OT: COVID-19 thread #2

[Dresden]

cleveland nursing home resident exhibits symptoms and tests positive, so entire home gets tests, turns out that majority of residents are infected:

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/04/what-happens-when-an-entire-nursing-home-is-tested-for-cornavirus-more-than-half-the-patients-positive-at-one-facility-in-tallmadge.html

no excuse for not pro-actively testing nursing homes across the board

https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/long-term-care-facilities/cases

Ohio kind of sucks by the way. The state is 4th from last in tests per pop. Not sure what the bottleneck is but they really haven't tested much at all. Read that 1/3 of all ohio deaths were in nursing homes. I wouldn't be surprised if testing every person in every nursing home would be more tests than they have done in total.

They may be low on the testing scale, but in other ways Ohio has been exemplary, from what I've read. Their gov. was pretty early in closing down the state, and as a result, their cases/deaths are pretty low.

[dougthonus]

60K with a lockdown. Just do the math. This has every potential to drive up and exceed America's 600K Spanish Flu death toll, especially if airports, hotels, buses and gyms completely open up.

Neither here nor there really, but it would need to be about 2.3M deaths in the US for it to match the per capita devastation of the Spanish flu. Doesn't seem like it will be that bad regardless of what we do. Not that if it becomes 700k deaths it would be minor.

I also think that you can open the economy, but people aren't going to go back and participate in the same way they did during the Spanish flu outbreak. That said, we'll see how it goes, I might be disillusioned how smart the average individual is based on the circumstances of those immediately around me whom are largely practicing safe measures.

[Ccwatercraft]

Annecdotal Update on PPP, my local email/chat group had a rash of PPP approvals yesterday, several happy business owners received their notice. Not sure on the exact % but it appears now that about 70% in my group have been approved now, which is double where we were before the 2nd wave of funding.

Unfortunately the one guy who likely was the most deserving of immediate help (several hair salon franchises) is still pending, go figure.

[Dresden]

Annecdotal Update on PPP, my local email/chat group had a rash of PPP approvals yesterday, several happy business owners received their notice. Not sure on the exact % but it appears now that about 70% in my group have been approved now, which is double where we were before the 2nd wave of funding.

Unfortunately the one guy who likely was the most deserving of immediate help (several hair salon franchises) is still pending, go figure.

That's good. In my group I'd say it's about 40% right now. I've been told by B of A my application has been submitted to the SBA, so I'm just hoping that I got in the door before they slam it shut again.

Here's another example of how poorly conceived this thing is though- you are only allowed to use those funds, if you want them to be forgiven, to apply towards your payroll from the date you receive the funds, going forward 2 months. I've been paying my guys at least 50% of their normal pay for the past month and a half now. But I won't be able to use the loan money to apply towards those payrolls. And now we are set to go back to work on Monday, so I won't be needing it to cover sick pay going forward, even if I do get the loan.

You can tell that this thing was crafted by legislators (with help from lobbyists), and not by business owners, or else it would have been done completely differently.

[Dresden]

Now our president has not only taken the bait, he's swallowed the hook, too, on this one. I like the fact that he claims he's not allowed to offer the proof. It sounds a lot like when he said he'd love to show us his tax returns, but his attorneys wouldn't let him, because he's under audit:

"President Trump said Thursday that he had seen evidence to prove that the coronavirus pandemic had spread from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but he declined to detail what that evidence was.

“I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he said at a White House news conference at which he repeatedly accused China’s government of being negligent in its response to the virus, while leaving open the possibility it was intentionally spread."

[wolffy]

The more its China's fault, the less its trumps fault. In his mind anyway.

[Ccwatercraft]

Annecdotal Update on PPP, my local email/chat group had a rash of PPP approvals yesterday, several happy business owners received their notice. Not sure on the exact % but it appears now that about 70% in my group have been approved now, which is double where we were before the 2nd wave of funding.

Unfortunately the one guy who likely was the most deserving of immediate help (several hair salon franchises) is still pending, go figure.

That's good. In my group I'd say it's about 40% right now. I've been told by B of A my application has been submitted to the SBA, so I'm just hoping that I got in the door before they slam it shut again.

Here's another example of how poorly conceived this thing is though- you are only allowed to use those funds, if you want them to be forgiven, to apply towards your payroll from the date you receive the funds, going forward 2 months. I've been paying my guys at least 50% of their normal pay for the past month and a half now. But I won't be able to use the loan money to apply towards those payrolls. And now we are set to go back to work on Monday, so I won't be needing it to cover sick pay going forward, even if I do get the loan.

You can tell that this thing was crafted by legislators (with help from lobbyists), and not by business owners, or else it would have been done completely differently.

It wont be an issue on our end to exceed the amount with payroll, it will take about 5 weeks.

I'm curious how you think it would/should have been different if written by business owners.

[Dresden]

Annecdotal Update on PPP, my local email/chat group had a rash of PPP approvals yesterday, several happy business owners received their notice. Not sure on the exact % but it appears now that about 70% in my group have been approved now, which is double where we were before the 2nd wave of funding.

Unfortunately the one guy who likely was the most deserving of immediate help (several hair salon franchises) is still pending, go figure.

That's good. In my group I'd say it's about 40% right now. I've been told by B of A my application has been submitted to the SBA, so I'm just hoping that I got in the door before they slam it shut again.

Here's another example of how poorly conceived this thing is though- you are only allowed to use those funds, if you want them to be forgiven, to apply towards your payroll from the date you receive the funds, going forward 2 months. I've been paying my guys at least 50% of their normal pay for the past month and a half now. But I won't be able to use the loan money to apply towards those payrolls. And now we are set to go back to work on Monday, so I won't be needing it to cover sick pay going forward, even if I do get the loan.

You can tell that this thing was crafted by legislators (with help from lobbyists), and not by business owners, or else it would have been done completely differently.

It wont be an issue on our end to exceed the amount with payroll, it will take about 5 weeks.

I'm curious how you think it would/should have been different if written by business owners.

I could list about 10 things. For one, you should be allowed to use the money to cover payroll dating back to when the virus started affecting your business- i.e., when you started paying guys sick pay because your state was in lockdown. That's the most basic and easily understandable provision.

Secondly, if this was intended for the purposes of helping small businesses to stay afloat, any company that earned above a certain amount over the last few years should have been ineligible. The Lakers made 147 million on their last tax return. 147 million! Why do they need a govt. bailout to make it through this? Same with a company like AutoNation, which has hundreds of stores across the country- they applied for 277 million dollars in loans (and got 76 million). Is that a small business? At the very least, half the money should have been reserved for companies with fewer than 50 employees, and that should have been for a company total, not per location.

Thirdly, this was supposed to be for companies that had no other source of credit. Yet I think over 100 hundred publicly traded companies were approved, and countless start ups, which had access to millions in capital through private investors.

Fourth, if they knew they were going to run short on money, which business leaders predicted from the start, the people designing this should have at least tried to make it more equitable. They could have provided a 2 week window to apply, then divided the amount in the fund by the amount of loan requests, and funded every one with a credible application for that % of their request. That way all businesses are on an equal footing. You wouldn't have one business get nothing, while his two competitors around the block got 100% of their funding. That not only hurts not getting the funding, it also puts you at a disadvantage to your competition.

Fifth, I've read that banks were earning a larger % on the larger loans they gave out. Something like 5% on loans over a million, but just 3.5% on loans under 200K. I might be wrong on those numbers, but it was structured so that banks had an incentive to favor larger customers over the small guy.

Sixth, banks should never have been involved. So much of the success of your application seems to be how well connected you are to a financial institution. That's why so many start ups got funding- they work very closely with their banks. Similarly, banks are prone to want to help their bigger customers first, so they naturally favored those companies that do more business with them, and that have bigger accounts. I've also heard, anecdotally, that smaller banks are having much higher success rates than massive banks like B of A and WF.

I could go on, but those are enough. Just a few simple rules would have made the program do what is was supposed to do- help small businesses stay afloat. Anyone with half a brain could have predicted the results we are seeing, if these simple precautions were not put in place. And this is taxpayer money, too, that is being given away by the fistful to entities like the LA Lakers, who are spectacularly profitable. Why wouldn't you put in some simple, common sense safeguards to make sure this doesn't happen? It's like designing a road system, and not realizing you will need stop signs and red lights.

[MrSparkle]

60K with a lockdown. Just do the math. This has every potential to drive up and exceed America's 600K Spanish Flu death toll, especially if airports, hotels, buses and gyms completely open up.

Neither here nor there really, but it would need to be about 2.3M deaths in the US for it to match the per capita devastation of the Spanish flu. Doesn't seem like it will be that bad regardless of what we do. Not that if it becomes 700k deaths it would be minor.

I also think that you can open the economy, but people aren't going to go back and participate in the same way they did during the Spanish flu outbreak. That said, we'll see how it goes, I might be disillusioned how smart the average individual is based on the circumstances of those immediately around me whom are largely practicing safe measures.

My 2c: it of course would (likely) not hit any place as hard as NYC — it is the only city in the US where you pretty much have no option but to use public transportation. But nevertheless, talking to friends there in the thick of it, it’s a taste of what it’d be like if you did open up. They were open while the virus hit hard. Each friend either had it or is more directly connected to the victims. Here, our percentages are so relatively low that it really isn’t a day-to-day problem for anybody unless you work in a facility with an outbreak/patients.

I do think you can open the economy with strict measures. The problem is, kind of like NBA owners with contracts, the average person doesn’t think of consequences. I have to wack my wife’s hands out of her face after our grocery runs; she’s smart but has the habit of touching her face when thinking, talking, distracted, etc.

And these grocery runs, oh my. It is incredible how many people simply don’t care. Touching things, browsing their phones, touching things, touching their phone, slowly trodding around. No care for the 6-ft rule.

Sometimes employees remind people, but really? You can’t make a market run or walk outside without heeding literally 3 suggestions? Maintain space, don’t touch things unless you need to, keep your fingers off your face. It’s crazy.

I’m walking my dog avoiding puddles and some jogger out of nowhere with no mask sweating bullets sprints right past me without moving off the side walk. Literally got a whiff of his sweat and could feel his hot humid self, and that was with my mask on. I suppose I could’ve yanked my dog into the grass but wouldn’t it have been easier for him to cut around?

The average person is simply a space cadet with lack of consideration.

[Dresden]

My pet peeve at the grocery store is the person who just has to go up the aisle the wrong way, because they just forgot that one thing, and can't be bothered to make the loop and come down the aisle in the same direction as everyone else. But hey! My time is so valuable, and I really need to do get that box of gluten free pasta.

[stl705]

Dresdon - While I shop courteously and with social distance in mind, I’ve never heard of a “correct direction” for going down the isles... that’s a first lol.

I think one of the interesting things at play now is the big meat factories having such big issues. It’s not surprising seeing the working conditions, but my hope is we localize food supply chains..

I’d much rather buy 1/2 a cow from farmer john than buy from one of 2 large conglomerates that get tax incentives because they are so big. I understand I’ll be paying double likely, but hopefully we can figure out some things to help citizens, ie higher wages from localized supply chain, more taxes being paid to localized govt, etc. I won’t try to get political but I do think a UBI could also fit here.

[Dresden]

Dresdon - While I shop courteously and with social distance in mind, I’ve never heard of a “correct direction” for going down the isles... that’s a first lol.

I think one of the interesting things at play now is the big meat factories having such big issues. It’s not surprising seeing the working conditions, but my hope is we localize food supply chains..

I’d much rather buy 1/2 a cow from farmer john than buy from one of 2 large conglomerates that get tax incentives because they are so big. I understand I’ll be paying double likely, but hopefully we can figure out some things to help citizens, ie higher wages from localized supply chain, more taxes being paid to localized govt, etc. I won’t try to get political but I do think a UBI could also fit here.

Yep, out here in San Francisco all the stores have the aisles marked one way. Smart idea- reduces close encounters a lot.

[Dresden]

I just heard my PPP loan was approved. Out of my email group now, I think it's like 6 out of 7 of use have been approved. So that is looking much better- we are all small time contractors with 20 or fewer employees.

[Dresden]

Dresdon - While I shop courteously and with social distance in mind, I’ve never heard of a “correct direction” for going down the isles... that’s a first lol.

I think one of the interesting things at play now is the big meat factories having such big issues. It’s not surprising seeing the working conditions, but my hope is we localize food supply chains..

I’d much rather buy 1/2 a cow from farmer john than buy from one of 2 large conglomerates that get tax incentives because they are so big. I understand I’ll be paying double likely, but hopefully we can figure out some things to help citizens, ie higher wages from localized supply chain, more taxes being paid to localized govt, etc. I won’t try to get political but I do think a UBI could also fit here.

I totally agree with you on localizing supply chains. I really hope too that this pandemic forces us to make changes that will benefit us in the long run, and I think focusing more on regional and local economies is a good way to go. Being locked down and shut in really has put more awareness on local neighborhoods and communities- it's drawing people together as they are often being forced to rely on themselves and not the federal or state govts.

[dougthonus]

I could list about 10 things. For one, you should be allowed to use the money to cover payroll dating back to when the virus started affecting your business- i.e., when you started paying guys sick pay because your state was in lockdown. That's the most basic and easily understandable provision.

This makes total sense.

Secondly, if this was intended for the purposes of helping small businesses to stay afloat, any company that earned above a certain amount over the last few years should have been ineligible. The Lakers made 147 million on their last tax return. 147 million! Why do they need a govt. bailout to make it through this? Same with a company like AutoNation, which has hundreds of stores across the country- they applied for 277 million dollars in loans (and got 76 million). Is that a small business? At the very least, half the money should have been reserved for companies with fewer than 50 employees, and that should have been for a company total, not per location.

If we're only talking about small businesses then I agree you should keep the employee count at a certain level. If you're talking about helping the economy last years earnings and size are a bit less relevant. A company with 277M in profit might be taking on 1B in losses a month now with their revenue streams cut.

I think solvency of the company should definitely be a consideration, but past profit level on an absolute scale instead of a relative one isn't a good measure of solvency.

Thirdly, this was supposed to be for companies that had no other source of credit. Yet I think over 100 hundred publicly traded companies were approved, and countless start ups, which had access to millions in capital through private investors.

Yeah, I think this is a hard thing to figure out and vet properly while still trying to process quickly, but I completely agree that it should be for people who need money to stay afloat. Solvency is the important thing.

Fourth, if they knew they were going to run short on money, which business leaders predicted from the start, the people designing this should have at least tried to make it more equitable. They could have provided a 2 week window to apply, then divided the amount in the fund by the amount of loan requests, and funded every one with a credible application for that % of their request. That way all businesses are on an equal footing. You wouldn't have one business get nothing, while his two competitors around the block got 100% of their funding. That not only hurts not getting the funding, it also puts you at a disadvantage to your competition.

There would be some advantages of that for sure, but if it wasn't enough money to support all the businesses you might be better off letting one fail and keeping to afloat rather than 3 all failing because they didn't get what they need. Tricky decision.

Fifth, I've read that banks were earning a larger % on the larger loans they gave out. Something like 5% on loans over a million, but just 3.5% on loans under 200K. I might be wrong on those numbers, but it was structured so that banks had an incentive to favor larger customers over the small guy.

That's totally absurd if true.

Sixth, banks should never have been involved. So much of the success of your application seems to be how well connected you are to a financial institution. That's why so many start ups got funding- they work very closely with their banks. Similarly, banks are prone to want to help their bigger customers first, so they naturally favored those companies that do more business with them, and that have bigger accounts. I've also heard, anecdotally, that smaller banks are having much higher success rates than massive banks like B of A and WF.

From a logistics perspective this might be difficult, but it makes total sense if you could organize it fast enough. It just might be difficult / impossible for the government to have run it directly and efficiently.

Either way, at a high level, it definitely wasn't done perfectly, but I'm still glad they implemented something quickly and have continued to try and improve it over time. If you compare the reaction the Fed had this time compared to 2008, it's amazing how much better it is.

[Dresden]

I agree that it's important to help all the workers in the country, not just small business employees. But that was the purpose of this program- to help small businesses. As such, they could have done a lot more to make it work in that regard.

I don't know what is being provided for employees of larger companies. Presumably they can get unemployment, or the companies are big enough they can afford to take some losses.

They should have just paid all employees directly. They did this in many European countries, and I think in Canada as well. I don't see what's so hard about that. Just send checks to the addresses on their last tax return, or to their last place of employment. With the PPP, it has to go first to the SBA, then through a bank, then to an employer, and then to the worker. I don't see the point in adding all that extra admin.

For those that get this money, it is a godsend. It's a bit late- it was supposed to provide security to workers so they wouldn't be forced to chose between risking working or staying home and sheltering. But most of the money is going to arrive when a lot of places are going back to work. It should have been available as soon as shelter in place orders went into effect. And I believe that was the case in many European nations. Not sure why we chose to go this route.

[Dresden]

There would be some advantages of that for sure, but if it wasn't enough money to support all the businesses you might be better off letting one fail and keeping to afloat rather than 3 all failing because they didn't get what they need. Tricky decision.

I can only speak about my industry, but I know that as a small contractor, I would say it is definitely better for 10 of us to get, say 50% of what we asked for, than 5 get 100% and 5 get nothing. For one thing, if you have the money to pay your guys for 1 month, instead of 2, most of the guys will be able to make that money stretch until they can get back to work again. So 50% would be enough to get everyone through. And you wouldn't lose any businesses.

Whereas if you got nothing, then you are probably in trouble, and your employees would be too. Not that you wouldn't survive, but it would be tough, and you would have to make changes, or go through all your savings.

But again, that's just my industry. It might be a different for other businesses. The good thing about our industry is that we don't have a lot of overhead. I work out of my home, so don't have office rent to pay- just a shop space. I'm not making payments on a lot of trucks or equipment. I don't have a lot of inventory sitting in a freezer or warehouse that I have to pay for. If you have those expenses, you're in a much tougher spot.

There is also an ethical consideration to this. If everyone is paying taxes, it is extremely unfair for one taxpayer to get left in the cold by the govt., while the next taxpayer gets fully funded.

[transplant]

I'm an avid golfer. Played for the first time since early-March. Though there are all sorts of restrictions here in Illinois that made it kinda weird, it was a beautiful day and it was close enough to normal fun to call it wonderful.

[dougthonus]

There is also an ethical consideration to this. If everyone is paying taxes, it is extremely unfair for one taxpayer to get left in the cold by the govt., while the next taxpayer gets fully funded.

LIfe isn't fair in how our government distributes tax dollars in any other situation in our economy. The benefits for everyone vary extremely widely.

Their goal should be to maximize impact of the dollars they spend not to be fair. I'm not suggesting that they are accomplishing that goal, but in a theoretical debate I'd rather save 1 million jobs than 900k jobs even if what I did was less fair to some individuals compared to others.

If you absolute need X to keep a business alive and there are 3 of them, and you only have 2X, it's better to give two businesses X and the other 0 than to give all of them 2/3rds of X and watch all 3 fold. Again, not saying it's that cut and dry or that this is the scenario going out, but it's definitely a possible scenario that exists.

More likely than anything else, they are stuck with a lot of logistical problems where they can't get all of the correct information in place in time and its easier and faster to give everyone what they apply for than to wait longer for all applications, analyze them, then come up with some shared pool to give everyone.

I think while almost all of your arguments work well in theory, they also all discount completely the practicality of the government trying to run this entirely new program without any existing protocols and get the money out in a matter of weeks. Again, not saying they made all the right decisions, just that its not easy to organize, process, and distribute something this big and this new really fast.

[Payt10]

60K with a lockdown. Just do the math. This has every potential to drive up and exceed America's 600K Spanish Flu death toll, especially if airports, hotels, buses and gyms completely open up.

Neither here nor there really, but it would need to be about 2.3M deaths in the US for it to match the per capita devastation of the Spanish flu. Doesn't seem like it will be that bad regardless of what we do. Not that if it becomes 700k deaths it would be minor.

I also think that you can open the economy, but people aren't going to go back and participate in the same way they did during the Spanish flu outbreak. That said, we'll see how it goes, I might be disillusioned how smart the average individual is based on the circumstances of those immediately around me whom are largely practicing safe measures.

It's also worth noting that the Spanish Flu largely targeted younger, healthier people, while this virus is targeting older people—the elderly in particular— which doesn't make up as much of the population. I think only 16% of the US population is over the age of 65.

Based on reports I have seen, if you take into consideration the recent antibody tests, the true mortality rate is going to end up somewhere between 0.1-0.5 as compared to the Spanish Flu, which I believe was 2-3%. That's a big difference.