04-10-2020, 12:01 PM
(04-10-2020, 10:09 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Hope everyone is doing okay in this cluster **** and doing their best to avoid getting sick despite the piss poor leadership taking place in Washington DC.
I have mostly been working from home, fishing, and tying flies. Now, however, Shenandoah National Park is completely closed because people don't have any common ***** sense. Same for a couple of lakes that are in recreation areas in the George Washington National Forest. Not long after the stay-at-home order, here, they were shoulder-to-shoulder at the lake because of trout stocking. So now the lake is shut down and VDGIF is not announcing any stockings.
Economics wise, the state is in a hiring freeze and they are currently looking at budget cuts because the decreased economic activity will hit the budget. There are currently hundreds of adjunct instructors across the state that will likely not have jobs in the fall, adding to the already high unemployment rates. My city, in particular, is tenth in confirmed cases per capita in Virginia, so we have that going for us. That is, of course, taking into account the students that are typically considered in our population so we'd probably be a little higher on that list if we remove the 20-ish thousand students that are typically here and counted in our population of 50-ish thousand. It's also already outdated data as there are 20 more cases in the city and county than what that is based on. Well, with this hit to our city we don't want to be increasing the personal property tax like we had planned to pay for our severely overcrowded high school to have a second one built. So now we will likely see a delay in that construction which will be a problem for the city, the construction company, and the children.
This is all just a grand ol' time.
As a state worker (and one who cannot really work from home) I am essentially on an extended paid leave until this blows over. I look at it as the paternity leave that I should have gotten when my son was born 8 months ago. So while that is all good and dandy, there is a voice in the back of my head that says that the other shoe is going to drop once all this is done, especially considering my union's CBA is currently being renegotiated. We will likewise likely be looking at hiring freezes, furloughs and wage freezes.
So while some are feeling the pain now, I'm going to feel the pain in the coming months.