Wuhan Coronavirus - are you prepared?

[LanghamP]

On 4/13/2020 at 4:17 AM, Grumly said:

That would be some kind if irony if the lockdown inflates (no pun intended) the overweight and under-exercised population, who is indeed more vulnerable to respiratory diseases...

As long as we have bbq, beer and cake, why worry :-)

...

I can't see my feet anymore !!! Damn I'm blind !!!

A lot (most?) of these US suburbs aren't safe to walk or bike around, as they are driveways that feed into 35 mph 4 lane stroads. The South seems especially prone to having "moated" houses whereby the only access is via automobile, but all US cities have their share of hostile suburbs. You could practically guess who will become fat just by looking at the neighborhood.

[Grumly]

I experienced this some time ago. I went in the US only once when I was 20 for an internship near Boston, MA. That was about 24 years ago.

I was planning to rent a car and then had the unpleasant surprise that no car rental company would accept a customer under 21. My trip was too short (a little less than 2 months) to buy/sell a used car.

So I have been able to "enjoy" being a pedestrian / cyclist in a US suburb. Well, I really felt like an alien from outer space :-D

I don't know if this has changed much since that time.

[Rehab1]

My company received PPP funding from my bank today. Unfortunately 1000’s of other businesses who were still waiting in line for PPP funding learned this afternoon that the SBA no longer had any funds left in the program. This is terrible news. 

I now feel guilty and saddened for the other businesses even though my employee’s will sleep better tonight.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Rehab1

[atdlzpae]

2 hours ago, Rehab1 said:

I now feel guilty and saddened for the other businesses even though my employee’s will sleep better tonight.

Don't feel guilty, be happy that you got something, as you're providing a useful service.

FED just recently bailed out *Citadel, Millennium And Point72 which don't provide any value to the economy and are just speculating on the market. They should end the quarter with a loss, but noooooooooooooooooo... Poor millionaire investors would lose money.

* Citadel's senior adviser is Ben Bernanke, a former FED chairman.

Edited April 17, 2020 by atdlzpae

[LanghamP]

3 hours ago, atdlzpae said:

FED just recently bailed out *Citadel, Millennium And Point72 which don't provide any value to the economy and are just speculating on the market. They should end the quarter with a loss, but noooooooooooooooooo... Poor millionaire investors would lose money.

I'm disconcerted at how decisively the Feds are picking winners and losers in the energy industry. While coal and gas companies have been funded and not lost employees, the solar industry has not and lost most of their most of their employees. I think the solar industry has been eliminated with one decisive blow, judging by the number of ex-employees. In addition, today the EPA eliminated mercury regulations. Mercury pollution is mostly from burning coal; most people living near coal plants have some extent of mercury poisoning, and so controlling mercury levels constrains coal usage. This could be really dangerous if those constraints are eliminated.

[Kens]

Man: I want to return this.

Worker: I'm sorry sir we cannot accept your return.

Man: What why?? I want to speak to the manager! 

Manager:

Edited April 17, 2020 by Kens

[atdlzpae]

@Rehab1 You're very lucky - it looks like the funds were very mismanaged and are already gone. Louis Rossmann has an interesting take on this "help". Small business are like always, screwed.

 

[Rehab1]

9 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

@Rehab1 You're very lucky - it looks like the funds were very mismanaged and are already gone. Louis Rossmann has an interesting take on this "help". Small business are like always, screwed.

 

Thanks! I had my initial doubts. It took three days of document preparation but I must have satisfied the SBA’s loan requirements.

I do worry that many companies will mismanage the funds or not pay the employees that are currently collecting unemployment. I also hate to hear about lending institutions abusing the system designed to help the smaller Mom and Pop stores. Hopefully another influx of capital will be available soon. 

[mrelwood]

4 hours ago, Rehab1 said:

Hopefully another influx of capital will be available soon. 

It really doesn’t sound like the lack of capital is the issue here though, or that more of it would make anything different.

I deeply respect Mr Rossman for what he does in pulling people’s attention to these kinds of matters, Right To Repair, etc. But at the end of the day everything he talks about gets my blood pumping in a bit too bad of a manner, and since I live quite far from the US anyway, they don’t directly affect my life very much, so I’ve stopped watching his videos.

 Not something I’d recommend to US citizens though. That stuff needs to be known.

Edited April 18, 2020 by mrelwood

[Gasmantle]

I don't know what the situation is like in other countries but in the UK we seem to have a shambolic government without any direction.

First we had herd immunity and no lockdown, now it's lockdown that is a joke when I can travel across London on the Underground without restriction if it is essential.

We have medical staff working without proper PPE.

We don't test anything like enough people and as a result we have no real picture of the extent of the problem.

The elderly and infirm are dropping like flies in care homes yet somehow they don't count in the daily statistics?

The UK government couldn't empty a boot full of water if the instructions were written on the sole.

[atdlzpae]

6 hours ago, Gasmantle said:

now it's lockdown that is a joke when I can travel across London on the Underground without restriction if it is essential

Isn't that a good thing? When you forbid people from traveling, they die.
I understand that there are huge crowds... But what can you do in a city as densely populated? You can't buy everyone a bicycle.

Edited April 18, 2020 by atdlzpae

[Gasmantle]

4 hours ago, atdlzpae said:

Isn't that a good thing? When you forbid people from traveling, they die.
I understand that there are huge crowds... But what can you do in a city as densely populated? You can't buy everyone a bicycle.

The point I was making (although I didn't explain it very well)

Is that I can travel unrestricted on public transport, using ticket machines, grabbing handrails, door handles etc and nobody seems bothered but if I want to go a mile up the road on my EUC it is the crime of the century.

If we are going to do something lets do it properly or it makes a mockery of the rules.

[Patton250]

2 hours ago, Gasmantle said:

The point I was making (although I didn't explain it very well)

Is that I can travel unrestricted on public transport, using ticket machines, grabbing handrails, door handles etc and nobody seems bothered but if I want to go a mile up the road on my EUC it is the crime of the century.

If we are going to do something lets do it properly or it makes a mockery of the rules.

Whoever said government makes sense?? 

[Gasmantle]

38 minutes ago, Patton250 said:

Whoever said government makes sense?? 

I'd agree with that.

I used to think the USA were crazy for electing their president then a few years later we elect our very own half wit as prime minister.  

[Patton250]

6 minutes ago, Gasmantle said:

I'd agree with that.

I used to think the USA were crazy for electing their president then a few years later we elect our very own half wit as prime minister.  

You won’t get any agreement from me on that. Im as conservative as you can get. I happen to like your new Prime Minister. But then again I’m a capitalist. No worries we still have EUCs in common. :-)

Edited April 19, 2020 by Patton250

[Gasmantle]

28 minutes ago, Patton250 said:

You won’t get any agreement from me on that. Im as conservative as you can get. I happen to like your new Prime Minister. But then again I’m a capitalist. No worries we still have EUCs in common. :-)

No probs, I'm a hard core socialist - I have even voted for the communist party on the odd occasion that they've fielded a candidate in my constituency.

[travsformation]

12 hours ago, Gasmantle said:

The point I was making (although I didn't explain it very well)

Is that I can travel unrestricted on public transport, using ticket machines, grabbing handrails, door handles etc and nobody seems bothered but if I want to go a mile up the road on my EUC it is the crime of the century.

If we are going to do something lets do it properly or it makes a mockery of the rules.

Amen to that! Same here... 

Testing is reserved only for people whose respiratory problems are severe enough to warrant hospitalization, so the official stats represent just a fraction of reality. Senior citizens dying in nursing homes (or alone, in their home) aren't being counted either. 

Or as you said, I can get fined for going for an EUC ride along deserted paths through tut woods, while non-essential workers are being forced to go back to work, involving a ridiculously higher potential of infection (working in close quarters in office buildings with no ventilation, etc). Add that the government has exempted companies of providing masks and hands sanitizer for their employees, and that they haven't effectively secured enough for the population anyway... People are starting to get mad... 

Edited April 19, 2020 by travsformation

[Gasmantle]

I can accept that the virus is serious and clearly something needs to be done to reduce spread but I can't help but think governments are using the threat as a way of ushering in more strict controls on their citizens.

I'm not sure what other countries are looking at but it seems the UK are trying to get all the public to install an app the their smart phone that will track the locations of people in relation to others. The idea is if a person contracts the virus the app will then notify all other people who that person has had close contact with. The use of the technology is to be voluntary and on the face of it sounds like a good idea, personally I think it sets a dangerous precedent.

It is all very well saying it is a voluntary scheme but what if years later another government comes along and says the scheme was a success so it is to be rolled out again but will be compulsory in 'the interests of public health'. It wouldn't be much of a problem for the government to issue every adult with a phone/tracker as part of the deal in making it compulsory.

Before you know it every citizen is effectively fitted with a government tracker.

Where does it stop? Why not load the tracker with a persons address, their bank details, their blood group, vaccine status, crime record, employment status etc.

Why not implant the tracker under the skin? The potential is limitless.

I know it sounds far fetched but I firmly believe, this kind of surveillance isn't far away, once a government can instil a culture of fear in its citizens they will agree to anything. Since 9/11 we are constantly told restrictions are imposed in order to 'fight the war on terrorism?' As far as I'm concerned Covid19 is being used as phase 2 of the same idea.

We tag dogs, not people.

 

[atdlzpae]

Can we please move the offtop to a dedicated topic? Discussion about socialism is a good debate, but this thread is already a total mess.

[travsformation]

On 4/20/2020 at 12:06 AM, atdlzpae said:

Can we please move the offtop to a dedicated topic? Discussion about socialism is a good debate, but this thread is already a total mess.

Conversation split to:

(don't ask about the image the forum chose, it's auto-generated)  

Edited April 23, 2020 by travsformation

[travsformation]

On 4/18/2020 at 2:59 AM, Rehab1 said:

I do worry that many companies will mismanage the funds or not pay the employees that are currently collecting unemployment. I also hate to hear about lending institutions abusing the system designed to help the smaller Mom and Pop stores. Hopefully another influx of capital will be available soon. 

Your fears are not unfounded...

Hundreds of millions of dollars of Paycheck Protection Program funds have been claimed by large, publicly traded companies. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/large-public-companies-are-taking-small-businesses-payroll-loans.html

"Hundreds of millions of dollars of Paycheck Protection Program emergency funding have been claimed by large, publicly traded companies, new research published by Morgan Stanley shows. In fact, the U.S. government has allocated at least $243.4 million of the total $349 billion to publicly traded companies, the firm said. The PPP was designed to help the nation’s smallest, mom-and-pop shops keep employees on payroll and prevent mass layoffs across the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But the research shows that several of the companies that have received aid have market values well in excess of $100 million, including DMC Global ($405 million), Wave Life Sciences ($286 million) and Fiesta Restaurant Group ($189 million). Fiesta, which employs more than 10,000 people, according to its last reported annual number, received a PPP loan of $10 million, Morgan Stanley’s data showed. At least 75 companies that have received the aid were publicly traded and received a combined $300 million in low-interest, taxpayer-backed loans, according to a separate report published by The Associated Press."

Edited April 23, 2020 by travsformation

[LanghamP]

6 hours ago, travsformation said:

In fact, the U.S. government has allocated at least $243.4 million of the total $349 billion to publicly traded companies, the firm said. 

That's 1/10 of 1%.

I did notice Harvard and other universities aren't refunding student board and room despite not providing board and room.

[mike_bike_kite]

17 hours ago, travsformation said:

Conversation split to:

I'm confused. Aren't these off topic discussions going in the other post?

[travsformation]

3 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I'm confused. Aren't these off topic discussions going in the other post?

I guess it depends on how you see this thread. If it's exclusive COVID-19, healthcare implications, preparedness, etc., then a lot of the content I didn't split doesn't belong here. But this is, after all, an off-topic thread, and the way I see it, the subject is a global pandemic whose economic effects can't be separated from the health crisis, neither "in the real world" nor in this thread, so I personally don't see COVID-19 related economic discussions as being complete departures from the subject of the thread. Economic and financial news and discussions are going to keep resurfacing one way or another, I don't see much point in over-moderating the thread. It is what it is.

The posts I moved when splitting it were broader, more abstract discussions on economics, capitalism, socialism, etc., that were no longer connected to the current situation. That way that discussion can continue in the other thread (if the parties involved care to), and this once can stay on-topic (within the still broad chaotic domain of COVID-19 and its countless implications and ramifications). 

 

[LanghamP]

In the US, already about 1/3 of renters weren't able to make their April rent. About 56% of people under the age of thirty who DID have a job lost their job. These are mostly terrible service jobs that are now gone.

But as @travsformationcomplains about going off topic, should we care about the younger generation? I don't interact with them, I know that very few of the under 30 females are interested in dating an old geezer like me, and so I wonder if the Baby Boomers were right to buy lots of stuff today and stick the younger generation with the bill tomorrow.

On the other hand, we are seeing a lot of people already running out of money, can't even buy food, can't make rent, can't use public services (public transportation, streets, parks, etc...), enforced by Draconian authorities (who can still use all those services and they still get paid).

It might simply be in the best interest of Millinials to infect as many as possible, because covid-19 has minimum effects on younger people. Half of the US Navy personal (young and in shape) had no symptoms whatsoever.