Coronavirus (COVID-19) is too exciting for adults to discuss (CLOSED)

[heisman]

1. Everyone's in the same boat, so would work.
2. We are the world's economy. The USD is the de facto world currency. If we say we're not paying interest for a month, we're not paying interest for a month.
3. Even just covering the intl interest payments would be a lot less than the $4 Trillion slush fund and $2 Trillion printed by the Fed, the overwhelming majority of which is going straight into the hands of people who don't need it, didn't do a single thing to earn it, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue we're in.

You literally have no idea what you are talking about, and I don't have time to write a dissertation to explain the world's varying cultures, laws, and economies to you. It's just complete and total ignorance (No offense to you personally). It has nothing to do with banks and interest, etc....absolutely nothing. And yes, I know what I'm talking about because I own factories in these countries, and if those countries shut down your factories, the entire supply chain in this country goes completely kaput. Those are the cold hard facts and they are not debatable.

 

[Jaxbuck]

The Achilles heel in this whole thing is the healthcare system, no? More testing won't alleviate the surge of people flooding emergency rooms, right, or am I missing something?

Granted, if we'd ramped up testing in, say, January (when it seems that, finger-pointing aside everybody knew about this thing), maybe we could have put resources and emergency response / preparedness measures in place to handle the hot-spots. Though... I'm not sure what more we would have been willing to do in January after we realized that there aren't enough respirators in place. I think there were credible voices already raising flags on that (even without testing) as early as mid-February.

So... bottom line in my IMO... we definitely missed the boat on testing, but I don't think we could have summoned the political will to do anything with/about the results we'd see.

The political will is the key part of your statement and I don't know that I disagree.

In a vacuum, more testing would help alleviate the bottleneck of the health care system (appropriate resource allocation for appropriate disease) but at some point it gets swamped no matter what. Very widespread testing could have helped us not swamp the economy at the same time by allowing us to do more pinpoint social distancing (option #2 in the Royal College study). IE isolate the sick and highly at risk but not have the blanket shutdowns.

You are right though, in the real world, no politician is going to take the more well thought out and longer term approach. They all want to be seen as going above and beyond in the immediate term so they can get re-elected in their next cycle but leave someone else the long term bill for the damage to the economy and the health issues that will come from the lockdowns.

My biggest regret of everything so far with COVID-19 is that more politicians haven't gotten it. It could have done some real good there.

 

[AKAK]

The political will is the key part of your statement and I don't know that I disagree.

In a vacuum, more testing would help alleviate the bottleneck of the health care system (appropriate resource allocation for appropriate disease) but at some point it gets swamped no matter what. Very widespread testing could have helped us not swamp the economy at the same time by allowing us to do more pinpoint social distancing (option #2 in the Royal College study). IE isolate the sick and highly at risk but not have the blanket shutdowns.

You are right though, in the real world, no politician is going to take the more well thought out and longer term approach. They all want to be seen as going above and beyond in the immediate term so they can get re-elected in their next cycle but leave someone else the long term bill for the damage to the economy and the health issues that will come from the lockdowns.

My biggest regret of everything so far with COVID-19 is that more politicians haven't gotten it. It could have done some real good there.

Yeah, so, thing is, you can't say "without pointing fingers" without pointing fingers... the political will is indeed the key thing. But you're right, the earlier testing is just giving greater data points to react. That's a thing I guess. My larger annoyance with these exercises is the underlying implication that we could have contained this in the US. This is a delusion. If you go look at how Governors reacted, you'll largely see they were waiting for early community spread in their states and then started implementing incremental measures. (and I mean the early reacting states, not Florida Man and Missisippi mudslides, hell really not even tristate)

So, speaking of achilles heel healthcare systems... the UK only has 5,000 ventilators? Is that true?

Edit: I saw another article claiming NHS has 8K ventilators.. that's still a "holy fuck that's not enough" number.

 

[jwinslow]

 

[jwinslow]

 

[NJ-Buckeye]

New issue starting to grow... crematoriums and funeral homes are very hesitant to take corpses... fearing the virus could spread within their facilities

Testing not completed as to whether the virus is 'dead' when the body expires

 

[AKAK]

 

[heisman]

New issue starting to grow... crematoriums and funeral homes are very hesitant to take corpses... fearing the virus could spread within their facilities

Testing not completed as to whether the virus is 'dead' when the body expires

I can see this being the case in NYC. But, people are living under completely false assumptions for the most part. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when.

 

[Dryden]

Like we needed the reminder that Kenny Rogers just passed away...

 

[Zippercat]

Good question. It was cancelled 10 days before the start and I hadn't made a definite decision on that yet. As days went by I was leaning more and more to not go; however, since I was still actually agonizing over it I can't give you a definite yes or no reply. I was booked on back to back cruises (17 March & 1 April) and once the 1st one was cancelled I decided fairly quickly that I wasn't going on the 2nd one (which wasn't cancelled yet) either. Fortunately to get a full refund on it, it was cancelled a few days later too.

Another comment. You would like to think that companies in the travel business (i.e. like Celebrity Cruises) has your best interest heart and wouldn't put you in harms way; however, it appears that the primary reason Celebrity cancelled this cruise was just because India was refusing the ship entry into their ports (i.e. not necessarily your "safety and well being"). See their cancellation notice:

Dear Guest,

We have some urgent information to provide regarding your upcoming Dubai and India cruise aboard Celebrity Constellation®

As we monitor global developments related to the coronavirus, our priority remains the health and safety of our guests and crew, as well as providing amazing vacation experiences. each morning our executive team reviews daily updates from the CDC and WHO regarding the situation.

We have just been advised that the Government of India will no longer allow entry to cruise ships. We have therefore made the difficult decision to cancel the Constellation voyage of 3/17/20. Up until today we did not intend to cancel this voyage, however, in an abundance of caution

BUT, Celebrity did have "an abundance of caution" too so you always had that going for ya, right?

 

[lvbuckeye]

Just look what happened on 3/9. Eclipsed the 1929 fallout, despite all the circuit breaker protections.

come on, man. in 1929, the market lost 23% in two days.

 

[Jagdaddy]

Article about a Colorado state legislator who is working as an emergency room nurse: https://coloradosun.com/2020/04/01/colorado-lawmaker-er-nurse-kyle-mullica-coronavirus/

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Fortunately, I'm keeping my immune system limber with a strict Manhattans and Burgers regimen.

 

[ScriptOhio]

 

[NJ-Buckeye]

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A director of radiology for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center has died from the coronavirus.

A hospital spokesperson says Jeannie Danker died on Sunday.