The Coronavirus Thread

...yes?

 

Was at my local Walmart Market (the smaller version of a Supercenter) before 5 PM EST. They actually had some TP and some PT. Not a whole lot of both of them, but enough to last for another house. No disinfected wipes of course.

Meanwhile my work's VPN keep trashing due to the amount of people on the network. Still sucks as always. Meanwhile the ultra partisans on both political sides keep pointing the blame at each other online and in Congress. Just heard from another guy I know that is still claiming all of this shouldn't happen due to how good the economy was.

 

That there are 43,000 (and climbing by thousands a day) cases in the U.S. alone and Mayors have to chase people away from beaches and golf courses...

Also, Domino's and Netflix stock each jumped ~9% today, which anyone could have seen coming.

 

Twelve years too late. Start now. At the very least, a savings scheme: deposit a few toilet rolls a month. Compound interest. More advanced would be, I think they call it buying futures: then cash in big. But don't forget to grow a hedge too: apparently that's what serious financial-world people do.

It's been said that this virus could change capitalism. Yes: Toilet rolls will now be the reserve currency.

A fort Knox full.

While we are beset with panic and fear (Yes, I am) We forget that, apparently, only one person in six gets seriously ill. For the rest, it varies from nothing to something like a rather nasty flu. The odds are actually in our favour.

 

In France and on day-6 of a total nationwide lockdown with fines for anyone outside without good reason (food shopping; visiting a doctor or pharmacy; buying tobacco (got to love the French); buying petrol; going for a walk - not more than 2KM). You have to have a completed form ready for police inspection and they are everywhere: name; DOB; address; and reason for being outdoors, else it's 35-euros and rising if unpaid.

The shops have started to run out of things - difficult to say whether this is because it's the start of the lockdown or supply chain problems - milk is a scarcity (this is in the Var region right down on the Mediterranean coast) and you are lucky if you get one bag of mozzarella - mentioning this because perhaps that is a genuine supply chain issue. My online shopping is coming back about 60% complete.

People generally being hugely respectful - big distances between people queueing outside e.g., bakeries, and humour and smiles too.

I've seen videos of the Gendarmes being tough in some places - a motorist was shot in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and some hard-love going down in the Paris suburbs.

Looking after my 91-year old father (a surgeon who has so many comorbidities that he is a deadman walking anyway) and my 78 -year old mother - I have a quarantine set-up that is like Fort Knox.

Being in a lockdown definitely turns up the 1984-dial by 10%.

 

My crystal ball shows a vaccine trickling to the public in the US by November, with lots for the masses by Jan., this based on h1n1 historical timetable.

More importantly the housing market bubble may have found itself bumping into a sharp lancet. If you believe in the 18 year cycle (2 which have roughly followed this time frame) of boom and bust, then we were on track for 2026 as the next burst bubble. Covid-19 effects can be the piercing arrow that takes the housing market down at least 30% by the end of the year. I guess the saving grace for those folks who bought a house recently is: at least you had the $ for a down payment.

Any thoughts on how long before the internet feels some impact. eg. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Youtube cutting resolution in UK and EU to help prevent strain on networks.

 

I think normal will happen at different paces depending on the society and local climate, anywhere from 3-18 months.

Somewhere small that is able to get sufficient resources for themselves, manage people coming in more easily, and have the ability to somewhat manage the whole thing already (think like HK, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) will probably return to normal more quickly. That and most of these places are quite hot in the summer. If the heat helps and they have sufficient screening of visitors / travellers is done post summer - they can probably live 95% normal until a vaccine pops up in 3 months.

Bigger places with more internal travel like the US, most of EU, and China I think will be messed up for a while and there will be waves and contractions for this thing over many months if not a year or two until vaccine is ready or enough people have been sick. Lack of resources for 325M or 1.4B people (vs 24M in Taiwan, 7.5M in HK, only 5.5M in Singapore), variable weather, relatively poor management (not blaming strictly gov, directives won't fix anything if people don't execute, everyone as a whole being smart about it fixes the issue), and large pockets of people being exposed at different rates and times IMO makes this much harder to predict. I do think stuff like TP or groceries will be normal soon though - the fact that nothing broke this whole time combined with everyone getting over the initial hump of hording will drop demand to normal soon.

As for economics, it took places hit by SARS about a year to recover but then everything stayed open when SARS happened. Stocks fell by about 40% but recovered IMO b/c nothing broke at the macro level, it was just fear. Unless this whole thing is horribly mismanaged (as in much worse than now), I don't see anything getting "broken" at the macro level by these events. I'm just hoping too many people don't go under in the next few months b/c that is IMO the one thing that will cause MUCH bigger problems long term for so many reasons.

 

Vegans who like burgers are in luck. With nary a morsel of ground heifer to be found at least the recent craze over beef like plant based unwholesomeness has one positive effect.

 

Until the first of June no more social gatherings. Do you know what that means?

For the next two months the hospitality and the service industry will be kicked into an economic dip. Sure the state will take care of some costs and can postpone some credit issues for a short while.

I am already on the verge of an exit from my current/old job, I shall manage. 2020 is off to a rough start.

Thing is, I do not trust that this "intelligent lockdown" will work as desired. Our current police force in NL is under too much pressure as it as because decades of decreased budgets made the job very underappreciated. The Dutch Prime-Minister delegated execution of his measures to the already heavily burdened municipalities in NL. He is doing the Pontius Pilate and will wash his hands of any issues that will arise.

The Taiwan measures are the best, period. The Dutchies will find ways to make the lockdown look stupid. People need to unwind and putting them between four walls will not change that. Even the coffee shops were opened again after the first quarantine measures. City folk need their fix, who knew?

I detest that I have doubts. Thing is, I do not trust politicians when they cannot follow their own rules. Guess what? When telling people on T.V. to not engage in physical contact they were still shaking hands amongst themselves. So yeah, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

I shall stop here. This is stressing me out.

 

I feel you. I'm sorry about your job. Mine likely won't be lost, but working in a private school I'm probably about to be airborne for a while.

I've been kind of thinking the same thing about us in the USA. It's nice to think everyone will just drop everything and hide away indefinitely, but I don't think it's realistic... unless they declare martial law. We aren't wired for that shit here.

Anything anyone can do to minimize is great, but it's a BIG compromise long-term, and is not likely to be successful unless the bar is completely flat. Everyone has to abide in the exact same ways, otherwise not only can it still spread, but the things we give up are hard to get back... it would suck to get fucked by the virus, and suffer losses from failed mitigation, due to our failure to get all of our collective shit in the same toilet. Worst of it is some lose a whole lot more than others... those disparities create compound issues that get hard enough to even make sense of. Sliding into a steep sand pit, so to speak.

I get that there's not much else that CAN be done, but in mid, let alone long term, I think it's a terrible preposition, for myriad reasons. A lot of the fears here stem from that... more than the actual spread of the virus, which don't get me wrong, people are worried about. My one hope is that as time goes by we find a more tactful, consistent way to contain and treat only the actual problem, rather than simply exchanging some problems for others.I'm NOT just talking vaccines, treatments, changes to the medical system... but monitoring and protocols across the board. The latter will always be just as important. Hiding away is a stopgap that. I don't think we can hope to just do that, work up a 'cure' or whatever, and think that's really enough.

What we really need is a clear picture. Ideally, everyone would be tested so we could have a good picture of where it is, who has it, so on. That information is absolutely vital to making more incisive moves... as in, taking all of the actions needed, while minimizing interruptions and damage. It gives us the power to make the right moves for keeping everything under control without having to tweak the country's major global settings as much.

I think it is doable. It's just a logistic nightmare that takes time to put together. If it takes a month or so to figure it out, that might not be so bad. A whole quarter... that starts looking dismal. The challenge is figuring out how to contain and mitigate effectively, while allowing for normal life and business as much and as often as possible.


Our politicians also do that crap with the doublespeak. Pence has done the same.

Of course, it's probably got something to do with upcoming elections. He wants to make sure people haven't forgotten about that.

Don't shake hands, but if your job involves it... ehhhh it's really only a broad recommendation. "You shouldn't shake people's hands. But we're politicians, and we shake people's hands." Because basic pleasantries are so much more important than doing your part to contain an epidemic

The funny thing is, politicians have already gotten it... so really good to see how that advice plays out.

A lot of this stuff doesn't make sense to me. Half measures, lots of conditional stuff. It's misleading people. Not to mention, if the goal is to isolate and minimize contact, it diminishes the effectiveness of everybody else, who are potentially setting aside a lot of income and other things in life in order to do so. It's like, why am I avoiding shaking people's hands, when other people are going to undermine that by doing it anyway? Might as well not give a shit at that point.

And I'm betting that's a commonly unspoken sentiment, too. People see vectors being left open based on circumstance and saying "Why am I taking these hits to my money and my daily life if other people are gonna f**k us all anyway?" Playing the game of who does what and who gets fucked can't end well... mostly because nobody on earth is wise or fair enough to decide what is right.

As for me, I abide by everything and just hope enough other people do to not drag things out more. And that as we go about abiding, we start learning enough to come up with ways to not have to operate this way any longer than we need to.

 

I think you're confused. The measures we've taken are designed to purposefully drag this out for as long as possible as to not overwhelm the healthcare system and to preserve life.

The faster the virus spreads the sooner it's all over with but we've chosen to take a different direction.

 

I simply have to stay healthy, economise and avoid illness given my dust allergies can compromise my airways at any given moment. Spring days are starting to become warmer in NL.

Soldado avisado no muere en guerra.

 

I understand that completely. I wouldn't be doing all of the things you're supposed to do otherwise. Soon my employer will completely close down and I will be at home, and that just kind of is what it is.

What I'm meaning to say is that if that's really all we can ever do, that might be a problem. I'm concerned that it won't be nearly good enough, in more ways than one.

There needs to be a better way, if not this time, then definitely next time. I heard Trump calling this a one-off... like after this it can't happen again. That's a big part of how we got into such a compromising position. Since we haven't had a pandemic in such a very long time, it hasn't been as much of a priority. If we had been operating as though something like this was possible to begin with... making specific preparations and structuring a wide range of things around that notion, we might not have ever needed to stoop to longer-term quarantine tactics. That would have been nice. Instead, we have built up this whole way of operating where it wasn't in anyone's reality before, it became a huge debacle, and we are all now forced to choose between unforeseeable loss of life and unforeseeable economic downturn. Obviously the loss of life has to be the priority always, but that's still to say there is no winning outcome.

There's captain hindsight again... but maybe this is our lesson that the possibility for things like this, on this scale particularly, need to be taken a lot more seriously now and forever. Sunscreen now, or sunburn cream later?

 

In Texas we can get alcohol delivered now.

 

FL as well. I was thinking about Total Wine delivering me more German Beer. This is due to the best beer in the world is from Germany. Bavaria bitches!!!

 

I've always wondered why it is that in a lot of places you can get cannabis to your door and they almost prefer to do it that way... and yet it's somehow not a thing with booze, when it's probably better for people to not be going out making beer runs mid-party, during more 'normal' times. Why give them a reason to get in the car?

 

Friends in Louisiana tell me the drive thru daiquiri shops are still open so there is still hope for civilization.
You called it with all of the New Yorkers down here, our Guv has ordered 14 day quarantines for all passengers arriving in Florida from NY/NJ. If that doesn't work maybe he'll activate the Air National Guard to "quarantine with prejudice" incoming flights? He also admitted that it wouldn't be practical to close down I75 and I95 to incoming plates from the NE so the Army National Guard artillery battalions have been stood down....

 

So Trump is talking about re-opening America for business in a couple of weeks and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is "all in" for risking his health for the sake of the economy. I had previously reserved insanity on this sort of scale to North Korea.

 

These are not easy decisions. Six hundred thousand American lives is no joke but neither is the worst economic depression in the history of our country. That kind of economic instability could lead to all sorts of problems and many more millions of lives being lost.

 

I'd trust the "difficulty" of that decision if it came with a signed agreement to forgo a ventilator.