What Does A Quarantine Due To Coronavirus Mean For Truckers?

The initial view coming out of China was of a completely overwhelmed healthcare system. They literally built new hospitals to deal with the influx of sick patients, particularly the ones who stood to die from this.

I think trying to contain the infection rate has more to do with not overloading the healthcare industry's capacity to treat people than it does with how serious the infection itself is for the majority of people. Even if this virus would only kill as many people as die from the flu each year, that would mean double the amount of people being treated at one time to try to prevent them from dying, and flu season already puts a big strain on hospitals' capacity... and how many who would die would also depend on whether they can get full access to treatment.

I don't know how to calculate if the overall damage caused to our species by trying to contain it is more or less than the loss of the older and sicker people who would die without trying to contain its spread, but everyone probably has people in their lives who would die from it, and no government would dare risk trying to say it'd be better to just let them die.

So in the end it's all about slowing down the infection rate so hospitals won't get spiked too much at once until it dies out on its own.

So in the end it's all about slowing down the infection rate so hospitals won't get spiked too much at once until it dies out on its own.

If this goes on much longer, this virus will be the least of our concerns. They're going to throw the global economy into a depression so deep the Great Depression will look like the best of times. The damage it's doing by the day is already incalculable. To give you an idea of how widespread the damage is, my doggy daycare lady had a ton of cancellations from people who were going on vacation in March and April. She lost probably 80% of her business for the next two months. If doggy daycare way out in the mountains of rural Upstate New York is struggling, imagine what's happening throughout the world.

I agree the side effects of this thing is going to be the worst part. No pun intended. I’m just thankful when I complete a load, they give me another. In that regard I am blessed.

I am laid over until monday afternoon to load. We are at the TA in Janesville WI. There is a great little mexican restraiant across the street. We went there for supper last night. The place was packed with customers and I overheard no one taking about the virus. It is in a shopping center and the lot was full of vehicles.

Was nice to see people here at least going about their daily routine

I'm hauling a trailer full of bleach, soap, and hand sanitizer from a shipper to a Walmart DC.

Hopefully, I won't need a police escort. I tell anyone that asks about the load that I'm hauling dirt and Chia Pets.

If this goes on much longer, this virus will be the least of our concerns. They're going to throw the global economy into a depression so deep the Great Depression will look like the best of times. The damage it's doing by the day is already incalculable.

I agree, and it's a particularly bad time to face that too since we were not only already due for a recession, but the government also kept amping up the deficit spending during a time of economic growth, limiting its means to respond to a new crisis.

The best thing probably would've been to have immediately isolated everyone fitting the profile of being at higher risk from this, and simply let it spread among everyone else. In my mind at least it would've been a hell of a lot easier and far less damaging to control what two percent of the population does than to disrupt everything for everyone to this level.

And it's not like no one knew this was coming, people at decision-making levels knew both that we were overdue and that we were underprepared. No one ever really wants to face taking a loss until they've already taken five times more of a loss by trying to avoid taking a loss.

They can pull the plug on this experiment anytime, and they know the damage they're doing economically is growing exponentially by the minute. I'm confident they won't crush the world's economy into a dizzying depression over a basic flu virus, but they will stress-test the system a little harder for a little longer.

My prediction is that in the next few weeks they'll announce victory for the world. They'll pat themselves on the back for saving the human race from extinction, announce that we can all go back to living normally, and push trillions of dollars of stimulus into the world's economy. The stock markets will soar beyond all-time record levels and we'll have a short party until we realize it will take many years to recover from the economic effects of this.

Always bet that the desire to make money will win out over all else in the end. It always does.

I'm hauling a trailer full of bleach, soap, and hand sanitizer from a shipper to a Walmart DC.

Hopefully, I won't need a police escort. I tell anyone that asks about the load that I'm hauling dirt and Chia Pets.

Lucky for us we know the truth AND your location on tracker

I'm hauling a trailer full of bleach, soap, and hand sanitizer from a shipper to a Walmart DC.

Hopefully, I won't need a police escort. I tell anyone that asks about the load that I'm hauling dirt and Chia Pets.

Lucky for us we know the truth AND your location on tracker

That's my alternate identity for the tracker, and my TT name, too.

I'm really in Iowa right now, hauling grocery store loads.

Are you old enough to remember all the hype and the money spent on the looming Y2K disaster? I am, and many more false national panic attacks. As a trucker, living this unique lifestyle, I do move about an awful lot, yet I have very little human interaction or contact. The isolation of this job is one of the many difficulties of it that people can't handle.

We have been under our own unique type of quarantine for generations.

I worked for a huge software company in 1999. I was working from home New Years Eve 1999 waiting for armageddon.

It never happened.