Spoken like someone who probably doesn't work for a living..............
Hey stupid. I'm 71 years old. I retired 5 years ago, and I'm living comfortably in a small resort town two blocks from the waterfront park, on a very nice pension which I earned over the more than 45 years that I worked full time before I retired.
So, just as
eagle1462010 surely thought, you're someone who no longer needs to work for a living; so you do not expect to be impacted the way others are, who are being forced into unemployment. You don't care of anyone else is forced into homelessness or starvation, as long as you can keep living on your pension.
Of course, if we crash the economy hard enough, then your pension will do you little good. All the money in the world is useless, if there's nothing you can buy with it. No food in the stores, no medicines at the pharmacy, no utilities for your home; all the things that you need to keep living—crash the economy hard enough, and there won't be any of that, even for you.
If there was any true justice in the world, those of you who defend the shutdowns would be the first to suffer the consequences; the first to be driven from your homes and forced to live homeless on the streets, the first to starve to death, the first to suffer all the impacts of the poverty that you are so delighted to impose on others.
What an idiotic claim - that I'm out of touch with reality because I'm retired. Like I don't have family or friends who aren't being profoundly affected by this pandemic, or that I can't see what's going on in the world.
I have a great-grandson who was born June 18th - 5 weeks premature, in the middle of a pandemic. His mother had to travel to the hospital every two hours to feed him until he was big enough to come home because she wasn't allowed to stay in hospital with him. I haven't seen or met him yet because he lives a thousand miles away. His mother is a registered massage therapist, who owns a massage therapy clinic which is currently closed and she may not be able to re-open.
My oldest daughter, this little guy's grandmother, had to close her hairdressing salon and could only re-open after passing a course on covid safety, and make a lot of really expensive purchases of disinfectants, masks and other PPE. Instead of being allowed to stack customers - applying colour to one person or two people and cutting another head of hair, while the first two are "processing" the colour, to pack 10 to 15 people into a work day, she is only allowed one customer at a time, and the chairs, sink, and all equipment used must be sterilized in between. At best, instead of doing 3 heads in an hour, one cut, colour and styling takes an hour and a half to complete and sterlize after. Instead of $300+ per hour, she's down to $100 per hour, although her rent is unchanged, and her costs for supplies have gone up. Her ONLY saving is that she no longer has or needs an assistant, which is a $150 a day savings. Her husband has been unemployed since the beginning of the pandemic and is still NOT back to work. His job may be gone as well.
My son has had his entire job change. His company converted from manufacturing and retailing a line of electronic guitar amplifiers and PA speakers systems for large scale concerts, to manufacturing ventilators. They're still retailing musicial instruments, online, with curbside pickup and shipping, but instead of working in a store, they're working at a computer, and everything about the job has changed. At least he had a job all the way through.
My youngest is a stay at home mom. Her husband's business was an "essential service", but he had to meet "covid standards" for PPE, before he could re-open. He had to find face shields and masks. Fortunately, he has a Korean friend who got him masks shipped directly from South Korea, and he re-opened quickly. He gave me a pack of 10 masks so I would have them before they became widely available.
None of my children's businesses had the 10 employees necessary to qualify for government assistance. My SIL's workers did get the unemployment insurance, as did my granddaughter's employees. My SIL got nothing. He still has business, and he's doing OK, but their usual cash reserve is down to 25% of what it would normally be at this time of year.
All of my children have school age children, who are being profoundly affected by the pandemic. Both of my daughters have asthma, and my oldest has multiple health issues which make her "at risk".
One of my best friends was a top executive in one of the biggest travel agencies in Canada. She's currently unemployed. We have no idea when or if her job will ever come back. As a cancer survivor, she is immune compromised and is planning on working from home if and when she gets her job back.
One doesn't have to be in the work force to understand what is going on and how difficult it is. Of course in my country all workers are receiving $2000 per month in unemployment insurance, and $500 per month per child. We also have "competent government" which neither politicized the pandemic, nor mismanaged it.
We used our time between January when we learned of the pandemic, and March when the disease starting hitting Canada hard, to build our testing and tracing system (they come to your HOUSE to test you), stocking up on PPE's. We tested everyone who came in from our of country, until we closed the border with the USA. Calling Canadians home from the USA, doubled our cases almost overnight, and unleashed the virus in Canada, and WE STILL MANAGED to stay home and shut it down.
While American states fully re-opened in early May, we're still not fully open. Schools won't be open more than 2 days a week this fall. But we are slowly and safely re-opening, because
OUR GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN AND STAYED SHUT DOWN UNTIL THE VIRUS WAS UNDER CONTROL.
