no subject

[annarti]

Good shit: We're up to 10 days in a row with no new cases here in SA :DDD Grand total of, like, 14 active cases, none of them in ICU. NT hasn't had any new cases in over three weeks, ACT has been declared COVID-free and across the whole country we're generally getting fewer than 15 new cases a day. Many states are rolling back restrictions, we're not because ours were never as stringent as the rest of the country anyway. Federal Government is looking at easing certain restrictions this Friday, but only if enough people download the COVIDSafe app. We're at 3.5 million and need roughly 10 million to cover 40% of the population, which is the target.

Less good shit: I'm now officially part time, working Monday, Wednesday and Friday until further notice, which cuts me by about $190 per week. It sucks, but I mean, anything to actually keep a job, right? My boss is even putting some of his own money into the company to keep us alive. We're not kidding ourselves that everything'll just bounce back to normal as soon as restrictions are lifted and everyone can go back to work. But I mean, the sooner the better. Idk how much longer my business can survive having no goddamn business. We had an almost all day meeting on Friday discussing how to come out of this with work, so we've been each put in charge of some sort of marketing-related thing/s. Cross your fingers for us, guys.

Fitness continues, though it's very suddenly become winter and it's making it hard to motivate to do the thing. Like, I'm still getting out and doing the thing, but I feel like I start halfarsing it and just getting it done, rather than fully going at it like I was in nice weather. I have to go for a run today and it's been on and off raining all day. Mostly I'm scared for my new phone. How do people deal with non-waterproof phones? This stupid thing, if it so much as sniffs moisture in its charging port, it won't charge. Like, running and holding it as my timer/tracker, my hand gets sweaty, and that screws it up for like three days. I feel like that's a design flaw. So now I put stickytape over the charging port whenever I go running now, ugh. Rain, though? I'm going to have to put it in a plastic bag and rubber band it closed. First and last time I buy a non-waterproof phone, I swear to G.

I made banana bread! It's perfect!

Comments

[drazzi]

The thing about lockdown is like, you can't just remove the lockdown or you get madness. You have to ease back into life. So yeah, its going to be hard for most places to get back to work, or stay afloat :/

But hopefully it'll end okay.

[annarti]

Yeah we're doing it slowly, for sure, going backwards from where we started shutting things down. Open one thing up, wait two weeks to see how that goes, open another thing up, wait again... It'll take a good couple of months to get functioning again and even then, interstate travel won't happen for ages, let alone international. Today we in SA reopened playgrounds!

The thing that consistently amazes and terrifies me is countries that are still counting their death toll in the hundreds per day, still counting deaths rather than new cases, are easing restrictions. Like. Guys. Guys. What don't you GET? Yesterday we had 15 new cases and we're still hesitant to do much. How you can be opening up with still people dying in the hundreds just beggars belief.

[drazzi]

There's also like if you open x-thing but people are still mostly distancing or other things near arent open, then that business is not doing much money and bleeding it staying open. So yeah. This whole thing is a fun old mess.

UK government is like "we're going to start planning opening things up in bits... but if it looks like we'll have another spike, we'll stop" and it's like issues as said above and so on, its just like. A difficult position.

I think it's still too early, really.

[annarti]

if you open x-thing but people are still mostly distancing or other things near arent open, then that business is not doing much money and bleeding it staying open.

Yeah, that's exactly the boat we're in. In Australia, we've closed pubs, restaurants and cafés except for takeaway/delivery, and gyms, massage places, beauty places, cinemas... basically anything where people gather. Everything that hasn't been specifically mentioned is an 'essential service,' so that's us. But with so many of our clients having shut down or being just as affected as we are and hence not ordering print, we've got fuck-all coming in. Also nobody's ordering business cards right now. FUNNY, THAT.

We're due to have some announcement re opening up tomorrow, so if we're going backwards from when we shut things down, I thiiiink that'll mean weddings and funerals are allowed more than 5 people again? Then the businesses that have been closed. Sport goes in there somewhere. Then eventually groups of under 100 people, groups of under 500 people, interstate travel... and we're done. Realistically we're not getting international travel again until there's a vaccine, except potentially the Trans-Tasman Bubble we're talking about cos the Kiwis are just as chill as we are. But yeah. At least we're in a position where reopening is realistic.