Covid 19 CRISIS

Call me one of the near 60% who has said they wont be patronizing businesses until the virus is reduced, testing available, and precautions set. I dont see how these people who want to open up america really see this going. Its not like I am going to go to any retail or restaurants.

With retail it wasn't all that well positioned to begin with. Imagine opening back up as a retailer with angry employees because you are risking their life then barely having customers which means you have low revenue and high cost of operations.

Restaurants and bars I go to are centered around people its not like I cant mix a better rum an coke at home its the people I want to be with. If I am not really getting the environment or ambiance why go to a restaurant? I can get a delivery order already why bother going to a place with a greater risk for a bad experience?

I get that some people are willing to take the risk to go to work and get sick. But why rush head long into it without having the necessary precautions in place. Are they even going to have enough thermometers to test all their employees?


I am with you. I am one of the few that stayed at home before it was recommended because I have underlying conditions that make me susceptible.


EDIT:

 
I would love to know how much they really have though of the pragmatics of opening the country. They are not wearing mask or gloves but if their employers required them to do so would they quit? How will they get the gloves and mask and PPE equipment? If they own a business will they have multiple shifts, will they use thermometers to check, will they provide PPE, what precaution will they take for customers... Who is going to take care of their children WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN. If schools don't open, don't you have hundreds of thousands unsupervised children left at home?

I just don't how little thought is being put into this.
 
As for patient numbers, the same source claims an estimated 4.3 million patients with flu symptoms this season. If accurate, that would be a very very low mortality rate for the flu. If you scaled up that rate using Covid-19 lab-confirmed deaths you'd end up at virtually the entire population already being infected.
In the US flu infection rate is about 20% on average, I've seen estimations of 50-70% for C19.
No shit? I never would have thunk it. My point was that this is already more people than the flu, and it is doing so very quickly.
You remind me of an old joke.
"Two guys get blown off course in a hot air baloon, they land in some field where there is a guy herding sheep. They ask the guy:
- Hey can you tell use where we are?
- You are in a hot air baloon"

Absolute numbers don't tell us anything useful at all, the study talks specifically about the rates not absolutes, so what is the point of your point?

If we are missing deaths caused by this, the rate is even higher.
Yes it's the other side of that same coin, though I suspect the death counts are more accurate than infection counts. If anything they might be inflated since it's basically up to the doctor to use their judgement to call something a C19 death vs not.
It is also impossible to say how high the rate of infections are at his point due to a lack of enough tests. It is also impossible to get that rate from those that show up to get tested because they are already symptomatic.
We do have some data, I forget which state did it but some tested a bunch of homeless people in shelters whether they had symptoms or not. There is also what we know from the cruise ship (can't recall the name at the moment) so we can make some fairly educated guesses as to the actual rate of infection.
None of this is isolated. The whole system can collapses like dominos.
There is also the question of how long the recession (or possibly depression) will actually last. Even as we come out of the lock down how many people will have money to spend on non-essentials?

If the US reopens too early, the virus will restart its exponential trajectory and the country will have to close down again. The earlier they reopen, the earlier they will have to lockdown again.
Reopening is not a binary concept, for example NY government has already said they will have three phases of reopening and will evaluate infection rates at the end of each phase to make a decision on whether we can go to next phase or even back a phase.
But if milk is getting wasted, make cheese. When, in due time, milk will cost a fortune and cheese will be cheap, people will eat cheese. Which means: adapt, rather than throwing food away.
Cheese expires too, cheese producers have a limited production and storage capacity, warehouses have a limited storage capacity, etc... It's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be.
This is, again, the effect of the shortcomings of the US system, that has not taken into account a possibility like this, even if that could be crippling.
No country in the world took this possibility into account, all pandemic plans always assumed that early containment was possible no one had any expectation of having to shut down the entire world for a few months.
I am with you. I am one of the few that stayed at home before it was recommended because I have underlying conditions that make me susceptible.
I've also been home much earlier than suggested.

I've thought of the same thing that @Momentum57 is saying, how many people are really going to be all down for going out to stores/bars/etc...
 
Tyson Foods idles its largest pork plant after Iowa outbreak

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Tyson Foods suspended operations Wednesday at an Iowa plant that is critical to the nation’s pork supply but had been blamed for fueling a massive coronavirus outbreak in the community.

The company said the indefinite closure of the Waterloo, Iowa, plant would deny a vital market to hog farmers and further disrupt the nation’s meat supply. Tyson had kept the facility, its largest pork plant, open in recent days over the objections of local officials.

- Why don't they just liberate the plant?
 
^ There is no reliable source because we are not doing testing at the rate or scale that other countries are. The plan so far as I can see is tell people we are at the peak, its over, so go back to work. We are not at the peak (maybe NYC) and going out of a stay at home status will spread this virus so we see a spike higher than me on 4/20. If the goal is getting people back to work why are we seeing less test being done? Oh its because we are seeing a shortage of reagent and swabs to even be able to do the test.

We are not even a tenth of the way through this. Buy some bacon and freeze it if you thought toilet paper shortages were bad wait till its meat.
 
Got a reliable source for those 50-70%?
My bad 40-70% not 50.
Depending on how you feel about CBS I suppose
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/corona...ldwide-virus-expert-warning-today-2020-03-02/

However Harvard has also cited his estimaion:
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/the-latest-on-the-coronavirus/
Marc Lipsitch said:
According to Marc Lipsitch, 40% to 70% of the world’s adult population could become infected with the new coronavirus, and of those, 1% could die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. (In a later tweet, Lipsitch revised his estimates downward, to 20% to 60% of adults becoming infected.) As of March 2, the coronavirus death toll topped 3,000 worldwide, with nearly 90,000 cases. “If it really does spread as widely as that projection says, and that’s what I think is likely to happen, then there are going to be millions of people dying,” he said. He added, “I think it is now almost inevitable that this will transmit in a global fashion and take a big toll on essentially the entire globe.”

I vaguely remember seeing something similar from CDC or the WHO but can't find anything at the moment.

Bit more here:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200401/how-scientists-predict-how-many-people-will-get-covid-19#1
WebMD said:
on March 21, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he expected between 40% to 80% of New Yorkers to become infected with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. California's governor Gavin Newsom landed on the virus reaching 56% of his state in a letter he wrote to President Trump on March 18. And in a study published March 16, researchers from the Imperial College of London cautioned that without adopting social distancing measures, 81% of the US would be infected.

P.S. I wonder if people will finally stop with the "we must stuff as many people as possible in as tiny area as possible and take away their cars and make them take mass transit" after this.
 
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Think about Vegas how do you open up a Casino? How do you open up a resort? How can you have a show? Blackjack the dealer sits directly across from you. Craps what do you do a table of one? So table games basicly gone. Ok how about slots remove two machines for every one machine? Pools limit the number of people? Forget about pool parties like Temptations Sundays at Luxor. Do you have only stage acts with again maybe a third of tickets only able to be sold?

I dont get what will be accomplished by rushing this
 
Yes it's the other side of that same coin, though I suspect the death counts are more accurate than infection counts.

Usually, they are.

If anything they might be inflated since it's basically up to the doctor to use their judgement to call something a C19 death vs not.

Not really. Covid-19 has a specific set of evident symptoms requiring hospital care; if they had those symptoms, they probably had the illness and were tested. it is more probable that people may have died of Covid-19 and may be buried without being tested or included in the official numbers.

There is also the question of how long the recession (or possibly depression) will actually last. Even as we come out of the lock down how many people will have money to spend on non-essentials?

This is why it is important that the Government help people not going broke before things can restart. Competences and equipment are not going to go away. Demand may only fall if people get no money, not because they don't need things anymore.

As you and Momentum said, though, some industries will be swept away for a time (long or short).

Reopening is not a binary concept, for example NY government has already said they will have three phases of reopening and will evaluate infection rates at the end of each phase to make a decision on whether we can go to next phase or even back a phase.

It is like this everywhere, but if at any point the rate of infections grows again, you will have to go back to an earlier phase again. For how long? Who knows. Another month? Two?

Angela Merkel said it way better than I can.

Cheese expires too, cheese producers have a limited production and storage capacity, warehouses have a limited storage capacity, etc... It's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be.

It wasn't simple, it was a suggestion to think differently than simply throwing milk away. And it is a suggestion, next time, to think this through BEFORE things get this bad, even when things are still good. It is strategic planning.

No country in the world took this possibility into account, all pandemic plans always assumed that early containment was possible no one had any expectation of having to shut down the entire world for a few months.

I never said the US are the only Country with this problem. Most of them have it. This (the possibility of crises of similar amplitude) is a strong indication that this is a systematic problem that needs to be addressed in how we organize our societies. How it was before is way too fragile, as we can see.
 
Not really. Covid-19 has a specific set of evident symptoms requiring hospital care; if they had those symptoms, they probably had the illness and were tested. it is more probable that people may have died of Covid-19 and may be buried without being tested or included in the official numbers.
For one, we are talking about people who died at home without being seen so the symptoms are irrelevant.
For two the symptoms of C19 are the same as about all other upper respiratory infections. Give you an example my wife, myself and both kids had C19 symptoms recently, symptoms were too mild to qualify for actual testing and was basically "chill at home and wait it out". Wife being a medical worker got a serology study done by her hospital, they found no C19 antibodies. Without the initial test for the virus itself we now have no idea what we actually had (probably C19 but who knows?)
For three, when cause of death is reported without an autopsy it is basically a physician's best guess as to what happened. These days you are likely to see CoD being put down as C19 even if it was something else.
Lastly, this varies country by country a lot, IIRC you and France don't count home deaths in official stats, I believe US does (or maybe it's state by state here).
It wasn't simple, it was a suggestion to think differently than simply throwing milk away. And it is a suggestion, next time, to think this through BEFORE things get this bad, even when things are still good. It is strategic planning.
It's easy to say but no one can really strategize for world wide shutdown, our global economy depends on free flow of goods, services and currency there is no way around that. Some industries/companies can keep cash reserves to weather a storm like this but many cannot, for example restaurants generally don't have massive corporate backing and don't have the margins to save up to that extend.

You've said this already but basically the only remedy is governments backing their citizens/businesses.
I never said the US are the only Country with this problem.
You did name US specifically...
Most of them have it.
All of them have it, unless we are counting uncontacted tribes

This is going back to what I was saying about difficulty of developing a vaccine, I know it's Fox News but they are referencing a Chinese study.
TL;DR there are now 30 strains, 19 previously unknown some are way more dangerous than others and there is a good possibility of them being different enough that a single vaccine won't work for all.
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/coronavirus-has-mutated-into-at-least-30-different-strains-study-finds
 
I feel like this is the not too distant future

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I feel like this is the not too distant future

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I’d rather Fury Road personally...

IMO worst case scenario is we get a huge number of deaths (in the millions) and another great depression, this isn’t civilization ending by any means.*

*Assuming we don’t start flinging nukes at each other
 
I’d rather Fury Road personally...

I do to I love bondage gear but that's not the type of mask we need.

IMO worst case scenario is we get a huge number of deaths (in the millions) and another great depression, this isn’t civilization ending by any means.*

*Assuming we don’t start flinging nukes at each other

I don't want part of the dead or diminished lung capacity. Like I said I can weather financial hardships I can't pull a Lazarus because some loons want to run around going to stores so they can pretend to be back to normal.
 
Our local media is now warning of a second wave of COVID locally - we haven't even peaked from the first wave yet. We are pretty lucky that @Kiki and I can both work from home and we live a modest lifestyle. We are still in our first home and would be able to pay our expenses on one income; I work for a large regional healthcare company and my department is expanding. I also have been here long enough and demonstrated enough value that I doubt I would be on the chopping block if we do have to shrink the department. Kiki works for a company that makes remote learning software to get technical certifications - among other things. So they are probably going to be okay.

A lot of people aren't so lucky.
 
If the economy collapses because of a virus like this, it means the economic system had not taken this possibility into account and has to be modified accordingly. A system that does not prepare for foreseeable crisis is a weak system, and we are seeing it right now.

However, part of the collapse will rebuild fast, because needs, competences and, most of the time, equipement, are still there in good shape. Most of the loss can and will be recovered.

Economies can't predict, they are reactive. Hundreds of thousands of people suddenly want understuffed plush dolls, the market starts providing them.

All attempts at creating a predictive economy have failed. The states that tried this ended up tolerating a black market as they were unable to determine what people needed or wanted.

Capitalism will always recover, it has been doing so since before history. The problem is the length it takes to recover. If it takes a while, people will starve.

This is why the UN has warned there may be a "biblical" famine as a result of this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52373888

Food production is indeed one of the most important things to consider, and one of the few production lines that should not really stop.

But if milk is getting wasted, make cheese. When, in due time, milk will cost a fortune and cheese will be cheap, people will eat cheese. Which means: adapt, rather than throwing food away.

Most of the problems for the food production industry, here, come not from the reduced demand, but because of the lack of specialized workers in the fields, who are usually foreigners who cannot enter the country right now; or illegal immigrants enslaved at 2-3€ per day who can't be used now because the police controls when too many people are together and who can't be regularized because the owners don't want to (or can't economically) pay them adequately and because many xenophobes oppose this anyway (the same hypocrit people who normally have no problem in buying and eating cheap produce picked by those same immigrants...)

I assume they are already making cheese, the cheese market isn't the same as the milk market. If I want to make pancakes, I can't just replace the milk with cheese. There are whole production lines dependent on the milk, but it is no longer as profitable to make milk so the farmers stop producing it. People in those industries loose their jobs. Everything is interconnect.

I agree that illegal immigrants are the new slave class. Which is why I support forcing businesses to hire citizens and legal immigrants.

This shows the fragility of the system. But then again, when the market is too free, this might happen. Too many people believed that the high rates of return we experienced were free of risks. They aren't free (that's both the most basic rules of the market tied together: nothing is free and the higher the reward, the higher the risk). So, better be prepared if something goes the wrong way.



You might have to anyway, because if things reopen too early, another lockdown will come, and it will be economically worse than the first one, or you'll have another, and another, and another, with a devastating compound effect. It would be like two or more hurricanes hitting the same place in a short period of time. The first is a disaster, the second is a massacre. The third...

Economically, the impact WILL be disastrous. This is why the Government should use its strength to alleviate the suffering and avoid panick-behaviours that would worsen the effects of the crisis. Also because, as we have said, the demand and competences and equipment can all be there after the crisis, if companies and workers and families will be helped to get by and not get broke.

Where does that money come from now that a significant part of the population is no longer paying taxes? Inflate too much and you get hyper-inflation which makes everyone broke.

Governments are terrible are predicting the market for the same reason everyone is terrible at predicting the market, it's a chaotic reactive system. Economies are built on the wants and needs of each individual taking part in them. In order to predict a market, you need to know what each individual inside it is thinking. Educated guesses can be made, but they will never be reliable. Add a black swan like COVID, and all you have is chaos.

Capitalism always recovers, the problem is how long it will take.

I don't want this to be the answer, but we might have to just say fuck it and let COVID run its course. It's a choice between a turd sandwich or shit stew.
 
Can confirm, I've been working at a dairy in Michigan where they haven't stopped. their 3x nearly 10MW boilers are still humming away.

Another one in Wisconsin a collegue was at this week also had to work while the boiler was maintining production, they had a problem but it's since fixed.


Also to note, Nestle Waters are still moving along where we did a start up at last week of new equipment. I have a PM Service scheduled for May at a soap factory where they just built a new boiler room with European sourced equipment. This will be a struggle as they brought in Italian workers which will not be coming this time.
 
We have also been speculating about how long Norway will be under (partial) lockdown. Nobody knows for sure but there are some hints of what lies ahead.

International travel is most likely a no-go for the rest of 2020, so no holidays abroad, our minister of health said that last weekend. Further, any use of public transportation must be at an absolute minimum an reserved for those who have critical jobs and/or have no choice but to use public transport to get to/from work. I have figured we won't be back in our office until maybe after the summer, as it is not critical for us to be there, we currently have a home office solution that works, and all of our case files are digital. Those who are working with physical case files (cases older than 2010) will most likely be prioritized to go to our offices.

No matter how much keeping in touch with colleagues with Microsoft Teams sucks, it's better than having no job. This is one of the very few scenarios where being an underpaid government bureaucrat pays off.

Our current Covid-19 numbers are:
7225 infected (on average less than 100 new cases per day since last week)
187 dead (on average 5-10 new per day)
131 in hospital (peak was 324)
54 in intensive care (peak was 117)
33 in ventilator (peak was 99)
 
Capitalism will always recover, it has been doing so since before history. The problem is the length it takes to recover. If it takes a while, people will starve.

Who cares if capitalism will recover? Do you eat capitalism? Do you have time to wait until it does?
I don't care about ideology. I see societies that were wealthy, and yet mostly failed to protect themselves from a danger they knew could come.

This is why the UN has warned there may be a "biblical" famine as a result of this.

A fantastic success of capitalism. Everyhing is a success, even famine.
BTW, criticizing capitalism DOES NOT MEAN endorsing the only other system you can think of.

I agree that illegal immigrants are the new slave class. Which is why I support forcing businesses to hire citizens and legal immigrants.

They do resort to slave even if that's illegal and legally punishable... Most of the times, they wouldgo broke becaue they can't really afford paying them fully.

Governments are terrible are predicting the market for the same reason everyone is terrible at predicting the market, it's a chaotic reactive system.

Stop thinking that everything other than US capitalism is Government-decided sovietic 5-year plans. There is a world in between, and also sideways.

Add a black swan like COVID, and all you have is chaos.
Covid-19 is not a black swan. It was predictable.

Capitalism always recovers, the problem is how long it will take.

In the meantime, many may die. This is why I say the system has many flaws that should be addressed. People do not eat capitalism.

I don't want this to be the answer, but we might have to just say fuck it and let COVID run its course.

This is not a movie, nobody gets a plot armour.

Let it run wild, let people die in the corridors of hospitals, and you'll see those who are still healthy abandon their jobs to try and save themselves and their families; and f*ck the businesses. And bye to the economy.
 
For the last couple of weeks, Stockholm have been a hotspot when it comes to new infections in Sweden with around 75-90% of the new cases. This weekend police shut down 4 pubs/restaurants there and fined 20 more for not following the rules of a maximum of 50 people and/or the distancing.

A local politician from the small town of Storfors went to Stockholm to actively try and catch the virus "just for fun". He then tried to sue the other political parties in his hometown because they shut him out of meetings because of said virus.

In short: people are fucking stupid.
 
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