Apple is temporarily closing its retail locations in the Los Angeles area due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases in Southern California, reports Bloomberg. Update - Dec. 19: Apple has extended the closures to all stores in California indefinitely.
This is the first time in several months that stores in Los Angeles have been closed. Apple has several major retail locations in the area, including stores at The Grove and Beverly Center shopping centers. Two stores in Los Angeles are closed today, and 11 additional stores are closing on Saturday. There is no word on when the stores will re-open.
All of Southern California is under a stay at home order that went into effect earlier in December, but the order does not require non-essential retail stores to shut down. Instead, stores and malls are able to operate at a reduced capacity, so Apple is not required to shut down by the state, but is likely doing so to protect its employees.
Coronavirus cases are also surging in the San Francisco Bay Area where Apple's headquarters are located, but the company has not yet closed stores there. Most stores are, however, operating in a limited "Express" mode that allows for order pickups and genius bar appointments, but does not let people browse.
Apple began closing retail locations earlier this year and many of its stores were shut down for months in the spring. Apple began reopening stores in June, but said that stores could close again depending on local guidelines and conditions.
In all stores, Apple is requiring face masks, limiting store occupancy, conducting temperature checks, implementing social distancing measures, and deep cleaning regularly.
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Top Rated Comments
Coincidently, masks and lockdowns certainly helped with that low influenza rate.
Just because someone is old or sick doesn’t mean they deserve to die.
Sweden admitted they made a huge mistake and are backtracking because things have gone so poorly for them.
And the fact that you think this pandemic doesn’t exist is precisely why it’s gone on for so long.
Sure, the media is the problem. The evil media! Of course!
I love how people are acting like we're living under the thumb of a tyrannical government when in reality we've never really had a real "lockdown." If we'd have a true, nationwide lockdown, we'd have been out of the worst of it MONTHS ago. Instead we half-ass it so people can eat in restaurants and pretend that everything is normal so we can watch football and try to act like everything might be OK without any real sacrifice. "Minor inconvenience? Sure!" Any other measure that requires staying inside for two weeks! "I'd rather kill myself!"
Wow.
Ok. If lockdowns work, and then you lift the lockdown, the spike is anticipated. In other words, there is a spike because lockdowns work. The lockdown is what you're comparing against.
The average life expectancy you are describing is years from birth. An average is taking all the numbers, adding them together, and dividing by the number of people. Infant mortality contributes a lot of zeros into that average calculation. Once you survive a few years your life expectancy increases.
For men, once you live to see 50, you're expected to live to see 80. Once you live to see 80, you're expected to live to see 88. Once you see 88, you're expected to see 93. At 93, you're expected to see 96. Women do better.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
The probability of dying in any given year doesn't cross 50% until you turn 108 in the US.
In other words, for everyone younger than 108 that asked "am I going to die in 2020?", the answer was "probably not".
So if your argument is "they're going to die anyway", then why have a healthcare system at all? Next time someone gets hit by a car, leave them there in the road unless they can walk home. Remember, the life expectancy doesn't only include disease, it includes death by accident so if we're taking life expectancy as destiny, we should stay hands off, right?
Survival is programmed into us. The argument that "they lived longer than they should have" is sociopathic.