I live in Denmark and have contact with others in the EU and in China. I would use the analogy of cockroaches. You can not just get rid of half of them. You need to thoroughly clean and get rid of them all.

What is happening in many places is a partial effort that drops the numbers for a little bit, and then opening up, and a return to virus growth.

Here in Denmark, we have been operating at a "new normal" since August. Basically, you can do anything, except all the nightclubs have been and will continue to be closed, and there are no concerts or large theater. In Denmark, all movie theaters have reserved seats, so the separation of viewers is enforced. At work, groups of more than 50 are prohibited, and all the meeting rooms have half the chairs removed. We are encouraged to limit our personal meetings to those that are necessary or difficult to conduct online. This level of control has been relatively successful, and has no expiration date. We are not accepting any foreign visitors.

China has taken the extreme extermination approach. Here is the experience of one my students returning home from Denmark to China in September:



The Chinese border is tight-tight-tight.

I needed to go to my local computer dealer's store in my local mall, named for a fruit, last week for warranty service from the "Genius" bar. A very different experience from the last time I saw the mall and the store in early March.

The number of empty spaces in the mall now (which was doing better than many up to that point) was disturbing, especially close to the holiday shopping season. I had to make an appointment for service, which has long been suggested, but is now mandatory. There are several security persons outside the store in the main hallway, with a couple of different rope lines to stand in, all marked with places to stand the proper distance from others. The first person you encounter will ask your business with the store. If you are more than 15 minutes early they will ask you to go elsewhere until closer to time, then when you come back they will take your temperature, ask you the standard questions about how you feel and who you might have been exposed to, etc. Everyone wore a mask. All employees have radios with ear pieces. Then you are directed to the line for service, where a regular store employee will ask for your name, and a service appointment number if you have one. They ask you to describe your problem with your device briefly, type that info into your service form, and leave you to wait your turn. Then when you get to the front of the line, when there is room in the store, someone else will escort you to an empty table near the "Genius" bar (kind of like being in the "on deck" circle for a baseball batter), and tell you to take the next available seat at the bar (where service positions have been cut at least in half, like to four positions total). Once at the bar, one waits for a service employee to get around to you, maybe another 5-10 minutes. They will then evaluate your problem, get a solution started, and if it requires running software that takes awhile will help others, while their tablet or other device notifies them when your device is ready for the next step. It's pretty efficient, and they have cleaners who do nothing but wipe down stations for servicing and sales after every customer has left. I did not feel unsafe being there.

They do give a damn and have planned accordingly as an outdoor event, anticipating the new level of restrictions in Colorado. https://coloradorailroadmuseum.org/Polar-Express/

MDR

The fact that everyone is eventually going to have to come to terms with is that we are nowhere even near controlling the virus. It is spreading out of control and more measures will be needed if we are to avoid totally overwhelming our health case system.

Here in the southwest, we have seen some authorities go to the extreme measures to limit spread. Navajo Nation enacted a Nationwide curfew months ago, which is enforced by tribal police at checkpoints. Earlier in the year, the State of New Mexico cordoned off the town of Gallup, New Mexico due to its high infection level. State Police set up roadblocks and only residents or essential workers were permitted to enter.

The fact is, the economic situation is going to get worse as government assistance ends in late December. We're probably going to see a peak in hospitalization rates, deaths and business failures all around the same time. Then the folks in my line of work will see a rise in personal bankruptcies and creditors suing debtors. The government has been propping up the bond market by buying up municipal and other government bonds. If there is any disruption in the support, the market will take a bad spill.

Alan raises a really scary point. The remaining federal program benefits expire on Dec. 31 as do the moratorium on evictions. There are an estimated 26 million renters behind on average 4 months rent who are subject to being evicted.

Also, the current CR funding the federal gov't. expires Dec. 11th.

With the extreme gridlock in the badly divided Senate things sure look dicey.

Add to all that a significant portion of our fellow Americans ignoring the CDC and packing airports and Lord only knows the Covid numbers we'll be seeing around Dec. 10th.

Really scary for sure. Ross Rowland

WE are really scary for sure.

How have we lost the ability to think rationally and act accordingly? I think we've put ourselves back into a mode of interaction with the universe that would have been commonly understood in about 1600 or so.......... another Enlightenment required very soon, perhaps?

This thread has drifted. Too much doom and gloom.

Here’s what my organization will be doing regarding Christmas trains- The Railroad Museum of New England/ Naugatuck Railroad has cancelled passenger operations for the 2020 season including our holiday trains. We will be running a train in support of the USMC’s Toys for Tots. We will not be offering rides. The train will make stops at several locations along our 20 mile line where we will “fill the train” with donations. Precautions will be in place to comply with social distancing guidelines, etc.

I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving however you decide to spend it. I know my family and I certainly will.

Whether our organizations thrive or wither is dependent on the economy. Right now, there is very little to be optimistic about, vaccine news included. The problem is that not enough people are taking the epidemic seriously enough and the result is predictable. The government has not managed the situation competently and the damage will continue until they do. With the surging infection rates and current economic indicators, next year could be well worse than this.

I am keenly aware of what is happening right now. I’m a firefighter/EMT and I deal with it on the front lines every time I go to work both in the firehouse and out on the street. My family and I conduct ourselves with due regard to our personal safety and to that of those around us. It is my choice and the choice of many other responsible individuals to remain optimistic just as it is your choice to remain the opposite.

This thread is slowly drifting from “Santa Visits- How will your railroad handle?” to “Santa Visits- How could anyone in their right mind offer such a thing?” Jeez! I know what they say about hoping in one hand and s##tting in the other. See which one fills up first. At this point, I’ll keep my hopes up and wash my hands.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Patterson- out.

Randy,

I would love to be optimistic about what's going on. However (at least for my museum) as the fiduciary agent and statutory agent, I have to be realistic. While our museum is okay financially as a whole, we made painful adjustments to meet our situation. We have a big payment to the bank coming up at the end of the year on the commercial loan and renegotiation of the terms. We've been working with the bank to see that we get more favorable terms and can make a good payment on it.

However, to do so in the current economy, we made some hard cuts. The Museum Division's executive director was laid off and all non essential projects are suspended. It's painful, but given the needs of the museum as a whole, it's something that had to be done. That said, I am quite optimistic about our museum's financial future. The fact that our museum has managed to create revenue streams that leave us largely non-dependent of the amount of foot traffic we get has actually been a benefit for us. We were able to shut the doors in March and have the ability to wait this thing out. In fact, we might be able to pay off a large portion of the commercial loan (or maybe pay it off entirely).

As for Christmas events, our partners made that decision for us in May. Normally we partner with the Fox Theater to show "The Polar Express" and have events at the depot. The Fox pulled the plug on all 2020 events in May and the City and county have caps on public gatherings that have convinced us that the effort simply is not worth it this year. I do not see our museum resuming public events until sometime in fall 2021, since summer is off season for us.

I find this extremely amusing as since there is personal involvement with a Pennsylvania Tourist railroad that is by no means safe from the virus, has operated trains at near capacity during the fall....and is quickly selling tickets for hourly Santa and North Pole express trains with abandon...

I'm pleased that Junior can't be talking about the NH&I RR where I run Santa trains every December.

The folks at New Hope ( www.newhoperailroad.com) have taken every precaution as per the CDC guidelines, mandatory mask wearing, spacing within cars to achieve social distancing, temp. checks, advance reservations only ( no walk ups), sanitizing each car between trips and on and on. They've made it as safe as humanly possible.

We've also had to eliminate selling the very popular steam cab rides as 40's cab is not big enough so as to allow proper distancing.

Advance reservations are surprisingly strong despite all the virus bad news. Here's hoping the state of Pa. doesn't shut us down again?? Time will tell.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Ross Rowland

If 2020 had a theme, it's "damned if you do and damned if you don't". For most tourist lines, you've got to keep earning income if you don't want to be choosing a good auctioneer to help you liquidate the property in the spring.

Similar to New Hope, we are running very long trains with seating limited to 50% in each car per PA guidelines, grounds maintenance is wiping down the cars between every trip, ticket sales are online only, and the trainmen are not collecting tickets to keep contact to a minimum. Everybody wears a mask. The employees are temperature checked every day, and instructed to stay home if they even think that they are not feeling right. We have had several false alarms, but as far as I know, not a single employee has come down with Covid. I hope it stays that way.

There will be lots of trains after dark in the next month, so there can be lots of photo opportunities. We are set for Christmas Tree Trains. The M&PA flat car is all loaded up to take them to the Leaman Place Grove for the events.

Santa Train and other such operations are all up in the air again here in England after yesterdays announcements about the various "levels" of activities permitted once the current "Lockdown" ends at 24.00 next Wednesday. Nearly everywhere has ended up in a higher level of restrictions, at least until 18th December, so some lines have already cancelled their events, others are going ahead regardless and others are involved in hasty consultation with various Authorities.
Another nice kick in the teeth (other anatomical parts are available..) for Railways that were hoping to bring in much needed revenue in the 3 weeks prior to Christmas, and fairly large sums are involved here as most lines had completely sold out.
Mind you, a lot of the pub/hospitality trade is going to be even worse off.....

Here's the real problem.

We went, rather quickly in the grand scheme of things, from "if we just do this temporarily, we'll be fine in a short time" to "no end in sight short of mass mandatory inoculation." (And, as someone who saw and remembers the swine flu mass-inoculation "fiasco" of the election year of 1976, I can see how well THAT strategy will work.)

I recently spent about a month working on a university campus of a high-tech school, which has only the elite of high-achieving students, all pursuing degrees in advanced physics, biology, IT, cybersecurity, etc. They're doing absolutely everything the scientists demand: 100% mask-wearing compliance except when eating and enforced by both peer pressure and hired security "nags," social-distancing (except for the ROTC guys, mind you), Plexiglas dividers at lunch and snack-bar tables, limiting room capacity (even the restrooms), massively jiggering the class and semester schedules, remote learning, quarantining library books, wiping down computers between uses, etc.

And they STILL had students coming down with COVID-19.

What was pledged to be "temporary" now has no end in sight.
I'm watching businesses, some I know and love, wither and perish to--depending on your view--either the virus or the mandated shutdowns. We're seeing governors order churches to cease having services, to "cancel" Thanksgiving (and now, any minute now, Christmas). Bars and liquor stores were ordered closed for one of the busiest days of the year (the day before Thanksgiving outdoes New Year's Eve or St. Pat's Day for the trade, nationwide). And these orders are issued by leaders later caught in their own hypocrisy.

It's easy, cheap, and lazy to point to "people not wearing masks" as the reason we're not out of the woods yet. The reality is that the post-mortem on this pandemic will be a multi-layered, problematic exercise in examining everything from political incompetence and malfeasance to biological unpredictability to personal responsibility to genetics.

What we are seeing by now is complete fatigue to the somewhat Draconian anti-virus measures.
"If we just wear masks for two weeks and flatten the curve...."
"If we just wear masks for another month.........."
"If we just keep churches and schools closed/online-only for another two months....."
"If we only keep restaurants/businesses closed for another month..."
"So we have to cancel the annual festival/fair/carnival/Santa Train this year, but we'll be back next year......." [Guess again.]

Then finally, to start World War Three:
"Well, this is the new normal....."

Only if we let it be so.