The Coronavirus thread

[elrodvt]

As an aside, Gman took a lot of heat and stuck with it. I think your concept of being uncivil is kinda touchy.

[urbanlover568]

 

BP, Amoco offer 50 cents off per gallon of gas for first responders, medical workers

 

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/491272-bp-offering-first-responders-medical-workers-a-discount-of-50?fbclid=IwAR2xIN7L-BaIe5YLWv8weA22anWnxnAyYzms3jp6lPVKHUfYYeNsdR3rc60

[11 HouseBZ]

Possibly

[elrodvt]

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/04/05/bryant-barr-helps-stephen-curry-deliver-key-message-on-virus-risks/

Nice public service.

[kermit]

2 hours ago, 11 HouseBZ said:

I get those points, my focus is more in the smaller world issues and personal opinions. I said "could be wrong" mainly because I'm referring mainly to opinions in general that I haven't looked into and or can't verify a position. It wasn't for A2's comments in particular. 

As far as how to deal with the bigger issues you've brought up, I don't know. That's bigger than me to figure out. I would just like to help keep this forum civil. Disagreed, defend your position, challenge others on theirs. But we can do it as adults.

Now back to topic, I really hope everybody is making it through this alright.

(My comments were not specifically in reference to A2 either)

I guess our dilemma is where you draw the line between 'small issues' and 'above my pay grade issues'.  It is my position that the propagandists (my term, not yours) have adopted the rhetorical  strategy of sewing uncertainty by telling small lies in support of larger ones. Being civil in the face of these small lies (e.g. "the Corona virus is just the flu, if I can get a bud at TGIFridays that will prove big government is unnecessary") simply delays our response to our immediate crises and allows their misdirection to have a longer half-life -- the end result is that more people die.

I have been posting here since 2005, I also very much want UP to remain civil. Unfortunately this sort of propaganda appears everywhere, it acts as a cancer. It metastasizes into anyone who reads it. Responding to it civilly allows it to continue to metastasize over the length of the discussion, and nobody benefits from more cancer. Unfortunately geography (urban and rural) is now political,  so that means UP is on the front lines of this war weather we like it or not.

I hope everybody is making their way through this OK as well!

Edited April 6, 2020 by kermit

[elrodvt]

WRAL.com: 2 dozen at N. Carolina assisted living center test positive.
https://www.wral.com/2-dozen-at-n-carolina-assisted-living-center-test-positive/19043557/

Inevitable and very sad.

[gman430]

3 hours ago, elrodvt said:

As an aside, Gman took a lot of heat and stuck with it. I think your concept of being uncivil is kinda touchy.

What can I say? I just sit here, drink beer, and watch the world destroy itself on CNN.  I knew I was gonna stir up the hornets nest also so I wasn’t surprised by the responses.

Edited April 6, 2020 by gman430

[Popsickle]

4 hours ago, urbanlover568 said:

I'm very glad you brought up this.

2 countries who started with COVID 19 at the same time:

US:

 

South Korea:

 

It's not hard to see which country got it right. 

What does the US have almost one million of as of the end of March?  It can’t be cases...
 

While CDC reports around 300K, today...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
 

 

 

[urbanlover568]

4 hours ago, urbanlover568 said:

I'm very glad you brought up this.

2 countries who started with COVID 19 at the same time:

US:

 

South Korea:

 

It's not hard to see which country got it right. 

 

3 minutes ago, Popsickle said:

What does the US have almost one million of as of the end of March?  It can’t be cases...
 

While CDC reports around 300K, today...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
 

 

 

fixed

[Popsickle]

18 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

 

fixed

Thanks for making it accuratish! 

[TCLT]

7 hours ago, urbanlover568 said:

 

fixed

Your South Korea chart is log scale and US chart is standard. The shape of the curves presented thus shouldn't be compared. The SK data in standard scale would not be curving flat as shown, but would be increasing in a shallow linear slope. Still a stark difference from US data, but not quite as stark. Your overall point is still supported. Data source is JHU.

[southernnorthcarolina]

The deadly effects of this pandemic are rightly the biggest concern, as reflected in this thread.  But economic impacts will last long after the disease has been minimized or eradicated, and will exact a toll of their own.

The poor and middle class will feel the biggest hit, of course.  If their current jobs are in retail, or in manufacturing of items sold by retailers, or real estate, or any of dozens of fields, their jobs may not be coming back, ever.  There will be a lot of retail stores and chains, and especially bars and restaurants, that will go under, sometimes dragging their landlords down with them.  Employees of such companies are the ones you hear about living paycheck to paycheck, or being unable to afford a $500 hit for an unexpected expense.  Some will be kept on the payroll for a few weeks, and most will receive some taxpayer help, but they will see a substantial decline in their incomes, and of course a sharp reduction in their ability to spend.

But the financially comfortable will also change their spending habits, and inject a lot less into the economy.  I talked yesterday with a friend who has recently retired.  He has no financial worries.  His generous pension is iron-clad, he owns a nice house free and clear, and more importantly, has a sizeable and diverse stock and bond portfolio.  My guess is that he falls just short of the 1%-er threshold, but is almost certainly a 2%-er.  He and his wife won't be traveling in the near future, and probably not for months after bans are limited.  Similarly, he likely won't return to his favorite bar and restaurant, even when (or if) it re-opens.  In the short term, these choices are made for him by government edict.  But in the longer term, personal choice will be the determining factor.  Economists speak of the "weath effect," the paychological urge for consumers to spend more when they feel richer, based on their brokerage statement or some other measure.  Well, the wealth effect works on the downside, too.

In our call, by friend mused that he enjoyed having a Hendrick's martini or two at a certain bar.  The bill was about $15 per drink; two plus tax and tip was $40.  At home, the same two drinks were about $6, and if he switched to a less expensive gin, maybe $3.  So, an 80 to 90% discount on drinks, plus you watch the TV channel you want to watch instead of what's on at the bar, and you get your favotite seat every time.  If he goes to the bar twice a week, that's about $4200 a year.  Can he afford that?  Without a doubt.  But he'd just seen his Merrill Lynch statement, which was awash in red.  Learned behavior as mandated by government regulation, plus the wealth effect after the bans are limited, mean that it will likely be a long, long time before he returns to the bar.

Drinks bought by one guy at one bar is a microcosm of what will happen.  It's not just inability to spend, but psychological aversion to spending.  Larger purchases than martinis will be affected.  New cars, second homes, ski trips to Utah or golf trips to Hawaii will be deferred, if not canceled outright.  And, of course, to the overall subject of this forum, commercial real estate -- office, multifamily, and especially hotel development -- will take a big hit.  The economic recovery will take longer -- much longer -- than the pandemic recovery.

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by southernnorthcarolina

[ertley]

One factor in all of this, that I haven't heard any commentary on, that helped sow doubt and disbelief early on is that this outbreak was initially concentrated among the affluent, or relatively affluent. In general, you either had been traveling internationally, or were in contact with someone who had been, if you were an early case. One of my best friends (an American) lives in Madrid but is married to an Italian who lives in Milan--before all this, they commuted between the two cities--and I had firsthand accounts of how it was spreading in Europe, when a lot of people in the States were only seeing accounts on t.v. Another friend's brother who lives in the U.K. somehow managed to have pancreatitis concurrent with covid 19 and was put into a medically-induced coma the week before last; miraculously, he seems to be stabilizing. I had atypical connections to it, and was concerned early on; but it doesn't make me prescient, just with early direct (virtual) contact.

The fact that the first epicenters of outbreak here were in coastal cities, i.e. urban 'blue' areas, was a manifestation of this socio-economic differentiation and was, weirdly, emblematic of our times: These socio-economic and geographic differences in early experience really affected people's appraisal of the situation. Historically, though, most outbreaks of this sort start not at the 'top' but somewhere in the general populace--tuberculosis, typhoid, the 1918 flu--and then work their ways in all directions, so the fear and agitation were more immediate, even if it meant certain people or groups were still scapegoated. I think that historical prejudice worked in weird ways this time around. 

Too many people, myself included, have to have a direct experience of something like this to really take it as seriously as one should, and I really do think the initial stratification of this outbreak had measurable effects on its spread and containment. Then, of course, with Donald Trump as president, whether you're a supporter or not it's objective fact his politics are explicitly "us versus them" in principle, the pre-existing social and political climate exacerbated normal human tendencies.    

But it's no longer limited to the coasts and the upper socio-economic strata, because of course viruses don't adhere to those distinctions.  I'm perversely thankful that the first person known to be positive in my hometown is someone who, in a 'micro' way, mirrors the general U.S. spread--someone my parents and family all know and respect--and so they've all immediately begun to take it more seriously than they had been, when it was more of an abstract notion or possibility.

In terms of the economic fallout, I vacillate from despairing to gong into deliberate denial, but the one factor that keeps me from permanent despair is that this is a global pandemic, and so we're all going to be affected equally, which at least means the U.S. won't be at a disproportionate disadvantage during the recovery, when it begins. It's not like it began and was concentrated here and other countries are going to be able to profit from our misfortune. For lots and lots of obvious reasons, we're at a huge advantage . I hate to talk in Malthusian terms, but if this does what it is very likely is capable of to India, with its hundreds of millions of people living in slums, it could set them back a generation economically. Business and finance friends of mine have been saying for a decade that China's economic expansion has plateaued and that India was the next Asian tiger , with an equally large potential workforce and potential...but this is very likely to upend all of that. And then of course there's what could happen in Africa, where its major cities (Lagos, Nairobi et al.) have huge percentages of the populations living in slum areas. 

I just hope that, unlike after 9/11 (IMO), we can manage to have rational, scientific, evidence-based discussions about what our response to this has to be, and that we make policy--political and economic--changes that genuinely are designed to combat a future outbreak like this, because the same epidemiologists who predicted this also say that this isn't going to be an isolated event. More are coming. And of course I read just this morning that China's 'wet markets' are opening back up (another conversation entirely). Of course, 2001 pre-dated the internet and the extraordinary role it plays in misinformation, so I'm not too optimistic. But we have to try to get everyone to understand that the impulse to try and make things as much like  they were before isn't going to be the correct one. That would be the worst outcome from this.

One specific area I've thought about--and this isn't meant to ignite a controversy, but just an example of how we're going to have to reconsider everything, so no one has to agree, I'm just thinking out loud--is education. We can't endure periodic cessations of our school systems like this, once or twice each generation. Most immediately, if there's a second wave of this in the fall, like they're predicting, we're looking at schools being shut down again for several months, which will cumulatively mean nearly an entire school year lost. The way things stand now, most public schools can't mandate e-learning, even if they're prepared to do it (which most obviously weren't and aren't), because internet access isn't universal, and equity is (understandably) a mantra of the public system. That's one issue that the technocrats will be all over, but I think the bigger (mid-term) issue here is the need for a coordinated, nationwide ability to respond to this, so that all districts and schoolchildren are 'on the same page' and can provide children with some degree of decent learning during future events. I understand the advantages, desire and need for local control of schools, but there's got to be a reformulation, even if it's only for 'emergency declarations', for some kind of central coordination of lessons, and more importantly platforms for their dissemination, so each and every district and school in the country aren't desperately working concurrently and redundantly on the exact same issue, when a centralized, coordinated response could provide well-conceived lessons designed and delivered from the top teachers in the country to each and every child. If lessons and their delivery are handled (dare I say it) at the federal level, that would have the added benefit of freeing local districts to then deal with their own local problems, of children who have specific issues, even if they're just about connectivity. But something like that will take (IMO) the courage to make serious adjustments to our public education system, because of course all the objections people will raise to what I've just posited are the products of the current way of doing things.

The health care system, with absolute certainty, is going to face intense reassessment in the coming years. It's weirdly coincidental that the 1918 flu pandemic--which actually originated in isolated farming areas in western Kansas, in a (now) ghost town called Santa Fe (it's fascinating, look it up)--not only hastened World War I's end but also is directly responsible for socialized medicine in the U.K. and elsewhere. They too didn't see the need for state-run or centralized medicine until the flu ravaged their civilian populations in addition to their surviving soldiers on the heels of World War I, and their private and charity-based hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed. All of this current fracas about lack of bed space and equipment capacity and coordination is going to lead straight to the same debate if we end up with actual bed shortages, ventilator rationing and patient deaths directly due to patient prioritization. 

Our '20s are going to be an interesting decade, just like the 1920s were. 

Edited April 6, 2020 by ertley

[urbanlover568]

i'm happy to see the Trump admin finally take ownership of this and provide services. We are seeing encouraging signs in New York where cases are beginning to flat line. Also, Washington, Oregon, and California are finally past the curve. The stock market is recovering tremendously and liquidity is flowing into the economy. If inflation does not skyrocket, we could be looking at a market comeback like no other. Many reasons to celebrate now! 

[eastsider]

Some good news that social distancing is working:

Quote

The updated Washington projections reflect government policies to keep people apart and slow the spread of the virus. Researchers say they now have better information from Italy and Spain about how quickly death rates slowed after social distancing was enforced, and that has brought down the projected death rates for several states, including North Carolina.

Charlotte Observer: Social distancing may be working: Researchers cut projected COVID-19 death toll in NC

[urbanlover568]

Denmark's prime minister has decided to reopen the country's kindergartens and schools up to fifth grade after easter. This will be the start of a 'gradual' reopening of the danish society. 

[gman430]

Boris Johnson now in ICU according to CNN. Yikes.

Edited April 6, 2020 by gman430

[urbanlover568]

10 minutes ago, gman430 said:

Boris Johnson now in ICU according to CNN. Yikes.

Hopefully he recovers soon! He's on a ventilator now

[kermit]

On 4/5/2020 at 1:28 PM, CLT2014 said:

Good point! Here is the curve as of today for NC (hopefully we see a better trend continue):

 

Today's chart shows us that he weekend data-reporting-lag  head-fake effect is still with us. Yesterday's data told us nothing about trend direction, tomorrow should help clear things up.

As related to our capacity to deal with infected North Carolinian's Jeff Jackson said in today's email update:

Quote

North Carolina has received three shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile, which means we’ve received 33% of our request. We’ve been told the stockpile is nearly depleted and not to expect any more shipments.

Katie offers a more local perspective on PPE:

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by kermit

[gman430]

Well, Henry McMaster finally did it. 

Edited April 6, 2020 by gman430

[kermit]

Vote By Mail!

 

It will save many lives.

It eliminates lines at the polls.

It will make the economy more stable by reducing exposure risk.

It will allow us to reduce the potential contamination of the churches and schools that may serve as voting locations in the future.

Five states already do it exclusively already: Colorado, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah.

Two plus million military, dependents, diplomats and expatriates do it every year.

Republicans have never been concerned about absentee ballot fraud in the past.

I have done it for three elections in NC (via absentee ballot).

 

Why Not? [I know why not, but everybody benefits when we make the right say it out loud]

Edited April 7, 2020 by kermit

[davidclt]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

Vote By Mail!

It will save many lives.

It will make the economy more stable by reducing exposure risk.

It will allow us to reduce the potential contamination of the churches and schools that serve as voting locations.

Five states already do it exclusively already: Colorado, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah. I have done it for three elections in NC (via absentee ballot).

Why Not?

The quiet part has been said out loud:
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/trump-dems-clash-boosting-mail-voting-pandemic-69979203

But Trump opposes voting by mail and is leading Republicans in a battle to limit its use, arguing that it would encourage fraud and lead to so many people voting that his party could not win.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490879-georgias-gop-house-speaker-says-vote-by-mail-system-would-be-devastating

 

Georgia state House Speaker David Ralston (R) is coming out against a recent effort taken by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to mail absentee ballot request forms to all voters in the state amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying the move could be “devastating” for Republican candidates. 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/27/15701708/voting-by-mail

The bill has little chance of passage — one of the core truths of US politics is that anything that increases voting turnout hurts Republicans, so they inevitably oppose it. But at the very least it ought to kick up a national conversation about America’s abysmal voting system and one dead-simple way to fix it.

[kermit]

^ yeah, I know. F' em.

Lets make their efforts to deny democracy to Americans by endangering their lives plain for everyone to see this election year. The Wisconsin supreme court just ruled that any Wisconsinite  who wants to exercise their right to vote in their primary must show up at the polls tomorrow and stand in line....  I think that's gonna leave a mark in a swing state.

#Revolution

Edited April 7, 2020 by kermit

[urbanlover568]

‘I’m Covered In Jesus’ Blood’: Defiant Churchgoers Say They’re Immune From Catching COVID-19

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/04/04/ohio-church-service-covid-19-pandemic-tuchman-pkg-ac360-vpx.cnn

[elrodvt]

POLITICO: California sends 500 ventilators back to national stockpile.
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/06/california-sends-500-ventilators-back-to-national-stockpile-1272393