They ruined the Bo$ton Globe reporter's trip:
"Dirty looks, threats, and anonymous notes. Good riddance to the summer of travel shaming; It hasn’t been an easy year for families looking for an escape, as vacation vigilantes have taken regulations into their own hands" by Christopher Muther Globe Staff, September 5, 2020
Earlier this summer, Merry White arrived for her vacation in rural Maine with a negative COVID-19 test in hand, as required by state guidelines for visitors from Massachusetts, but following the rules didn’t seem to be enough to quell suspicion, or worse, among locals.
“We found that the locals didn’t trust visitors,” said White, a professor at Boston University, “and the visitors didn’t trust the locals. The locals didn’t wear masks because they felt ’This is our village.’ So no one trusted anyone. We wore masks, and that marked us as outsiders.”
I think it is the state you are from.
It hasn’t been an easy year for families looking for an escape. Some residents of rural areas and heavily trafficked tourist destinations have turned into vacation vigilantes, shaming outsiders who they feel may be putting them at risk of exposure to the virus. Ask around, and you’ll hear stories about dirty looks and locals grilling and shaming vacationers who show up with out-of-state plates.
Have only yourselves to blame for pushing the fear, panic, and shaming, and now he's complaining!
This has been particularly true in the Northeast corner of the US, where states have pieced together a confusing and ever-changing list of travel restrictions and who-can-go-where rules to protect residents from the virus. It’s a higgledy-piggledy patchwork of guidelines with varying levels of enforcement — from a little to none; therefore, vacation vigilantes have taken enforcement into their own hands.
I guess the Ken and Karen harassers are different, and he needs to remember he is in the "can't get there from h're" region of the country.
On a recent trip to Truro, New Yorkers Ann and Evan Garner woke up one morning to find a nasty note on their windshield. New Yorkers are allowed to come to Massachusetts without producing a negative COVID-19 test or quarantining for two weeks.
“Why don’t you go back to New York and spread corona in your own state!” the note read.
“It was a little scary,” Ann Garner said. “New York has a lower positive test rate than Massachusetts, so if anyone was in danger, it was us.”
To be clear, the CDC isn’t exactly encouraging travel. According to its website, “Travel increases your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-19,” but this year travel also seems to be fueling the spread of regional xenophobia. Krystal Lewis, a clinical psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health who specializes in anxiety, said the pandemic has amplified fear and distrust of others, and the lack of a consistent federal response hasn’t helped.
Not around here it hasn't, and a lot of things have been amplified these days as they basically blame Trump!
“For people who are in smaller rural areas and aren’t used to having people around from outside their immediate circle, it’s uncomfortable,” she said. “As humans, we tend to gravitate towards those people who we see as being similar and familiar. Perceived differences can create discriminatory behavior. So it can be really hard for them to accept people they don’t know. That could be a result of COVID-19, but in general, I think that’s human nature. We’re just seeing a more extreme version.”
Look at the elite $hit claim all us rural rubes are racist!
Someone out the check her head.
The travel xenophobia isn’t a summer 2020 phenomenon, and its roots go deeper than safety. The US declared coronavirus a national emergency on March 13, and throughout the spring, many city dwellers fled to ride out the COVID-19 storm in their country or oceanside second homes, but places such as Salisbury, Newburyport, and Plum Island refused to hook up the water supply to summer homes early to discourage second homeowners from coming.
Try taking a ferry to Nantucket!
Rhode Island took it a step further by sending state troopers to summer houses believed to be owned by New Yorkers. After New York Governor Andrew Cuomo threatened to sue Rhode Island for stopping cars with New York plates and checking on the summer homes, the order was rescinded.
“There has always been an undercurrent of resentment between residents and second homeowners,” said a year-round resident of Brewster, who asked that her name not be used. The topic is so contentious that many people interviewed for this story asked that their names not be used. “It’s always been there. Kind of an us-versus-them mentality, but the pandemic has really brought those feelings to the surface. It’s given people an excuse to be openly hostile.”
I don't know where he went, but that is nothing like the area in which I live where you will find the friendliest, most helpful people.
As someone who has traveled locally this summer, carefully following regulations put in place by each state, I can attest to an us-versus-them mentality toward tourists as well as second homeowners. In August I wrote a story about traveling to Maine with my parents. We all tested negative for COVID-19 before departing, stayed away from crowds, and wore masks every time we were outside. We followed all the rules. Despite this, I received a torrent of hate mail and online trolling like I’d never experienced in my 19 years at the Globe. The nice ones called me irresponsible, entitled, reckless, and many pet names not fit for print. The not-so-nice ones told me that they hope my entire family died of COVID-19. So much for writing a story that was intended to be a love letter to Maine.
These elite $cum just don't get it, and it's all deserved.
I'm not wishing he and his family die, but I'm tired of being condescended to by agenda-pushing liars like him who then have the temerity to complain about the backlash and ruin his vacation!
He's lucky he has a hack job when so many of us are done!
According to psychiatrist Zlatin Ivanov, the heightened tensions surrounding travel, and resulting behaviors, aren’t just about health. He said we’re all cracking to some degree as a result of living under chronic stress.
“There is so much uncertainty about what is going to happen in the future,” Ivanov said. “Aside from getting sick from coronavirus, people are experiencing stress about their financial future, confusion around schooling for their kids, and, in some cases, they’re just fed up working from home and being around their spouse all day.”
He obviously doesn't know about the World Economic Forum's Great Re$et because that is certainly what is being devised as we all crack due to the strain (I have found myself under strain but with a more determined resolve than ever).
This is where it gets even more complicated. Everyone deals with stress differently, Ivanov said. While some people may channel anxiety into finger wagging and shaming travelers, others may deal with their anxiety with a vacation. It’s a vicious cycle.
So just let it go, right?
“I went to New Hampshire because there are no travel restrictions for people from Massachusetts and I really needed a vacation. My boss told me to take a vacation,” said Frederick Ross of Boston, “but that didn’t matter. People saw my Massachusetts plates and I got dirty looks, but here’s the kicker: I was the one who was always wearing my mask. A lot of locals weren’t.”
Oh, it's a border thing.
Whether you’re traveling, or worried about tourists traveling to your community, there is something you can do to reduce your anxiety, and that’s follow basic common sense.
“There are really only certain things that people can control, and that’s their own behavior,” Lewis of the NIMH said. “We know anxiety is fueled by uncertainty and uncontrollability, which I think we’re going to be living with for a while. So the best advice is to focus on what you can control to keep yourself and your loved ones safe, and that’s wearing a mask and minimizing time spent around large groups of people.”
Unless you need to go protests social injustice or some such thing.
--more--"
The Globe says the summer of COVID-19 fed their soul, but broke their heart as summer temperatures hit records across region and the beaches were temporarily closed because of shark sightings so paddle away as fast as you can before you become a meal.
Happy Labor Day!
"Coronavirus made the wealth gap worse. How long can a divided economy stand?" by Shirley Leung and Larry Edelman Boston Globe, September 5, 2020
Far from a leveler, the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated America’s already grotesque wealth gap. The rich have gotten richer — much richer in some cases. The poor are being squeezed from all sides, and so a longstanding question has taken on new urgency: How long can our divided economy stand?
It's already been collapsed, and they didn't mention the middle cla$$ because there is no longer a middle cla$$.
Five months into the sharpest downturn on record, white-collar jobs have essentially recovered, while employment for the lowest-wage workers has declined 14 percent since January as thousands of temporary layoffs are being extended or have been made permanent.
The housing market is hot, fueled by city dwellers fleeing to the suburbs. Meanwhile, a tsunami of evictions threatens renters.
Wall Street has climbed to new heights on the shoulders of tech giants such as Amazon and Google whose businesses have benefited from the COVID-19 crisis — gains that go overwhelmingly to the top 10 percent of households, yet broad swaths of the lower-wage service economy continue to struggle: restaurants and shops, airlines, hotels, gyms, movie theaters — any business that relies on customers mingling in close proximity, but many of the companies that have avoided the worst of the pandemic’s economic pain may prove vulnerable unless the government comes through with another significant rescue package, economists say. That’s because consumption accounts for 70 percent of the US economy, and either by government restriction or by choice, the novel coronavirus has altered consumer behavior. People aren’t eating out or traveling as much and are unlikely to do so until there is a vaccine.
There they go again, unnecessarily jabbing the agenda.
“In the long term, if we don’t get people back employed and back consuming, everyone is going to feel it,” said Dania Francis, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Too late, and there is no hope in $ight.
If anything, we are heading towards a $oul-cru$hing $hutdown.
The country has so far avoided another Great Depression because Washington has poured trillions of dollars into the economy: generous stimulus checks, a $600 boost in unemployment benefits, billions in loans to small businesses, subsidies for hospitals and airlines, lower interest rates, and financial market stabilizers provided by the Federal Reserve, but the stimulus checks have been spent or stashed in the bank, the extra jobless money expired at the end of July, and Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on the next round of help. Analysts warn the economy could fall into a downward spiral when low-income households stop spending and high-income households continue to save at high rates because the pandemic is keeping them home.
We have avoided a Great Depression, huh?
(Blog author shakes his head)
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal consumption expenditures tumbled 12.9 percent in April as people lost their jobs when the country shut down to contain the virus; but as government aid arrived, consumers began to spend again, helping consumption rebound strongly.
The bureau’s latest report indicates spending is again slowing to a trickle, and if consumption continues to drop, more retailers and restaurants will need to lay off workers and close locations. The economic pain is unlikely to stop there, and a constellation of companies that support those sectors could also buckle.
At the other end of the economy, the pandemic has spawned a gold rush. Thanks to the stock market, American billionaires have seen their combined wealth surge nearly 33 percent, or $970 billion, since mid-March, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ fortune has grown about 83 percent, to $206.4 billion, over the past five months, while Tesla cofounder Elon Musk’s wealth has tripled to $93.3 billion.
Even after the market’s sell-off on Thursday and Friday, the billionaires are way ahead. Meanwhile, the job market’s recovery over the past four months has been uneven.
That was by design for those who are funding and will benefit from the Great Re$et, and the Globe won't linger on that as it will press any other division it can find.
A stark contrast is also evident in the Massachusetts housing market, where those with financial wherewithal are locked in bidding wars in the suburbs while those who have lost their jobs are applying for rental assistance in record numbers. A seller’s market, the median price of a single-family home in the state surged 8.4 percent to $475,000 in July, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
And they wonder why they are not greeted kindly?
When the pandemic spooked home buyers and sellers in the spring, real estate firm Jack Conway & Co. planned for a challenging year and anticipated overall sales volume could be off by as much as 25 percent, said chief executive Carol Conway Bulman, but the market has sprung back to life, buoyed by ultra-low interest rates and the exodus from the city as people working remotely seek suburban houses with backyards. Bulman said that bidding wars are common. “Honestly there is no better time to sell your house,” said Bulman.
Nik Bryan, 34, who works in sales for a cybersecurity company, said, “We live in a great unknown right now.”
Some know where they are driving it.
How long the divided economy can stand will depend on the country’s ability to contain COVID infections, which in turn will drive the pace of hiring. Progress will be slow, especially in Massachusetts, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 16.1 percent in July.
I'm so sick of the mullarkey when we are allegedly testing below 1% now.
Positive test rates in the Commonwealth are now among the lowest in the country, but some workers who had been put on temporary furlough recently learned it’s unlikely they will ever be called back, including 1,000 at MGM Springfield and 385 at Encore Boston. Delaware North, which operates TD Garden and other venues, extended furloughs for almost 2,800 workers, and UMass Amherst said 850 workers would be temporarily out of work, though some permanent cuts were likely.
Don't let that stop you from doing $ome back-to-$chool $hopping!
The outlook isn’t all bleak. One of the biggest hallmarks of this downturn is the creation of unexpected winners and losers.
Mo$tly lo$ers as they $hovel $hit!
Beth Blaney, whose Derry, N.H., firm provides bookkeeping and administrative services to small businesses, braced for hard times after the pandemic hit, but is enjoying a banner year.
“It started with PPP,” Blaney said, referring to the forgivable loans made under the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. “People realized they needed to get their stuff together in order to apply. Or COVID scared them into getting their books in order.”
Blaney said the new clients have signed on for continued services, doubling her business since the start of the year. She recently hired two people, bringing her staff to six.
“Other bookkeepers and accounts I know are going through the exact same thing,” she said. “We are turning away clients we don’t want.”
--more--"
Meanwhile, Central Square in Cambridge dies.
Also see:
Boston students evenly divided on remote, hybrid learning
Finally, someone asked the kids what they think and who knows, education might suffer less than you think due to $cholar$hips and new leader$hip that will upend campus life before graduation.
I will be going on vacation from the Globe for a while, readers, so.... au revoir!
