Yes, but they warm up every day and keep their skills honed. And the reed players spend many hours making reeds. edit: there are also many hours of score study and listening to recordings involved. And there are often 3 or more concert sets of different music to learn each week.
Young musicians and professionals often practice in excess of eight hours per day if/until they win an audition for a group that has enough salary to sustain them.
Most professional orchestras rehearse 3-4 times for what's usually called a "Masterworks" ie the usual subscription concerts. Only something like a pops or light classics concert will be one rehearsal and a show.
At least in the US, almost all full-time orchestras are union shops with the American Federation of Musicians. The first stop for major issues should not be with management's HR, but with the union local and the union steward for the orchestra. Most of these orchestras also have an Orchestra Committee made up of musicians, and it is this committee's job to help as well. And most of the largest orchestras do have an HR rep.
HR is there to protect management. The union is there to protect employees as a collective. Individual results may vary.
> It obviously benefits buyers in non-hot markets. It's pretty nice to put $7500 down in the mid-west for a house.
Unfortunately banks won't loan what they see as small mortgages like that. This leaves the lower priced homes only available to landlords buying cash. I live in a home like this myself - all the banks would happily loan me $215,000 with $35k down, but no bank would loan me $15,000 to buy a $50k house. There's many people renting in my city that have decent credit that could easily afford one of these lower cost homes, but instead the houses stay empty or get turned in to rentals.
> all the banks would happily loan me $215,000 with $35k down, but no bank would loan me $15,000 to buy a $50k house.
This seems like a made up problem. Those same banks would also gladly loan you $40k with $10k down, and you could have the remainder to fix the house up or make huge payments every month. Furthermore, if you already have $35k it shouldn't be too difficult to save another $15k and buy the house cash. If it is, you probably can't qualify for the mortgage payment on either property based on your income.
Huh? This is nonsense. You can indeed buy a 50k house if the house appraises at that value. You can also get an improvement loan included to make it livable as well if necessary.
Second! Visiting is very interesting, and the tour guides are real scientists that actually work there. I was lucky that they were able to fit me in same-day even though I hadn't booked ahead as strongly recommended.
France started testing systematically in EHPAD (nursing home for retired fully dependent elders). That's why they have the most dramatic fatality rate out of every country now.
Not sure it was a good idea to test and attribute all the deaths to COVID.
