OT: COVID-19 thread #2

[mack2354]

Update just now that they are extending lockdown in Chicago area till late May. A crap ton of people just going to lose their jobs. I am fully expecting some protests going to start happening here as well.

No doubt this will happen.

These lockdowns are getting ridiculous now. People need to go back to work! Almost 30 million have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks alone. I am for sensible social distancing measures—protecting the most vulnerable—but I'm not down with the strategy of trying to save the lives of thousands in order to ruin the lives of millions by keeping people in their homes until everything is perfect. It will never happen.

Eventually, we're all probably going to end up going the Sweden route. I think it's only a matter of time.

My issue with this is the money we have already lost and spent on the bailouts. If we go the Sweden route now then that TRILLION plus dollars we spent was for nothing. If we were going to take that route then we should have did it from the jump. We may have had 5-10 times more deaths than what we have now if we did that. Going back to normal now is going to give us a huge jump in deaths AND not get any of that money back. We already spent the money, we may as well stay the course and try to save as many lives as we can going forward.

[otwok]

Update just now that they are extending lockdown in Chicago area till late May. A crap ton of people just going to lose their jobs. I am fully expecting some protests going to start happening here as well.

No doubt this will happen.

These lockdowns are getting ridiculous now. People need to go back to work! Almost 30 million have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks alone. I am for sensible social distancing measures—protecting the most vulnerable—but I'm not down with the strategy of trying to save the lives of thousands in order to ruin the lives of millions by keeping people in their homes until everything is perfect. It will never happen.

Eventually, we're all probably going to end up going the Sweden route. I think it's only a matter of time.

Well this is the issue. When you talk about a pandemic and what we are doing the key is jobs. The problem is that the government isn't doing enough for this. Everyone focuses on unemployment, well if everyone focused on keeping people in their jobs it would be better. The government needed to do more in ensuring companies wouldn't layoff rather than just giving some half-assed unemployment checks. Because of this, if this goes on like this till about June or July, at this rate you are looking at 100 million unemployed.

[AKfanatic]

Expanded coronavirus testing in nursing homes could uncover a higher toll

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County health director Dr. Barbara Ferrer, in a major policy shift, announced that nursing homes are now being advised to test all residents and staff, not just those who show symptoms. The previous guidance, to test only those who showed symptoms, was a mistake, she said.

“We were wrong,” Ferrer said at a news conference before announcing the new recommendations, which follow a similar shift in state policy.

Testing only people with symptoms has likely resulted in a significant undercount of cases at nursing homes, experts say, where the ever-climbing number of people falling ill and dying is already a national tragedy.

At about the same time, a professional acquaintance who is chief medical officer at the Los Angeles Jewish Home had received about 500 hundred test kits from the city of Los Angeles. He offered to share half of them with Brier Oak.

That left them with a tricky decision, given the general reluctance within the industry to become associated with the deadly disease.

“There were people saying to us do you really want to do this because it could create a lot of ‘noise,’ ” Amparo said, referring to negative publicity. “But you come to a point when you just have to do the right thing for the residents and the staff.”


So they tested everyone: 95% of the residents had the virus, 75% of staff had it too, Amparo said.

[coldfish]

The big problem I see is Europe. Italy has been locked down for quite some time. They still continue a good number of new cases and daily deaths. If they stopped the lockdown, the disease would come roaring back. So far, the lockdowns are merely a very expensive delaying tactic. As of right now, what are they delaying for?

Someone needs to come up with a serious plan. We can’t stay locked down forever and I’m not a big fan of a million deaths. This seems to be lost in the debate.

The epidemiologists thought this would just go away in the face of a lockdown. You can see it in their models. They were wrong it appears.

[Payt10]

Update just now that they are extending lockdown in Chicago area till late May. A crap ton of people just going to lose their jobs. I am fully expecting some protests going to start happening here as well.

It will, and it should.

These lockdowns are getting ridiculous now. People need to go back to work! Almost 30 million have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks alone. I am for sensible social distancing measures, but I'm not down with the strategy to save the lives of thousands in order to ruin the lives of millions. Eventually, we're all probably going to end up going the Sweden route. I think it's only a matter of time.

So if big urban populations open up and new hot spots inevitably pop up, overwhelming hospitals.. is it still worth it?

The “thousands” of lives are only limited to the numbers they have currently been at because of the extreme measures taken. I get it, it’s tough, extremely tough for people to go through this. It’s not normal and society isn’t built to go long term in such a way. But among those “thousands” of lives that folks are willing to sacrifice for the economy, the hardest hit by lifting lockdowns will be first responders. That will lead to an even larger loss of lives as law enforcement, fire departments, and healthcare professionals will suffer losses, leading to a larger threat of loss of lives.

With places like Georgia, Florida, and other southern states looking to “return to normal” we will have a solid idea within a few weeks to a couple months of what opening up the economy could do nationally by paying close attention to regional numbers. Perhaps Americans will prove to be intelligent (unlikely) enough to return to some semblance of normalcy while instituting safety measures....Perhaps corporate America will open up with new safety parameters in place to keep their workforce safe (also unlikely) and the US can open up for business.

Eventually things will somewhat return to normal, but until there’s truly a vaccine or a proven point where the populace reaches “herd immunity”, normal will be closer to what we have now, than life before COVID. We won’t see concerts, or sporting events with thousands of fans. We won’t have cities opened up with citizens using mass transit or sidewalks full of people getting to work.

The talk of only “thousands” dying is disingenuous and completely ignores how many tens or hundreds of thousands would be dead at this point if Chicago, New York, LA etc hadn’t instituted the measures they did. It ignores how quickly things would/could have exploded to a point of a massive death count. Look at the numbers of infected at meat processing plants.... these places have known the threat their employees faced and have done the bare minimum. The keep the line running, keep employees literally shoulder to shoulder as the line runs and now... they are being forced to close due to their lack of responsibility and their care more for their bottom line/the economy than for the safety of those that they employ.

Opening prematurely poses much more of a long term threat to both the health of the citizenry and the economy than opening at a point where science and health professionals call safe.

You can't reach herd immunity if nobody is allowed to go outside.

Remaining indoors until a vaccine—that may very well never arrive—is not a doable thing either. Nobody is going to do that.

The main issue I have with these lockdowns is that we are treating everybody like they all have the same inherent risks, which has never been the case. Recent data out of New York shows that the death rate for those 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent! 0.01.

2/3 of deaths in New York were those over the age of 70, and 99.2% of all COVID-related deaths were those with underlying conditions.

Hospitalization rates for those under 18 are 0.01 percent. Hospitalization rates for those 18 to 45 is 0.1 percent.

If you take those numbers into consideration, common sense says we could avoid a disastrous hospital situation if we allowed those least likely to require hospitalization to go back to work while keeping the high risk groups isolated.

We need to tailor our policies based on some of these %'s rather than treating everybody the same. We know way more now than we did a month ago when it made more sense to take a more generalized approach.

Here is a great article on the topic with all of the numbers I cited, written by a medical professional: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation

[johnnyvann840]

I had completely forgot about season 4 of "The Wire" where Stringer Bell changes the name from WMD to "Pandemic".. kids on the corner ... "Yo, get your pandemic, right here... pannndemic!". Oddly, it looks like the Covid-19 pandemic will kill about as the same number of people in the USA as heroin and opioid OD's will this year.

[johnnyvann840]

NSFW language..

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

[coldfish]

Update just now that they are extending lockdown in Chicago area till late May. A crap ton of people just going to lose their jobs. I am fully expecting some protests going to start happening here as well.

No doubt this will happen.

These lockdowns are getting ridiculous now. People need to go back to work! Almost 30 million have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks alone. I am for sensible social distancing measures—protecting the most vulnerable—but I'm not down with the strategy of trying to save the lives of thousands in order to ruin the lives of millions by keeping people in their homes until everything is perfect. It will never happen.

Eventually, we're all probably going to end up going the Sweden route. I think it's only a matter of time.

Well this is the issue. When you talk about a pandemic and what we are doing the key is jobs. The problem is that the government isn't doing enough for this. Everyone focuses on unemployment, well if everyone focused on keeping people in their jobs it would be better. The government needed to do more in ensuring companies wouldn't layoff rather than just giving some half-assed unemployment checks. Because of this, if this goes on like this till about June or July, at this rate you are looking at 100 million unemployed.

The US right now is printing money like mad. New cash gets created and the fed buys debt obligations that are risky. That is the only thing keeping our financial sector going or all of the delayed payments would be crushing the banks and potentially causing bank runs as people feared getting their money out (ie rich people and businesses who keep more money than the FDIC covers in banks).

The amount of money being printed right now is at dangerous levels. Very few people in the US are doing anything of value. Cars aren't being assembled, vacations aren't being taken, houses aren't being built, etc. If this continues, we are staring at a Weimar Republic scenario where you have to take a wheelbarrow full of cash into the store to buy a loaf of bread.

We need to figure out how to start working again in a safe manner. We can't just keep printing money and handing it to people to stay home and do nothing of value. Money by itself isn't inherently valuable. Its only worth what it can buy.

[johnnyvann840]

No doubt this will happen.

These lockdowns are getting ridiculous now. People need to go back to work! Almost 30 million have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks alone. I am for sensible social distancing measures—protecting the most vulnerable—but I'm not down with the strategy of trying to save the lives of thousands in order to ruin the lives of millions by keeping people in their homes until everything is perfect. It will never happen.

Eventually, we're all probably going to end up going the Sweden route. I think it's only a matter of time.

Well this is the issue. When you talk about a pandemic and what we are doing the key is jobs. The problem is that the government isn't doing enough for this. Everyone focuses on unemployment, well if everyone focused on keeping people in their jobs it would be better. The government needed to do more in ensuring companies wouldn't layoff rather than just giving some half-assed unemployment checks. Because of this, if this goes on like this till about June or July, at this rate you are looking at 100 million unemployed.

The US right now is printing money like mad. New cash gets created and the fed buys debt obligations that are risky. That is the only thing keeping our financial sector going or all of the delayed payments would be crushing the banks and potentially causing bank runs as people feared getting their money out (ie rich people and businesses who keep more money than the FDIC covers in banks).

The amount of money being printed right now is at dangerous levels. Very few people in the US are doing anything of value. Cars aren't being assembled, vacations aren't being taken, houses aren't being built, etc. If this continues, we are staring at a Weimar Republic scenario where you have to take a wheelbarrow full of cash into the store to buy a loaf of bread.

We need to figure out how to start working again in a safe manner. We can't just keep printing money and handing it to people to stay home and do nothing of value. Money by itself isn't inherently valuable. Its only worth what it can buy.

Such an odd dynamic at work right now. The Fed claims that despite intervention of unprecedented levels in markets and all the printing money out of thin air, inflation won't be a problem. They might be right only because demand has gone down so drastically for so many things (like oil), that deflation could actually be a bigger problem short term. Of course, long term, the dollar could easily collapse (and fundamentally SHOULD collapse). It will be interesting to see just how long the Fed can keep the balls in the air and the music playing. So far, you are right, the only thing keeping the markets afloat is massive intervention. They managed to just keep kicking the can down the road for really the last 12 years since 2008. Eventually, the reality has to set in, but it hasn't yet. Wall Street is delusional and greed has set in worse than ever right now.

[AKfanatic]

Regarding that Hill op-ed

You should research who exactly Dr. Atlas is before posting his op-ed.....

The guy has made a career of attacking the “libz” on women’s right to choose, fighting single-payer/universal healthcare, fighting for the health insurance industry, and making appearances on right leaning “news” networks to tell the world why Dems are wrong and Republicans are right.

Mixing facts with opinion is his go to move to make it appear he’s only writing or speaking in the public interests.

[Payt10]

The big problem I see is Europe. Italy has been locked down for quite some time. They still continue a good number of new cases and daily deaths. If they stopped the lockdown, the disease would come roaring back. So far, the lockdowns are merely a very expensive delaying tactic. As of right now, what are they delaying for?

Someone needs to come up with a serious plan. We can’t stay locked down forever and I’m not a big fan of a million deaths. This seems to be lost in the debate.

The epidemiologists thought this would just go away in the face of a lockdown. You can see it in their models. They were wrong it appears.

This is the crux of the issue. The lockdowns have been buying us time to increase our medical capacity, but it's not going to stop people from dying—it's only delaying it.

The good news is that heat does seem to help. Southern states like Arizona and even Florida and other places like Texas where the weather is warmer are doing much better than places that are cooler temperatures.

[coldfish]

Well this is the issue. When you talk about a pandemic and what we are doing the key is jobs. The problem is that the government isn't doing enough for this. Everyone focuses on unemployment, well if everyone focused on keeping people in their jobs it would be better. The government needed to do more in ensuring companies wouldn't layoff rather than just giving some half-assed unemployment checks. Because of this, if this goes on like this till about June or July, at this rate you are looking at 100 million unemployed.

The US right now is printing money like mad. New cash gets created and the fed buys debt obligations that are risky. That is the only thing keeping our financial sector going or all of the delayed payments would be crushing the banks and potentially causing bank runs as people feared getting their money out (ie rich people and businesses who keep more money than the FDIC covers in banks).

The amount of money being printed right now is at dangerous levels. Very few people in the US are doing anything of value. Cars aren't being assembled, vacations aren't being taken, houses aren't being built, etc. If this continues, we are staring at a Weimar Republic scenario where you have to take a wheelbarrow full of cash into the store to buy a loaf of bread.

We need to figure out how to start working again in a safe manner. We can't just keep printing money and handing it to people to stay home and do nothing of value. Money by itself isn't inherently valuable. Its only worth what it can buy.

Such an odd dynamic at work right now. The Fed claims that despite intervention of unprecedented levels in markets and all the printing money out of thin air, inflation won't be a problem. They might be right only because demand has gone down so drastically for so many things (like oil), that deflation could actually be a bigger problem short term. Of course, long term, the dollar could easily collapse (and fundamentally SHOULD collapse). It will be interesting to see just how long the Fed can keep the balls in the air and the music playing. So far, you are right, the only thing keeping the markets afloat is massive intervention. They managed to just keep kicking the can down the road for really the last 12 years since 2008. Eventually, the reality has to set in, but it hasn't yet. Wall Street is delusional and greed has set in worse than ever right now.

I can go on at great lengths here. Our money is debt, created through fractional reserve banking. When everyone stops taking out loans together, the money supply actually contracts. The fed stepping in and printing money is replacing that. They are right that deflation is the biggest concern right now.

That said, if you were to shut this thing down for several more months, the amount of valuable goods and services being created would go down and down and down. The fed's window between inflation and deflation would keep getting smaller and smaller until the whole thing collapsed.

I'm not one of the "just open it up, I don't care how many die" people but there is a limit to what is realistic. I don't see how we can continue this for months, let alone years and I don't see anyone stepping up with a plan to control this in a semi open economy.

I just hope that private sector testing and medical treatments improve radically in the next few weeks. The federal government clearly isn't going to save us. Hopefully profit motive does.

[Payt10]

Regarding that Hill op-ed

You should research who exactly Dr. Atlas is before posting his op-ed.....

The guy has made a career of attacking the “libz” on women’s right to choose, fighting single-payer/universal healthcare, fighting for the health insurance industry, and making appearances on right leaning “news” networks to tell the world why Dems are wrong and Republicans are right.

Mixing facts with opinion is his go to move to make it appear he’s only writing or speaking in the public interests.

The numbers are the numbers. You don't have to be right or left to see the disparity between those that are at risk and those that aren't. It's common sense.

[coldfish]

The big problem I see is Europe. Italy has been locked down for quite some time. They still continue a good number of new cases and daily deaths. If they stopped the lockdown, the disease would come roaring back. So far, the lockdowns are merely a very expensive delaying tactic. As of right now, what are they delaying for?

Someone needs to come up with a serious plan. We can’t stay locked down forever and I’m not a big fan of a million deaths. This seems to be lost in the debate.

The epidemiologists thought this would just go away in the face of a lockdown. You can see it in their models. They were wrong it appears.

This is the crux of the issue. The lockdowns have been buying us time to increase our medical capacity, but it's not going to stop people from dying—it's only delaying it.

The good news is that heat does seem to help. Southern states like Arizona and even Florida and other places like Texas where the weather is warmer are doing much better than places that are cooler temperatures.

I have been pointing this out on the CA board. Something like 95% of the global deaths have happened between 30 degrees and 45 degrees north latitude where it was winter when this took off. There are some concerning sites, like Ecuador though.

[johnnyvann840]

The US right now is printing money like mad. New cash gets created and the fed buys debt obligations that are risky. That is the only thing keeping our financial sector going or all of the delayed payments would be crushing the banks and potentially causing bank runs as people feared getting their money out (ie rich people and businesses who keep more money than the FDIC covers in banks).

The amount of money being printed right now is at dangerous levels. Very few people in the US are doing anything of value. Cars aren't being assembled, vacations aren't being taken, houses aren't being built, etc. If this continues, we are staring at a Weimar Republic scenario where you have to take a wheelbarrow full of cash into the store to buy a loaf of bread.

We need to figure out how to start working again in a safe manner. We can't just keep printing money and handing it to people to stay home and do nothing of value. Money by itself isn't inherently valuable. Its only worth what it can buy.

Such an odd dynamic at work right now. The Fed claims that despite intervention of unprecedented levels in markets and all the printing money out of thin air, inflation won't be a problem. They might be right only because demand has gone down so drastically for so many things (like oil), that deflation could actually be a bigger problem short term. Of course, long term, the dollar could easily collapse (and fundamentally SHOULD collapse). It will be interesting to see just how long the Fed can keep the balls in the air and the music playing. So far, you are right, the only thing keeping the markets afloat is massive intervention. They managed to just keep kicking the can down the road for really the last 12 years since 2008. Eventually, the reality has to set in, but it hasn't yet. Wall Street is delusional and greed has set in worse than ever right now.

I can go on at great lengths here. Our money is debt, created through fractional reserve banking. When everyone stops taking out loans together, the money supply actually contracts. The fed stepping in and printing money is replacing that. They are right that deflation is the biggest concern right now.

That said, if you were to shut this thing down for several more months, the amount of valuable goods and services being created would go down and down and down. The fed's window between inflation and deflation would keep getting smaller and smaller until the whole thing collapsed.

I'm not one of the "just open it up, I don't care how many die" people but there is a limit to what is realistic. I don't see how we can continue this for months, let alone years and I don't see anyone stepping up with a plan to control this in a semi open economy.

I just hope that private sector testing and medical treatments improve radically in the next few weeks. The federal government clearly isn't going to save us. Hopefully profit motive does.

I agree 100% with you.... and I am one of the high risk individuals who would likely die if I contract the virus.

I do think more effort needs to go to getting as many tests as we can. If we could just test everybody on the spot we could start opening up everything. If you have it, you have to be quarantined... simple as that. If we know who doesn't have it, we can at least put a lot of people back to work and open up businesses everywhere. It should not be this difficult to get more testing.

[AKfanatic]

Regarding that Hill op-ed

You should research who exactly Dr. Atlas is before posting his op-ed.....

The guy has made a career of attacking the “libz” on women’s right to choose, fighting single-payer/universal healthcare, fighting for the health insurance industry, and making appearances on right leaning “news” networks to tell the world why Dems are wrong and Republicans are right.

Mixing facts with opinion is his go to move to make it appear he’s only writing or speaking in the public interests.

The numbers are the numbers. You don't have to be right or left to see the disparity between those that are at risk and those that aren't. It's common sense.

and how do you open up work for the low risk while still protecting the higher risk groups? That’s the crux of the problem. It’s easy to say “send the low risk people back to work”, but without a true plan to protect the elderly or those with underlying health risks, you only open yourself up to harm those deemed less important.

What happens when “life goes on” for those that are of the low risk demographic?

Do we suddenly have law enforcement locking down the high risk groups?

Do those low risk groups keep away from grandma and grandpa? From diabetic dad?

Does that low risk group of 500+ (Infected) employees working at a pork processing plant somehow managed to stay away from the high risk group after they’ve become infected?

All the “low risk” vs “high risk” return to work talk is weakly disguised “they’re willing to die for the economy” narrative.

Unless you plan on having many people separated in Tyson foods barracks on worksites, separating the weak from the strong, the return low risk folks is folly.


Like I said, we will see soon. Georgia and others plan to open up. once they do, we will see how that goes after 3 weeks to 2 months time.

[johnnyvann840]

The big problem I see is Europe. Italy has been locked down for quite some time. They still continue a good number of new cases and daily deaths. If they stopped the lockdown, the disease would come roaring back. So far, the lockdowns are merely a very expensive delaying tactic. As of right now, what are they delaying for?

Someone needs to come up with a serious plan. We can’t stay locked down forever and I’m not a big fan of a million deaths. This seems to be lost in the debate.

The epidemiologists thought this would just go away in the face of a lockdown. You can see it in their models. They were wrong it appears.

This is the crux of the issue. The lockdowns have been buying us time to increase our medical capacity, but it's not going to stop people from dying—it's only delaying it.

The good news is that heat does seem to help. Southern states like Arizona and even Florida and other places like Texas where the weather is warmer are doing much better than places that are cooler temperatures.

I have been pointing this out on the CA board. Something like 95% of the global deaths have happened between 30 degrees and 45 degrees north latitude where it was winter when this took off. There are some concerning sites, like Ecuador though.

It's so hard to know if it's weather related or space related. It seems to correlate to both. Obviously, the more densely populated east coast and other dense populated regions are getting hit the hardest. FL, TX, GA, LA are all warm weather states and have big numbers.... they are also fairly densely populaces.

[johnnyvann840]

It has been close to 90 degrees for the last several days in PHX and supposed to hit triple digits by next week, so it should be interesting to see what happens in AZ. If the heat and sunshine kills the virus theory holds, then cases in AZ should go down to nearly nothing. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of Flagstaff vs PHX also. Flagstaff has a climate more like Boulder, CO.

[AKfanatic]

It has been close to 90 degrees for the last several days in PHX and supposed to hit triple digits by next week, so it should be interesting to see what happens in AZ. If the heat and sunshine kills the virus theory holds, then cases in AZ should go down to nearly nothing. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of Flagstaff vs PHX also. Flagstaff has a climate more like Boulder, CO.

One problem with that is the amount of people and businesses that use AC. If heat kills it quickly, the AC hampers that as well as helps to disperse the virus throughout the air through the airflow.

[johnnyvann840]

It has been close to 90 degrees for the last several days in PHX and supposed to hit triple digits by next week, so it should be interesting to see what happens in AZ. If the heat and sunshine kills the virus theory holds, then cases in AZ should go down to nearly nothing. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of Flagstaff vs PHX also. Flagstaff has a climate more like Boulder, CO.

One problem with that is the amount of people and businesses that use AC. If heat kills it quickly, the AC hampers that as well as helps to disperse the virus throughout the air through the airflow.

Alaska sure looks like the best place to be right now, that is for sure.