Apple Expecting to Reopen 'Many More' Stores in May

[Mac Fly (film)]

Notice the people who continue to tell us all to stay at home are those who can financially afford to do so. Gruber says this but he's a millionaire. Normal people have to get our lives back. We can't just print money and live like prisoners.

 

[danny842003]

Tell me why the economy must come to a complete stop when only one or 2% of the population are being affected by this?

You do realise without these orders that number would be much higher than that right?

 

[newyorksole]

We have a ‘local’ mall that employees over 3500 people [Which are all furloughed at the moment until May 1], and obviously Apple is a part of that. There’s Community discussion in terms of how all these different retailers are going to manage occupancy in their stores given the amount of foot traffic This mall see on a daily basis. I think the challenge this poses, how do you efficiently/effectively manage so many people confined in a shopping center that are walking in and out of a store, which pose of the difficulty of giving one employee the Responsibility of coordinating to ensure the store only has XYZ amount of customers in it. This will be a very challenging time for retailers in general to somehow create social distancing with a restricted amount of customer flow in A store.

What I’m really trying to convey in a condensed form, retailers will be facing challenges they’ve never seen before and the only thing that they can do moving forward, is improvise, as this is a very fluid situation.

Yeah I totally understand what you’re saying. I worked at Apple Retail for 10 years and I remember in 2014 for the iPhone 6/6 Plus launch I would spend a decent amount of time playing “bouncer” for my store Lol. If there were too many people inside I had to keep folks out, but it was weird.

Apple is used to having lines for launches and people waiting so if that concept returned on a more regular basis it wouldn’t be totally unusual, but it’s definitely going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

I’m sure all of the retailers are scrambling. This is going to be very interesting.

 

[naturalstar]

So in reference to the article itself: Apple will most likely do as Home Depot has done - limit the amount of people in the store. Purchases and returns started online. Pickup your purchase outside the store, like Best Buy (too bad Apple stores aren’t exactly located where it’s easy to do curbside), and that’s it. Returns handled in a different line - like the iPhone launch days. Use the appointment system to drop-off a repair and actually stick to it. Tell the ones who have machines and devices that can be repaired in-store that they will have to come back to pick it up - no hanging out in the store. Also, hold back on in-store classes for a while and advise potential walk-in customers that the store is open for pickups and drop-offs only.

 

[gnipgnop]

I am sorry but I think many posts here missed the point of these measures. The goal was to “flatten the curve” so that ICUs are not overwhelmed. The goal was never to eliminate infections. The final total number of infections was not going to change much. If the curve has been flattened then it is time to move forward.

The curve won't remain flattened without massive levels of testing + nationwide participation in contact tracing + supported quarantine (meaning that if you test positive, you aren't economically penalized for a 14 day quarantine). Pandemic experts have already said that there will be a 2nd wave of the pandemic in the fall/winter that will be LARGER than this initial wave. Imagine how much worse that 2nd wave will be if people loosen restrictions too early during the spring/summer.

People are fooling themselves if they think a month and a half of restrictions is enough by itself.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Why does this concern you? You have the choice to not enter any Apple Store. You are free to stay isolated in your bunker for as long as you want, peaking out of your window from time to time to see if people are still alive. So why would you care who enters the stores or how many do so? As long as you stay isolated you’re safe, right?

There's a rational middle ground, which seemed to be what a lot of people were chanting months ago:
Flatten the curve.

The goal is to avoid overwhelming hospitals with massive amounts of coronavirus patients. Having overwhelmed hospitals isn't just a danger to people vulnerable to coronavirus - it's dangerous for everyone. Anyone could break a bone, need stitches, have a heart attack, etc... but if the hospitals are all tied up dealing with coronavirus, something that would normally be swiftly dealt with instead gets put into a queue.

 

[cocky jeremy]

About time. Lets end the scamdemic.

 

[kstotlani]

A lot of US Apple Stores are in a mall. Are malls open in the US?

 

[cmaier]

I would never buy a new car over the internet.

A car is one of the items where I think that most people would like to examine and test drive the actual car they are buying.

I use the internet to get a guaranteed price on the car before going to the dealership so there are no sales games.
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A vaccine is currently just a pipe dream and is at least two years away even if it's possible.

Maybe. So what? In the US nearly 60,000 people have died in four months, and that is with social distancing. Should we open everything up and see how many people die in those 2 years? Is millions worth it?
Researchers at oxford think they may have a vaccine much sooner than that, so fingers crossed.
And therapeutics are a real possibility in the near future.
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Here in Germany, shops that have reopened have to limit number of customers inside (1 person per 20 square metres / 215 square feet) and everyone has to wear masks. I don't see why this can't be done everywhere else.

It could be, but many people are going to die in Germany because of it.
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The curve won't remain flattened without massive levels of testing + nationwide participation in contact tracing + supported quarantine (meaning that if you test positive, you aren't economically penalized for a 14 day quarantine). Pandemic experts have already said that there will be a 2nd wave of the pandemic in the fall/winter that will be LARGER than this initial wave. Imagine how much worse that 2nd wave will be if people loosen restrictions too early during the spring/summer.

People are fooling themselves if they think a month and a half of restrictions is enough by itself.

The good thing is that areas like the Bay Area in California will remain locked down, so in June we will be able to see that everyone in Georgia is dying (but at least “freedom!”) and everyone in Silicon Valley is alive, and when the next round of shelter-in-place orders start, the governors won’t lift them too soon.

 

[Plutonius]

The good thing is that areas like the Bay Area in California will remain locked down, so in June we will be able to see that everyone in Georgia is dying (but at least “freedom!”) and everyone in Silicon Valley is alive, and when the next round of shelter-in-place orders start, the governors won’t lift them too soon.

And Georgia will reach the 60%+ natural herd immunity and Covid-19 will be under control while Covid-19 will continue to linger and kill in CA.

In the end, I think that the death rates between CA and Georgia will be comparable.

 

[cocky jeremy]

A lot of US Apple Stores are in a mall. Are malls open in the US?

It'll be state by state.

 

[Sedulous]

The curve won't remain flattened without massive levels of testing + nationwide participation in contact tracing + supported quarantine (meaning that if you test positive, you aren't economically penalized for a 14 day quarantine). Pandemic experts have already said that there will be a 2nd wave of the pandemic in the fall/winter that will be LARGER than this initial wave. Imagine how much worse that 2nd wave will be if people loosen restrictions too early during the spring/summer.

People are fooling themselves if they think a month and a half of restrictions is enough by itself.

Unless the virus automagically disappears, there will always be a “second wave”. I don’t know about you, but I learned immunology in medical school. Until enough people have immunity, someone somewhere will become infected and pass it on to other people. With that in mind, what purpose does it serve to keep everything shut down for another two, three, six, 12 months? Again, the concern was that this new virus was poorly understood. Expectations based on limited understanding but ample caution yielded the “flatten the curve” measures. These measures were only intended to slow the rate of infection in expectation that waves of critically ill individuals would inundate the hospitals. This has not been observed in most areas. Curiously, in nations with no special lockdowns (eg, Sweden), the trends closely match nations in lockdown. This should lead to questions about how effective lockdowns have been.

In my opinion, now that this virus is better understood, it would be better to cease isolation. Drawing this out until winter with a large uninflected population will be far worse. Data now shows that CV19 is infectious by nature of longer than average viability outside host and it is much less lethal than its cousins (SARS / MERS). Although fortunately this virus has a slow mutation rate for a retrovirus, the longer we give it a foothold, the more time it has to mutate. Holding out for a vaccine is foolish and frankly, given the very low mortality rate, unnecessary for most.

 

[cocky jeremy]

Maybe. So what? In the US nearly 60,000 people have died in four months, and that is with social distancing. Should we open everything up and see how many people die in those 2 years? Is millions worth it?
Researchers at oxford think they may have a vaccine much sooner than that, so fingers crossed.
And therapeutics are a real possibility in the near future.
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It could be, but many people are going to die in Germany because of it.
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The good thing is that areas like the Bay Area in California will remain locked down, so in June we will be able to see that everyone in Georgia is dying (but at least “freedom!”) and everyone in Silicon Valley is alive, and when the next round of shelter-in-place orders start, the governors won’t lift them too soon.

You're funny. You know as more and more people get tested for antibodies, the lower and lower the percentage of people that die is, right? We're already down to around .1 to .3% with more and more studies coming out daily showing more of us have had this than thought in even the previous week. 40-75% of people show zero symptoms. This whole thing is a giant scam.

 

[GDF]

You do realise without these orders that number would be much higher than that right?

Of course they would be, but I look at other countries like Sweden that stayed open with no rules and they are doing fine. Quit living in fear. Real flu numbers are also much higher than the stats show, because many people like me, never go to the hospital when you get the flu. This whole thing is getting to be a joke.

I served in the Military for freedom of choice, religion and speech. And my freedom of choice is no longer right now with big govt taking over and supplying hard earned tax payer money to bail outs, which would not be needed if we would start opening up. We are now living in a Socialist America.... I did not fight for that. Every one should have the right to choose, that is what America is about. For those that don’t agree with that, then move to Russia, China or other countries where you don’t get that.

Can not go the rest of our lives living in fear and the media and big govt are smoking that fire, where many people are. I for one am not and don’t know anyone that has the virus. Again it is a free country, if business want to open let them, if customers want to go then let them. If people want to stay quarantined, then that is your choice, but don’t force it on everyone else!

 

[cocky jeremy]

Unless the virus automagically disappears, there will always be a “second wave”. I don’t know about you, but I learned immunology in medical school. Until enough people have immunity, someone somewhere will become infected and pass it on to other people. With that in mind, what purpose does it serve to keep everything shut down for another two, three, six, 12 months? Again, the concern was that this new virus was poorly understood. Expectations based on limited understanding but ample caution yielded the “flatten the curve” measures. These measures were only intended to slow the rate of infection in expectation that waves of critically ill individuals would inundate the hospitals. This has not been observed in most areas. Curiously, in nations with no special lockdowns (eg, Sweden), the trends closely match nations in lockdown. This should lead to questions about how effective lockdowns have been.

In my opinion, now that this virus is better understood, it would be better to cease isolation. Drawing this out until winter with a large uninflected population will be far worse. Data now shows that CV19 is infectious by nature of longer than average viability outside host and it is much less lethal than its cousins (SARS / MERS). Although fortunately this virus has a slow mutation rate for a retrovirus, the longer we give it a foothold, the more time it has to mutate. Holding out for a vaccine is foolish and frankly, given the very low mortality rate, unnecessary for most.

Don't say that... the media keeps telling us everyone that gets it is as good as dead! lol.

 

[Complex757]

Please don’t reopen them, you aren’t a critical service.

Having a working phone, sort of is.
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You're funny. You know as more and more people get tested for antibodies, the lower and lower the percentage of people that die is, right? We're already down to around .1 to .3% with more and more studies coming out daily showing more of us have had this than thought in even the previous week. 40-75% of people show zero symptoms. This whole thing is a giant scam.

So the 55,000 dead are part of the scam?
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Of course they would be, but I look at other countries like Sweden that stayed open with no rules and they are doing fine. Quit living in fear. Real flu numbers are also much higher than the stats show, because many people like me, never go to the hospital when you get the flu. This whole thing is getting to be a joke.

I served in the Military for freedom of choice, religion and speech. And my freedom of choice is no longer right now with big govt taking over and supplying hard earned tax payer money to bail outs, which would not be needed if we would start opening up. We are now living in a Socialist America.... I did not fight for that. Every one should have the right to choose, that is what America is about. For those that don’t agree with that, then move to Russia, China or other countries where you don’t get that.

Can not go the rest of our lives living in fear and the media and big govt are smoking that fire, where many people are. I for one am not and don’t know anyone that has the virus. Again it is a free country, if business want to open let them, if customers want to go then let them. If people want to stay quarantined, then that is your choice, but don’t force it on everyone else!

The issue isn't just you. You endanger other people who have health risk or may be older. Maybe you don't have older people you care about, but some of us do.

 

[Sedulous]

Don't say that... the media keeps telling us everyone that gets it is as good as dead! lol.

Oh man, don’t get me started on the media.

 

[cmaier]

And Georgia will reach the 60%+ natural herd immunity and Covid-19 will be under control while Covid-19 will continue to linger and kill in CA.

In the end, I think that the death rates between CA and Georgia will be comparable.

We’ll see. Given that there is no evidence of any lasting immunity from being infected, the concept of herd immunity has yet to be proven. The common cold gives you 6 months immunity. The flu about 2 years. This time, we don’t know.

Sweden is trying the herd immunity thing, and has 10x the death rate, per capita, of its neighbors. (So we’d be looking at 570,000 dead in the U.S. so far?)

 

[Baymowe335]

You do realise without these orders that number would be much higher than that right?

You actually can’t verify that. There are counter examples. I think people like to think they are in control of everything, but too many factors exist to be completely sure.

I see a lot of quarantine supporters taking credit for “saving millions” of lives...but you’re relying on likely a garbage model that predicted 2.2M deaths in the US, relying on linear math from early numbers. The analysis was wrong from the start, so you don’t get to take full credit for saving lives that you guessed would be lost.

1) You’ll never know what doing nothing, ignoring it, and/or limiting the quarantine would have done with any precision.

2) You could make up any number and say you saved those lives. I could build a model that said 10M people would die without quarantine...doesn’t mean it’s right.

3) The quarantine may have played some part, but so did other things that are out of our control. Weather, antibodies, an imperfect virus, many showing no symptoms, mild cases, undiagnosed cases, people just not becoming infected, bad data, etc.

I could say the numbers were better because people had more time to pray. Am I right?

The whole “would have been worse” argument is flimsy.

 

[Sedulous]

Having a working phone, sort of is.
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So the 55,000 dead are part of the scam?
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The issue isn't just you. You endanger other people who have health risk or may be older. Maybe you don't have older people you care about, but some of us do.

Sorry to chime in here. Scam is certainly hyperbole but data is data. More people died from the flu last year during this time period. Yes, this virus is real but it turns out not to be the menace as “advertised”. Viral pneumonia routinely threatens the at-risk population but the world does not shut down on its behalf.

And I am genuinely sorry to be brutal here but these “lockdown” measures were never going to save grandma from infection (assuming she is not kept in BL-4 isolation). All these measures were intended to do is slow the rate. Things like homemade masks (or anything with more than .02 um pores) simply keep people from spraying droplets of liquid when coughing or sneezing... they do not filter out virus. A viral particle will go through those masks like they are not even there. Worse still, it gives virus a nice place to accumulate near the face. Then there is the human factor. Many people do not know how to safely handle a mask potentially laden with biohazardous material and I guarantee you many people are reusing the same masks day after day.

Quite frankly, data seems to indicate that the early models were wrong. While the abundance of caution was certainly wise, total lockdown appears to have been unnecessary in most areas. The media is not willing or able to undermine the panic and the politicians have been bullied into taking ever more extreme measures by a population that was whipped into a panic by the media.
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We’ll see. Given that there is no evidence of any lasting immunity from being infected, the concept of herd immunity has yet to be proven. The common cold gives you 6 months immunity. The flu about 2 years. This time, we don’t know.

Sweden is trying the herd immunity thing, and has 10x the death rate, per capita, of its neighbors. (So we’d be looking at 570,000 dead in the U.S. so far?)

Common cold mutates rapidly. CV19 does not. As for Sweden, they are further along the path to recovery whereas Finland and other neighboring countries are simply slowing down the rate, but in the end, the final numbers will be similar.

 

[Baymowe335]

We’ll see. Given that there is no evidence of any lasting immunity from being infected, the concept of herd immunity has yet to be proven. The common cold gives you 6 months immunity. The flu about 2 years. This time, we don’t know.

Sweden is trying the herd immunity thing, and has 10x the death rate, per capita, of its neighbors. (So we’d be looking at 570,000 dead in the U.S. so far?)

Yeah, just point out a few countries. Sweden’s deaths per million is half Italy’s and nearly a third of Belgium. It’s also less than the UK and Netherlands and nearly the same as Switzerland. Those countries have quaratined, so why are they worse?

The answer is that there are many other factors...not just quarantine measures.

Japan’s death rate is reported at 3 per million. Do you really believe that?

I think there is quite a bit of hiding numbers, variances in reporting, and some countries blaming deaths on Covid-19 when the true cause could be other factors. After all, the evidence Covid-19 kills people with underlying conditions at a higher rate is overwhelming. There are also financial benefits to claiming a death is Covid-19.

 

[Rocko99991]

Notice the people who continue to tell us all to stay at home are those who can financially afford to do so. Gruber says this but he's a millionaire. Normal people have to get our lives back. We can't just print money and live like prisoners.

Initial models were off by such a large magnitude it's disgusting. We need to question the people still pushing for extended or indefinite lock downs.

 

[EdMan]

You're funny. You know as more and more people get tested for antibodies, the lower and lower the percentage of people that die is, right? We're already down to around .1 to .3% with more and more studies coming out daily showing more of us have had this than thought in even the previous week. 40-75% of people show zero symptoms. This whole thing is a giant scam.

Apparently you don't know anyone affected by the virus to say that. Would it be a scam if someone you loved contracted the virus and died? I've known several. There are additionally several thousand people who would probably disagree that it's a scam. Have you actually visited an ICU in an area that's been affected by Covid? Doubtful.

 

[iOS Geek]

A vaccine is currently just a pipe dream and is at least two years away even if it's possible.

Yep. The thing to keep in mind is that historically speaking...developing an effective vaccine for a coronavirus...the odds aren't exactly on our side. Think about how long it's been since SARS and MERS came around. Still no effective vaccine for those.

Looking at SARS and MERS, it may end up being a very real possibility that we don't come up with a vaccine for COVID-19 and are then left to just find a way to live life alongside it (which we will have to figure out regardless). If we DO manage to come up with a vaccine...it will be one hell of an accomplishment. But like I said...the odds aren't on our side. So what does that mean? It means the people who say we should stay locked down until we have a vaccine...will have to keep in mind that that there is a possibility that we NEVER achieve that. Which means they will have to deal with the fact that we can't stay locked down until it happens.

 

[Rocko99991]

Apparently you don't know anyone affected by the virus to say that. Would it be a scam if someone you loved contracted the virus and died? I've known several. There are additionally several thousand people who would probably disagree that it's a scam. Have you actually visited an ICU in an area that's been affected by Covid? Doubtful.

The ridiculous death rate models, the panic induced by the media, the massive lock downs is what I assume he is referring to. The virus is real, just like the one that killed over 80,000 Americans a few years ago, the one we have a vaccine for.