TrickstaPriest

I'm so, so sorry to share this.

Ah, the NTD News site had better information.
 
They say at least 15 million of the missing 21 million users can be explained by low-end cash accounts that could have simply stopped being used during the economic downturn.
 
They also point out that Chinese businesses can't re-open until they go 14 days with 0 cases so...  that's what people are reporting despite locals reporting that they are still having new cases.

That's a strange site. It's not really associated with a TV station, even if the name looks like it is. And all of the articles that I looked at had Brandon G. Jones as the reporter. Are there any corroborating stories for this?

I know the vast majority of you folks are urbanites, 
 
but do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to _imagine_ a population so large that you could "hide" the loss of even a _thousand_ people?! Let alone damned near 22 million.....

I think it's already started. The Trump administration has made it clear that we can't depend on the federal government. The states are going to have to step up to the plate themselves on important issues.
 
I don't like saying that. I think a strong, sensible federal government is necessary for a nation, but . . . the federal government we have right now is neither strong nor sensible.

Honestly, I think it's better if you don't.
 
I mean, neither of you has a one-hundred percent chance of being absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and if we base a position on the last time the entire country shut down for a month or so--- we'll see that we have no data to pull from.
 
And ultimately, we will _all_ know soon enough, meaning that any time spent pithing back and forth about what will be in a month will have been time you both could have been solving differential equations.  
 
 And here's more news:
 
A dumbass I work with has exposed about 40 of us (me included).  Well, _may_ have exposed.  Let me sum this up:
 
Since Monday morning, Coworker has been regaling us with tales of the great time he and his family had with his sibling sibling's spouse all weekend.  They visited, they played with the kids, the did lots of fun things.
 
Today, three 0'clock this afternoon, the subject turns to "the virus."  Coworker announces that he hoped Sibling and Spouse got to their cabin okay.  Seems that was where they were headed to quarantine themselves after having been DIAGNOSED POSITIVE!
 
We can give all the suggestions or flat-out orders we want.  Stupid will make a mockery of it every time.
 
 

Four fairly simple, straightforward lessons. And we've blown them all. Fantastic.

The idea that we need to be "out spending money" to save the economy is, to my view, at least 20 years out of date. Is this contrarian individual not heard of things like Amazon? Pretty much every retailer at this point has an online presence, and most of them have delivery. 
 
Is this guy still connecting to the internet using dial-up?

Centuries.  Hope you stocked up on toilet paper.

Joking aside, I had a bit of a problem today. I originally put down "git of a problem", which is OK because the stupid git in question is me. (I am the only one who gets to call me stupid.)
 
I received a small check in the mail today. Not a big deal, only $20. But of course you can't spend a check. You have to deposit it first. Sadly, I do not live within walking distance of my credit union (who does)? So I did two idiotic things:
 
1. I got on a bus to an ATM that would take my check, not realizing Tri-Met (Portland's transit agency) had put out an edict that the buses would run, but only for "essential trips".
2. I left the check on top of the dresser back home.
 
So I got off the bus, went over to the ATM, and panicked when I could not find the check. My line of thinking was that what I normally do when I receive it in a small check is stick in my breast pocket until I could deposit it. I thought I'd done that -- but since I was wearing a T-shirt (something I rarely do) I had no chest pocket.
 
I was relieved to eventually retrieve the check, and it's in my wallet. But using the bus that way when it was not essential -- not cool, Michael. Trips aren't exactly rationed -- bus trips are not TP, which we can (and should) ration. There's no way for the driver to tell WHY a person is traveling despite a stay-at-home order. But it's embarassing as Heck. And we all know how embarrassing Heck is (That's all -- bathing in lukewarm water for eternity? I was a terrible person! Don't I even get a proper damnation?). Is it worth leaving home in a mass quarantine to cash a $20 check?

In my view, the good news is that we're still producing food, water, power, and all the other essentials, so the basics of civilization don't look set to go away anytime soon.
 
And if government supports people and businesses during the downturn, everyone with diminished income will get to pay their bills and keep their heads above water. So that keeps factories, shops, and homes in the same hands they were in before the crisis.
 
And if that government support for businesses is predicated on people remaining on the payrolls through the crisis, those businesses also won't have to lose their trained workforce.
 
After the crisis passes, we'll have a lot of pent up demand for all those non-essentials that we couldn't get during the crisis. People will go back to work providing those things and will therefore have money to buy them as well.
 
So it seems as though this could just be a rough period after which we're likely to see a nice rebound and a return to growth -- if we handle the crisis well.
 
If we handle it poorly, of course, it could get pretty darned bad. Congress can easily throw vast sums of money out the window if they listen to the corporatists in both parties instead of taking care of the middle and working classes. And if people keep going out despite stay-at-home orders, more people will get the virus, and more of them will die because the hospital beds are all full.
 
I hope we handle this crisis better than we've been handling things in general.
 
 

I may or may not have a glider tattooed on my forearm...

No, it's because they've won, and no longer have to fear any consequences.

Just got word this morning that one of the residents in the assisted living place where my mother-in-law lives, has tested positive for COVID-19 and been moved to the hospital.  They've been on lockdown all week, but I guess too little too late.  Don't know if the affected resident was on the same floor as my mother-in-law, but given that aides, nurses, and other staff cover all floors, I'm doubting it matters much.  My mother-in-law (age 75) has pretty bad dementia and is completely non-communicative, so we have no idea how she's been weathering things thus far, just second-hand reports from staff members.  Now we're worried we'll never see her again.

Yeah, as a conservative I probably did blame too much on Obama (in the heat of the moment in some cases).  But pretty much at some point in 2017, why bother?  Kind of have to move on.  
 
Though, having that knowledge makes it frustrating to see it in real time (D&R).   (course, I have had some heat of the moment against Trump, too.  but, I don't post it much, because I think it gets covered here, kind of a "dept of redundancy dept" thing. 😁)
 
 

We need to be careful about using that term -- it has a specific definition which is very unlikely to apply for practical reasons, and has provocative implications that could cause conflict.
 
 

In the news I read this morning, Inhofe's explanation sounded reasonable, Feinstein's vaguely suspicious, and Burr and Loeffler's like blatant smokescreens.

Younger people (in their 20s, at least) have been getting seriously ill from the virus all along. The news just seems to have been equating the low death rate to younger people being safe from the virus. There's a pretty wide gap between "everything's fine" and "not quite dead."

Hillary cost Hillary the Presidency.  Time she get to the stage of acceptance.

As you read toward the bottom of that article you'll note the various governments tracking everyone for "contact purposes," and Trump just suspended all HIPAA restrictions "for telepresence purposes." Being someone that works directly in the healthcare IT infrastructure, there was zero need to remove HIPAA for telepresence. I'm not a conspiracy person, but the removal of HIPAA sure smells a whole lot like given full capability of tracking people now in the USA.

Not sure if it's been posted yet or not, but the paper that's likely driving a lot of the time estimates: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2EzKndfMupd6kQ4mQ7sl9aTW9XQ7p_8tsgwDkeq664mosM5OCxZw_NU9g
 
TL;DR: The current social distancing/self-isolation/school closure is likely to continue for a minimum of 3 months. If relaxed after 3 months, there would be a resurgence of cases with ICU peak being exceeded in October and an estimated 1.1-1.2 million deaths in the US. In order to minimize the impact of corona, the full suite of  measures would need to remain in place for up to 18 months (until general availability of a vaccine).

It cheeses me off
 
I got nothing against Kevin Durant or even most other rich folk. I haven't met them, I don't know them.
But the unspoken message of 'people who matter' vs 'folks who can #$## off and die because they're don't' seems deafening to me and I have to wonder why others aren't outraged by it.