re: 5 years ago today, it all began to shut down

I've hated the world since....

So dumb. If we had just waited and not panicked..2 weeks my arse.

NEVER FORGET!

I was in Chicago, visiting an Italian-based vendor.

I remember hearing about this on the trip home. And yes, we all got violently ill lol. And lived.

I remember when California filled all the skate parks with sand.

We witnessed the dumbest shite ever.

I’ll never forgive them for closing schools, then keeping them closed just to spite Trump.

It was obvious by the end of 2019 that the videos coming out of China were questionable at best.

quote:

---

Regardless of where you stand on it today, I feel like most of us were pretty spooked early on.

---

I looked around me and literally no one I knew was hospitalized, much less dropping dead. Yet when I turned on the TV each day, the messaging was entirely different.

Then they said it was unsafe to do X,Y, and Z, but social justice rallies were fine. I mean come on.

Sorry some of y’all lacked common sense.

It was a Wednesday. I had $18K worth of pilings laying on a bay front lot with a scheduled install of the following Monday. The installer was pushing me to go, while everything that made sense said to hold off.

I am a builder, but this was my own home, and there had just been rumblings about needing to be an "essential service" or some bullshite to be able to even work. That Friday the 13th I changed my mind twice before calling the installer and telling him to be there Monday. I had yet to get a 100% commitment from my framer that he would be able to start a week later and the entire project hinged on him being there to set the pilings with stringers and joists or I risked them warping and losing $50K of materials and labor,

We got thru Monday and I was wreck. Literally didn't sleep for three days, By Thursday of that week, the framer was on board and I could breath again. I had walked over to the beach that afternoon to clear my head when he called to tell me. I was hanging up with him, almost in tears, when a cop drove up and told me to leave or I would be subject to arrest.

Jump ahead a month, and I was getting supplies at a 30% discount as I was basically the only game in town at that point. I had trades calling me every hour begging for work. I was getting inspection approvals same day on what would normally take 9-10 days.

Jump ahead a year, and it was a complete 180. I was desperately trying to finish with every single material item needed almost impossible to find, and trades demanding 150% of normal cost. If I had not pulled the trigger to start when I did, I would've lost my arse BIGLY, and the project wouldve taken an additional 18 months when you consider the delay to start along with the delay in materials. At the end of the project, I came in 12% under projected costs after being close to 40% under at one point. Oh. And days before we were able to get full power to heat the home, the freeze of the fricking century hits, and we lost 50% of flooring due to warping. It was the absolute must fricked up project in my history of building, and nothing even remotely compares.

quote:

---

TBoy

---

Of course you show up

quote:

---

I mean, yeah, no shite a year later people were better positioned to call out how dumb it was to have to wear masks, maintain separation, constantly use hand sanitizer, etc.

---

frick you.

It took about 15 minutes of logical thought to figure out that being outside in fresh, moving air on a beach or at a park was 100% unharmful if not beneficial to the problem. The fact people were being shamed for months for using common sense is ridiculous.

Yeah, for a few weeks it was perfectly understandable to wash hands 8-10 times a day, stay away from others, wear a mask, and even wipe down shite other people have touched, But, it became known VERY early that this thing affected non-elderly, relatively healthy people in a way no different than the bad flu. There was not nearly enough reason to shut down an entire world economy for months over this with little thought to the ramifications.

My daughter graduated LSU in December of 2019. It literally cost her a job, a planned move, and set things in motion that she is still dealing with on a professional level. She got covid during that time and was in bed for a miserable 3 days and sick a week. We can look back with relief and be thankful more didn't die, but real people are still dealing with the stupid fricking decisions made in the name of "health" over this shite when its fricking obvious it became a political football very early on. You white knighting for one side over the other makes you look like a fricking retarded lemming.