Thread by @HNIJohnMiller

This is the epitome of selfishness. They're more at risk of bringing the disease to the people they deliver to than they themselves are at risk of the disease, and they're taking advantage of the crisis to demand pay when in reality they're probably getting more work than ever.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1243612935022358536

I say they're more at risk because the default demographic for workers for these kinds of services is the kind least likely to suffer seriously from coronavirus.

A quick story. So, my city, the restaurants are now take-out only, making you wait in the parking lot for them.

So I pull up to a Buffalo Wild Wings, stand outside, and also waiting are a half a dozen people chatting. I join them to wait, and it turns out they're all doordash, ubereats, etc drivers.

All of them say that they're making absolute bank, $30 in tips in an hour is typical now.

These delivery services... if you're unafraid to go out, if you want to make some extra cash because you got laid off, this will help you get by in the short term. I'm not being sponsored or shit, I'm just telling you, this is what people are doing now.

One of the restaurant workers came out to get an idea of what orders were waiting outside, get names to match to the orders, etc. Pauses for a second to join the conversation.

Sure, we're all using gloves and such, we kept a decent distance from each other, but the absurdity...

These people are hiding out in their self-quarantines, and then getting stuff delivered to them, passing through several peoples hands.

They found coronavirus in 6 Amazon warehouses, did you hear about that? 6 different warehouses.

I've worked in Amazon warehouses.

If one person has it, they all have it. Guaranteed. The break rooms are small and crammed full of people during peak seasons, and Amazon peak seasons stretch into March.

The aisles are narrow. You're going to brush shoulders. Period. Especially in areas like book sections.

In a restaurant, the items to from cooks, to the wait staff kept on to handle getting the food to the curb, to the delivery drivers, to the customers.

In an Amazon warehouse an item goes from the intake, to the stock crew, to the pick crew, with some items having a HIGH turnover

One person in the restaurant has it, they all have it, and their customers, and their families, and the delivery drivers.

One person in an Amazon warehouse has it, they all have it. And their families. And possibly the people getting those overnighted packages.

I'm telling you, that this virus is COMPLETELY widespread, and we probably all mostly have it already, or HAD it already.

But it's not deadly. Even with our obesity, even with how fucking lazy we are, the United States is one of the healthiest nations in the world.

It's not shut down fucking everything levels of shit hitting the fan.

If we had a single fucking iota of sense, we would have simply locked down the elderly who were most at risk of complications, and stepped incredibly carefully in caring for them and delivering necessities.

INSTEAD, we ALL freaked out, and all of the services that the elderly would have been able to rely on normally to protect themselves were swamped with everyone else fucking panicking.

And this was all it took to lock everyone else down in pants-on-head-retarded quarantines.

I'm angry. I'm incredibly angry. We have one of the most robust and effective health care systems. We have a food distribution system incomparable to the rest of the world. We literally want for nothing.

Instead...

We're having fights over fucking toilet paper.

TOILET PAPER.

FUCKING.

TOILET PAPER.

Do you want to know why we have Democrats and Republicans leading us?

Because our population is so fucking stupid we engage in bitter battles over TOILET PAPER.

Do you want to know what I did when the grocery stores were packed full of panicked people?

I went into an asian grocery store. Chocked full of rice, noodles, steamed buns, fuck, EVERYTHING you could possibly ask for in terms of staples. No line.

This is why we can't have nice things. This is why. This is EXACTLY why we've strayed so far from the constitution the founding fathers would fucking weep in agony at what we've become.

Because when a crisis hits, we fight over fucking toilet paper in Walmarts.

And now, because of the collective pants shitting idiocy that no doubt required all that toilet paper to clean up, we're having to deal with MORE shit. We get told, 'oh, construction is a necessary industry to stay open', but not the parts stores we need to keep equipment running

There's thousands of instances like that where we have these just dumbfuck kneejerk reactions... and I'm just tired. I'm an introvert, so nothing *really* changed for me. I even managed to stay employed even amidst lockdowns. I usually washed my hands anyways.

Yet those kneejerk dumfuck reactions are now starting to impact me. Not because of any choices I made. I don't use a roll of toilet paper a day, so I was fine there, I kept my pantry stocked and went to underutilized stores so I was in great shape there. But I lost my 401k.

Sure, it'll come back. And I'm helping out others around me as best as I can. But this panic is possibly the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen. About the only real positive out of it is my commute to work is now a 10 minute drive instead of a 25 minute drive.

This was a dry run. This was a fucking test, to see how easily we can be managed in a panic.

Very easily.

Next time anyone in the government wants to get anything to happen, they just have to spin up another crisis, get the media to breathlessly report, and its a blank check.

Fuck it, I'm done.

/end