Coronavirus

[dougthonus]

I don't think there is any way we are flattening the curve in the Chicago area. We just had a weekend where large masses of people packed into Costco to hoard buy everything in sight. It isn't like obscure stores either I was seeing people post stores that I knew with people lined up outside at 4 in the morning to get in like it was black Friday. The Jewel by me is still stocked (I went in Monday at 6 AM) but there is a massive dent.

Then you have that fiasco that just happened in O'hare where they packed all of the people coming from Europe into a hallway for something like 6 hours so they could have them all write down that they didn't have the coronavirus and then release them into the city. This also isn't unique to Chicago, Dallas had the same exact thing happen a massive weekend of hoard buying followed by the same O'hare situation in DFW.

I feel like this war was lost before most people really even knew what was happening. I'd say we see a big surge Wednesday-Friday and then we see a second surge 4-5 days after what happened in O'hare. Then they probably really lock things down and at that point we don't know, we're basically following the Italy model so we just watch what's happening there and see if the lockdown can slow it enough.

It depends what you mean by "flatten the curve". If we don't flatten the curve, you could expect 2/3rds of the area to get it. I don't think we will have that happen.

[Habs72]

When you add up all the layers of government in the US, they take up roughly 35 to 40% of GDP. You simply can't get there with a 27.1% tax rate.

One real problem is that the real tax rate for people is also skewed way too highly towards the poor / middle class. When you factor in property taxes and sales tax, you see the effective tax rate for people in those classes often ends up higher than the effective tax rate for the upper class.

We ask for our tax code to be progressive but the reality is that it is bell shaped. The people in the middle pay the highest taxes. Whenever someone talks about raising taxes, they target the rich but end up hitting those in the upper middle. When they cut taxes, they again, don't help that group. The Trump tax cuts had little impact on me.

That's what generally pisses me off when people start going on about taxes. A lot of us already pay a ton of it and we really don't get a lot for it compared to other nations.

I also have experience dealing with europeans. They cheat. Like mad. When greece was struggling a few years ago it came out just how much of a black market economy they had. The US has the highest tax collections rate in the world. Most analysis don't take that into account.

Finns dont cheat. Also about Greeks, i have a couple of friends over there. Government officials cheat in there. Employers cheat even more. Common people who work for someone hardly cheats. They have ”government given rights” as workers but are still without any rights as workers if they want to keep their jobs if you know what i mean. And proper jobs are not that easy to find in Greece.

[Habs72]

I don't think there is any way we are flattening the curve in the Chicago area. We just had a weekend where large masses of people packed into Costco to hoard buy everything in sight. It isn't like obscure stores either I was seeing people post stores that I knew with people lined up outside at 4 in the morning to get in like it was black Friday. The Jewel by me is still stocked (I went in Monday at 6 AM) but there is a massive dent.

Then you have that fiasco that just happened in O'hare where they packed all of the people coming from Europe into a hallway for something like 6 hours so they could have them all write down that they didn't have the coronavirus and then release them into the city. This also isn't unique to Chicago, Dallas had the same exact thing happen a massive weekend of hoard buying followed by the same O'hare situation in DFW.

I feel like this war was lost before most people really even knew what was happening. I'd say we see a big surge Wednesday-Friday and then we see a second surge 4-5 days after what happened in O'hare. Then they probably really lock things down and at that point we don't know, we're basically following the Italy model so we just watch what's happening there and see if the lockdown can slow it enough.

It depends what you mean by "flatten the curve". If we don't flatten the curve, you could expect 2/3rds of the area to get it. I don't think we will have that happen.

One can still have 2/3 of the area population to get it even with flattening the curve. Its a matter of timeline how fast they will get it that is really really important. Today`s news from Germany says this virus thread is possible that it will go on for the next two years but not with this rate ofc.

[dougthonus]

One can still have 2/3 of the area population to get it even with flattening the curve. Its a matter of timeline how fast they will get it that is really really important. Today`s news from Germany says this virus thread is possible that it will go on for the next two years but not with this rate ofc.

If you really flatten the curve successfully you will also significantly stem total infections, but yeah, I agree, it is also about spreading out the time and not overrunning your hospitals.

That said, I'm not sure our society is built to manage 18 months of social distancing in the US. If you did that here, I think you'd bring the country into another great depression.

[Habs72]

One can still have 2/3 of the area population to get it even with flattening the curve. Its a matter of timeline how fast they will get it that is really really important. Today`s news from Germany says this virus thread is possible that it will go on for the next two years but not with this rate ofc.

If you really flatten the curve successfully you will also significantly stem total infections, but yeah, I agree, it is also about spreading out the time and not overrunning your hospitals.

That said, I'm not sure our society is built to manage 18 months of social distancing in the US. If you did that here, I think you'd bring the country into another great depression.

Prolly at not this rate of social distancing but everyone says this will/has to change our behaviours maybe forever or for a very distant future and we need to start thinking ”WE” instead of ”I”. Some nations can overcome this way of thinking better than others. That is a sad fact.

[coldfish]

One real problem is that the real tax rate for people is also skewed way too highly towards the poor / middle class. When you factor in property taxes and sales tax, you see the effective tax rate for people in those classes often ends up higher than the effective tax rate for the upper class.

We ask for our tax code to be progressive but the reality is that it is bell shaped. The people in the middle pay the highest taxes. Whenever someone talks about raising taxes, they target the rich but end up hitting those in the upper middle. When they cut taxes, they again, don't help that group. The Trump tax cuts had little impact on me.

That's what generally pisses me off when people start going on about taxes. A lot of us already pay a ton of it and we really don't get a lot for it compared to other nations.

I also have experience dealing with europeans. They cheat. Like mad. When greece was struggling a few years ago it came out just how much of a black market economy they had. The US has the highest tax collections rate in the world. Most analysis don't take that into account.

Finns dont cheat. Also about Greeks, i have a couple of friends over there. Government officials cheat in there. Employers cheat even more. Common people who work for someone hardly cheats. They have ”government given rights” as workers but are still without any rights as workers if they want to keep their jobs if you know what i mean. And proper jobs are not that easy to find in Greece.

My wife works for a Danish company. Many of the people who have come over speak openly about a barter system and black market economy where goods are traded without being taxed.

I deal a lot with German auto manufacturers. In one discussion early in my career, the germans had handed down a bunch of ridiculous requirements for the manufacture of the products. When we questioned it, the response was baffling to me at the time. Effectively the engineer was stunned that we would consider actually complying with the requests. They looked at them as just file filler and cover your ass documentation. When Volkswagen was busted for programming their cars to modify their emissions when they were being checked for emissions, it wasn't surprising to people in the industry.

I have no experience with Finns.

[chitowndish]

It depends what you mean by "flatten the curve". If we don't flatten the curve, you could expect 2/3rds of the area to get it. I don't think we will have that happen.

I meant more that flattening the curve is preventing our healthcare system from being overrun. I'd say 4-5 days after last Friday a lot of people will start showing symptoms and that is going to greatly increase over the next few days because the shopping got worse through the weekend as people became more panicked. A few days after that those people with serious symptoms will start flooding the system and every critical patient is going to need 4 weeks on a respirator, then a few days later you are going to get the increase from what happened on O'hare and by that first wave I would guess we're already overrun like Italy is. I think the concept of trying to keep this under what our healthcare can manage has failed before it really sunk in to a lot of people what needed to be done to prevent that from happening.

[Habs72]

Youre somewhat a week behind from what is happening in many of the european countries like we Finns are. Now its up to our governments AND our behaviour to prevent how bad its gonna be. Spain is gonna be very probably the next Italy, France announced restrictions to movement which is supervised by 100 000 policemen.

[MalagaBulls]

Quick update from Spain:

11,200 infected
501 deaths

There are rumors up 20K can be infected just in Madrid!!!!

[dougthonus]

I meant more that flattening the curve is preventing our healthcare system from being overrun. I'd say 4-5 days after last Friday a lot of people will start showing symptoms and that is going to greatly increase over the next few days because the shopping got worse through the weekend as people became more panicked. A few days after that those people with serious symptoms will start flooding the system and every critical patient is going to need 4 weeks on a respirator, then a few days later you are going to get the increase from what happened on O'hare and by that first wave I would guess we're already overrun like Italy is. I think the concept of trying to keep this under what our healthcare can manage has failed before it really sunk in to a lot of people what needed to be done to prevent that from happening.

Maybe, we'll find out shortly. There is also a matter of how overrun your hospitals are. Are you turning away 100s of people, 1,000s of people, 10,000s of people, or 100,000s of people. If you are at 1,000s or even 10,000s instead of 100,000s you've still done a good job if 100,000s was a possibility.

[TheStig]

I think it's incredibly irresponsible to have 4 states holding primaries today. They really should have postponed these.

[Ccwatercraft]

Florida shutting down bars and clubs as of 5pm, I heard that via text a moment ago.

IMO its a good idea, based on my observations around town, people were NOT listening to advice.

i'm on day 1 of working from home, its not even lunchtime and i'm already getting a little jumpy, this is not going to go well.

I read somewhere that 75% of people are more productive at home, I'm most def in the 25% category.

[musiqsoulchild]

Really good pivot from Trump today. Did not say anything political.

And really important policies being announced right now.

[dougthonus]

Really good pivot from Trump today. Did not say anything political.

And really important policies being announced right now.

Didn't hear his speech today, but I thought his speech yesterday was good and am generally not a Trump fan.

[Mech Engineer]

When you add up all the layers of government in the US, they take up roughly 35 to 40% of GDP. You simply can't get there with a 27.1% tax rate.

One real problem is that the real tax rate for people is also skewed way too highly towards the poor / middle class. When you factor in property taxes and sales tax, you see the effective tax rate for people in those classes often ends up higher than the effective tax rate for the upper class.

The US spends slightly less than the OECD average. Given that we are just about the only one without some form of public health care, that's amazing. When you look deeper though, there are a few issues:
- Massive benefits and pensions of government workers
- Massive defense spending
- Just general inefficiency from so many layers of government

The most important thing the federal and state governments could do, is stop all new pensions. It's a massive problem in Illinois and will lead to the insolvency of the state. I don't know if it is as bad everywhere else, but it's really bad here.

The defense spending is also ridiculous and over the top.

I'm not sure if our government is really less efficient than other governments or not that have comparable size and breadth of scope. I think there aren't really a lot of comparables there, but the larger you get, the more inefficiency you get IMO.

Amen to pensions. The private sector middle class employee has not only job insecurity, their savings are wiped out with the stock market crash. Plus, they have no pensions. And, they have lot of upheavals in their life because they have to move for their jobs. It's a tough situation.

I agree that you cannot trust government to be efficient. That plan will never work. We need a good checks n balances system for healthcare. Both Market driven and Government handled ones seem to be a problem and those are the only two we have tried/seen.

[musiqsoulchild]

Really good pivot from Trump today. Did not say anything political.

And really important policies being announced right now.

Didn't hear his speech today, but I thought his speech yesterday was good and am generally not a Trump fan.

Same. Not a fan. But will support anyone as my President who does the right thing and does it well.

[Mbrahv0528]

I don't think there is any way we are flattening the curve in the Chicago area. We just had a weekend where large masses of people packed into Costco to hoard buy everything in sight. It isn't like obscure stores either I was seeing people post stores that I knew with people lined up outside at 4 in the morning to get in like it was black Friday. The Jewel by me is still stocked (I went in Monday at 6 AM) but there is a massive dent.

Then you have that fiasco that just happened in O'hare where they packed all of the people coming from Europe into a hallway for something like 6 hours so they could have them all write down that they didn't have the coronavirus and then release them into the city. This also isn't unique to Chicago, Dallas had the same exact thing happen a massive weekend of hoard buying followed by the same O'hare situation in DFW.

I feel like this war was lost before most people really even knew what was happening. I'd say we see a big surge Wednesday-Friday and then we see a second surge 4-5 days after what happened in O'hare. Then they probably really lock things down and at that point we don't know, we're basically following the Italy model so we just watch what's happening there and see if the lockdown can slow it enough.

It depends what you mean by "flatten the curve". If we don't flatten the curve, you could expect 2/3rds of the area to get it. I don't think we will have that happen.

I think the 2/3rds thing is already underway?

Sent from my SM-N975U using RealGM mobile app

[TallDude]

Quick update from Spain:

11,200 infected
501 deaths

There are rumors up 20K can be infected just in Madrid!!!!

It is much worse what we expect. In Nordic countries we are kind of trouble. Even we have best healtcare in the world. And our goverment had 300 Billion Euros for stock market. I don`t want to check it right now how and i don`t care actually. We have enough money if goverment just use it. 10 Billion i calculated is what only Finnish people need for start. Only 5 Billion is given for now. Sweden handover 30 Billion Euros. Around 35 Billion Dollars or even more.

Today small cityes healtcare centers was overtaken for corona patiens. My Finnish friends if u like i can share it to u. Usa will come much much bigger problems. In our perspective only who have great insuranse have treatment. We are not perfect either but it will hit hard around 2-3 weeks in usa. Trump is just a clown who try to win your votes. No matter what he tells. He is not a leader. Just a lucky gyu who did get 1000 000 000$ when his dad past away. And he try to lie that he did not get that money.

I love United states of America and hate Trump. Even Putin is better and he is horrible. God bless for America (and nobody else). That makes me sick...

[transplant]

Reports I've read expect that COVID-19 infections will double in the US every 6 days for at least a month. If this happens, we'll look back nostalgically to mid-March.

Be smart and be well.

[TallDude]

Reports I've read expect that COVID-19 infections will double in the US every 6 days for at least a month. If this happens, we'll look back nostalgically to mid-March.

Be smart and be well.

Protect yourself and be safe. I want to argue with you guys next season also. US have now around 50 000 people who have ”it”. Stats only tell you how many are tested. I don`t won`r to scare anyone but in our perspective USA will get treep trouble. Trump just care some other more important things. But i hope when u go deep Europe can help you. If or up to me i will send my share, i guess we have enouhg and they make more special beds 24/7. How is Trump doing?