With masks and social distancing, you greatly reduce your likelihood of infection. So do that.
Yes, those that ignore these rules are strong candidates for transmitting the disease, increasing disease prevalence, and for prolonging the restrictions (til we get an effective vaccine). Avoid these people. Unfortunately, the people most likely to ignore restrictions (the young) won't typically get hit as hard. So, they'll propagate the disease, kill their grandparents and/or parents, but will get off with symptoms of a mild flu and cough. The tragedy of the commons. Sigh.
It's the same in the UK. People, encouraged in my opinion by people in authority who should know better, seem to think it's over when obviously it's nowhere near over.
I'm in the nervous club but unfortunately Mrs Shoelaces isn't. There is a brand of thinking in her family that thinks they'll live forever. For instance her father went into hospital in Spain for serious heart surgrry at the age of 85 and thought he didn't need to leave a will. It took us the best part of 3 years to sort out his financial affairs in the USA, UK and Spain.
So she's got us both booked on a flight to Spain in the middle of July.
Regards Tyrone.
Agree, its nowhere near over. Saw a picture of the beach at Bournemouth last week. Crowded as hell. No masks. Horrifying. And even more troubling is that we have people doing that stupid s**t here, too
Tyrone, your note about wills allows me to make a public service announcement. When my Mom and Stepfather passed a couple years ago, they had worked hard to have their affairs in order. For the most part, they did. But it was still hard to get things done. Some people have to break the law (writing checks on the deceased's bank account, for example) to pay bills and such. We avoided a lot of hassles, but still there were needless expenses and roadblocks.
We just had our wills redone and one key element was to put all our personal assets (house, bank accounts, and non-qualified (e.g non-IRA) investments) into a personal revocable trust that we own. If Mrs bosleyjr and I both bite the Covid bullet, our assets would be in a trust controlled by our heir. This means that he'd be able to pay bills, etc. but no personal liability would be created for him. The lawyers that did this are in Delaware, which has some favorable laws regarding this sort of thing. We live in Pennsylvania, but visiting the lawyer in Delaware (20 minute drive) created enough of a nexus to allow the wills to be drawn up as Delaware wills. The lawyers that did it are a father-son team. The father developed this method over many years and now his son is applying and further developing it. They explained things in a way that made it clear that they do ok by doing good rather than by stealing from the heirs of the recently departed.
The counterexample was the will drawn up by a lawyer for a relative. When that relative passed, all the assets (about $340,000) ended up going through a bank, and the bank took a bite and hired a lawyer to handle all the paperwork. Total cost? $40,000. Oh, and guess which lawyer the bank hired to do that paperwork? Yup, the guy that drew up the will. So there's wills and there's wills. We feel that our setup (which costed about 2000 bucks to set up) will probably save our heir a lot of hassle and stress, not to mention reducing the legal fees and bank charges to near zero. Just sayin.
So the PSA is that if you live in the US, to get your will done, and search out a guy or gal that will set you up with a revocable trust, and put your non-qualified assets in that trust. If the lawyer starts hemming and hawing saying that joint trusts arent' a great idea, IMHO you should get a new lawyer.
Not sure how this would work in the UK.