Post 204 - October 1, 2020

Day 204…

Quarantine - Day 4

The cat is ready for Michael to come home. A day or two was endurable, but four days is already too much.

I am not nearly as well trained as Michael is to do his bidding.

The cat believes that his food needs to be switched out as soon as the sun comes up. He is happy to remind us of this.

If we aren’t already up - and these days we have not had many reasons to get up that early - then the cat will attempt to get us up. He will jump up on the bed and walk on top of Michael and just sit on him, looking at him, until he wakes up. If that doesn’t work, he’ll meow. It’s almost the only time he makes any noise at all.

Michael is a much lighter sleeper than I am, as the cat knows, and he will actually get up and switch out his food then come back to bed. It doesn’t work that well with me. I will basically sleep through it. I might stir a bit, but I’ll just kick him off the bed and turn over and go back to sleep. With me, he will usually give it a shot but then curl up and doze along side of me until I actually get up on my own.

To be clear, the cat is not hungry in the morning. There is almost always a bit of food still left in his bowl. The cat just needs the attention and the routine.

I got the cat’s food and water bowls from the gift shop at the Dickens Museum in London. The quote from Oliver Twist is written around the inside lip, “Please sir, I want some more.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin failed to reach an agreement on a new stimulus package yesterday.

Many of us are in need of this assistance.

Many businesses were holding out hope for an agreement today. That it failed to happen means that many of those companies have now been forced into the position of having to cut jobs. This should come as no surprise to anyone in the government. They have been warned over and over and over again that this was going to happen.

In light of the failure of that package to pass, American Airlines and United are going to lay off 32,000 employees today. It is the largest day of aviation job losses in history.

28,000 Disney theme park employees are also being laid off today because help is not coming. That number also includes some workers from their retail and cruise line divisions but most of these people had jobs in the parks in Anaheim and Orlando. These lost jobs range from people who were working part-time on hourly wages all the way up to executives.

Disneyland in California has not been allowed to reopen since the initial shutdown in the spring. About 32,000 people worked there and been on furlough since April.

Because of laxer restrictions in Florida, Disney World in Orlando has been allowed to reopen in a limited way, but attendance there has been weak. Just under 20% of their 77,000 regular employees were called back to work when the state of Florida allowed them to.

Families, however, have not come. According to travel agents, people are unwilling to risk the flight. They also don’t want to pay for what ends up being a limited experience - no fireworks, no interaction with characters, limited dining options and shorter hours.

“As heartbreaking as it is to take this action, this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of Covid-19 on our business, including limited capacity due to physical distancing requirements and the continued uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic,” said the chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products in an email to employees.

It should be said that so far, it seems that the measures that the park in Orlando have taken have been successful in terms of keeping the virus from transmitting. No major outbreaks have been reported. Some of that is probably due to the low numbers of people who are actually attending, making it easier to socially distance.

Statewide, as of last month, the unemployment rate in Florida stood at 7.4%. Orange county where the Disney park is as well as Sea World and Universal, that rate was 11.6%. Osceola county directly to the south was at 15.1%.

Unite Here Local 737, the Orlando local union of Disney World food and hotel workers started a food bank. They initially thought that they would need to provide for 200 families. This past Saturday, 800 people waited on a line that stretched over two miles.

The CDC announced today that it is extending its No Sail Order for cruise ships through to the end of October.

Part of their statement reads, “Recent outbreaks on cruise ships overseas provide current evidence that cruise ship travel continues to transmit and amplify the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,—even when ships sail at reduced passenger capacities—and would likely spread the infection  into U.S. communities if passenger operations were to resume prematurely in the United States.”

Originally, they wanted the order to extend through February, but the White House pressured them to shorten it.

The cruise industry generates $53 billion in revenue both from the actual cruises but also from other businesses that are connected to it. Florida’s cruise industry is the largest in the country and has been the hardest hit. Florida’s Governor has been a staunch supporter of the President and has pushed through reopening many businesses even when the science has warned him not to.

This past week, the Governor of Florida allowed bars, restaurants, movie theatres, gyms and strip clubs to reopen at full capacity. He has also prohibited any locality within the state the ability to limit attendance at anything less than 50%.

On Tuesday the state reported 3279 new cases of the virus, the largest jump in a week. The state’s positivity rate is currently at 5% and is on the rise. Despite all of this, Republican politicians in Florida have called for an end to the No Sail order and have repeatedly petitioned the White House to step in.

Last week, Dr. Robert Redfield was overheard telling a colleague that he thought that Scott Atlas, one of the President’s top coronavirus advisors was feeding the President misinformation.

This follows him being scolded by the President for saying at a Senate hearing earlier this month that a vaccine wouldn’t be available until the middle of next year and that the most effective means of curtailing its spread was the wearing of masks.

According to people close to him, Dr. Redfield believes that he may be fired. He has considered resigning if he’s forced into overseeing a federal policy that he believes will endanger the American public.

Contained within the Democrats’ Heroes Act, that is still stalled, is The Save our Stages Act. This provision would provide $10 billion in assistance for live event producers, promoters and talent representatives whose businesses have been compromised by the pandemic.

Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League said, “I believe that this single bill could bring Broadway back to as close to what we were when we closed than anything else out there.”

That money would cover six months of payroll expenses, rent, mortgage, utilities and PPE. The League has attempted to cover a wide swath of both commercial and not-for-profit theatres with the bill. Organizations with more than 500 employees, such as Disney would be excluded from the assistance that this Act would provide.

So, without an agreement, all of that is still on hold.

Disaster? No.

Charlotte Martin also said, “It (the Act) certainly doesn’t save us, because we’re not going to die.”

There is some cause for optimism.

During the almost unwatchable debate on Tuesday, in the one-hour period between 10pm and 11pm, the Biden campaign received a record $3.8 million in donations.

Yesterday, the campaign received $21 million more in campaign donations.

The GOP, on the other hand, won’t announce how much they got.

As the number of people laid off rises, more and more pressure is being put on this Administration to actually do the job that they are supposed to be doing - taking care of the American people.

Early voting is starting in some places. We can do this.

Following that debate, there is absolutely no question whatsoever about exactly who the man who is currently sitting in the White House is.

He is a white supremacist.

He is a lousy businessman who has benefited from the American economic system without ever paying taxes.

He is a serial liar, a misogynist and a con man.

While he is in office, we are losing our jobs and our futures. The 28,000 workers at Disney and the 32,000 workers at American and United Airlines are all people. They aren’t just a number.

They are individual people with homes and cars to pay for. They have families. They have the same hopes and dreams that the rest of us have. We cannot let them get lost in the numbers.

I will say that I am surprised that is has taken this long for this stimulus package to pass. A month before the election and they are leaving us all high and dry? That doesn’t seem like the best campaign strategy to me.

Well, that’s it for now. I have to post this and get to work.

The cat has a whole list of things for me to do today and I’d better get to it before he wakes up.