awesome.

@Jules

There was a reason you lived here.  Awesomeness is part of the daily fabric.

True that

Fresh Direct grocery delivery times available for my address.
Maybe this online shopping thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Peapod?

Just checked peapod, they have a popup stating they have limited service, and their delivery times are all closed through the latest date available, Sunday, April 5th.
I wonder if this is the electronic equivalent of hoarding.

Ouch. Sorry buddy

So to update you all and to hopefully provide some information.

1. A coworker tested positive. He was in my building on Monday & Tuesday. He got tested Wednesday or Thursday, and his test came back positive yesterday (Sunday.
2. We've been ordered to work from home.
3. I called our employee number to get tested and of course I was told to leave a message and that they will call back. The general population number has over 4 hour wait times just to speak to someone.
4. I read an article from the NYTimes which talks about the loss of smell and taste being an indicator that you are carrying the virus, even if you don't have any symptoms. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html?algo=top_conversion&fellback=false&imp_id=410989231&imp_id=808799078
5. My co-worker said that happened to him, and that was his only symptom. So, even though it's not 100%, there is another indicator to keep an eye on to see if you might be infected.

So please keep safe and practice proper social distancing or whatever is currently mandated.

Just keep in mind that a positive test is really only useful for epidemiologists trying to contain the virus. Because people are so infectious long before they have *any* symptoms - everyone should behave as if they have it.

Hospitals are telling people that if they can walk on their own they should stay home even if they are sick and have symptoms.

TLDR; a positive or negative test doesn't change things for you very much one way or the other

The issue with my job, being a institution of higher learning suddenly scrambling to get online learning for all, after squandering tons of money on pet bullshit projects for resumé building, I was deemed essential. They never provided tools for me to work remotely so I had to go in. Now of course we are told to work from home which means just staring at email all day long since I can't do my daily tasks with out the necessary tools. My boss has ignored me when I pointed over the course of a year or more that I needed tools to be able to work from home. It is what it is at this point. For now I'm working on getting tested, and staying inside for 14 or so days.

Oh and P.S.: I think the essential and non essential designation is bullshit anyway at my job. It seems management uses it as it sees fit, and is convenient for them.

Seems like a shit deal, for sure.

I'm reconsidering how my training fits into overall immune system strength. I'm going to continue, obv but I'm planning to keep the intensity doses lower than usual and ramp volume more slowly. That and as much sleep as life will allow.

Jules said:

I'm reconsidering how my training fits into overall immune system strength. I'm going to continue, obv but I'm planning to keep the intensity doses lower than usual and ramp volume more slowly. That and as much sleep as life will allow.

Yeah sounds like a good plan.

AndrewJohnson said:

Oh and P.S.: I think the essential and non essential designation is bullshit anyway at my job. It seems management uses it as it sees fit, and is convenient for them.

Completely agree , my office and all construction sites are open , one site had a positive test Sunday , they did a deep clean Monday and are open again ,
the project is a form for mercy college , which won’t be occupied until September 
how the fuck is this essential business 

My dad works at an engineering firm that makes engine control systems. When this happened, they put most people on their military contracts so that they'd count as "essential". Plus 1 for the military industrial complex, minus 10,000 for global public health!

Wow

Mark Taylor said:

Completely agree , my office and all construction sites are open , one site had a positive test Sunday , they did a deep clean Monday and are open again ,
the project is a form for mercy college , which won’t be occupied until September 
how the fuck is this essential business 

What counts as a "deep clean" on a site?  

I guess you should be happy they're so "thorough".  At an Amazon warehouse in Queens, one worker tested positive.  They closed the site, "cleaned" and reopened something like four hours later.

@mugwump In my building the janitor is working from home, and after the positive case, I doubt they did any cleaning of the building.. because our building is the out to pasture guys who they would love to get rid of but we keep all the computing systems running for the campus....

@mugwump
the guys that do Asbestos abatement come in a spray the place ,DEP. has now halted all abate until April 21 , as the contractors are concentrating on Covid clean up

incidentally at 7.05 am the following day SL Green , the city’s 2nd largest real estate owner sent a prissy email demanding to know “ is the job site open, how many men on site “
must be a way to out these guys 

@Mark Taylor et al,

Slate.com has a story about it

https://slate.com/business/2020/03/construction-coronavirus-building-developers.html?via=taps_top

I guess this is the meat of the excuses reasons

"Developers, contractors, and labor unions have offered a handful of reasons that construction ought to continue through the coronavirus shutdown, a combination of blue-collar bravura, engineering needs, hygiene logic, and societal necessity.

Mostly, the economic expediency of everyone involved.

Builders say shutting down a job site is less like shuttering a restaurant than firing the chef while the roast is in the oven. If you abandoned a project halfway, materials like insulation and exposed wiring degrade in the elements. “There’s a sense that a 100-year-old building will deteriorate but continue to perform its job,” said Ehren Gresehover, a structural engineer in New York. “But when you start opening things up, start demo’ing a little slab, you might unbrace a column, and that column has temporary shoring, or perhaps it’s only temporary braced, and that’s less stable.” What’s safe for a weekend might not be safe for several months unattended."