COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Cheesepuff]

Actually it is known. Jobs destroyed by events often don't come back. 2008 at is a recent example. A lot of businesses in my area, shut down and never reopened. In a few cases, the buildings are still empty. Sure, folks went and found jobs, but instead of their own business, they found jobs working at Walmart and Papa Johns. In my case, the home contractors had no work, so they had no work for me. As I had no work, I stopped ordering steel. As the steel distributor had lower sales, they laid off workers. Do you see where this is going?

You're right of course.

Some jobs will come back and others won't. My point is we don't know how many come back, and how quickly new jobs will grow, or even if new jobs will grow.
What we do know, is the longer we lock down the worse it will be. I suspect the damage will be exponential relative to lock down time.... and not the "mildly exponential" kind.

Living life is a risk. You can't just hide from every danger. It appears this virus is going to find you anyway.

The strong shall survive.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Everybody gets sick. A few people get sick and die. The City Council cannot change this. The Government cannot change this.

[Yngvi]

We are experiencing a sharp plunge in the price of agricultural goods. How many farmers are at risk of losing their farms? How many have simply stopped producing, because the prices are temporarily too low for a profit.

Will the democrats in congress agree to support the farmers or will they punish them for voting the wrong way?

This looks a lot like the beginnings of other food shortages in the 20th, 21st centuries

[mpalios]

Got a very sad story. Friend from church has family in NY. His brother, mother, Sister in law all got the virus, and have recovered. His dad now has it, in the hospital. He's 92yo. prob won't make it.

But that (IMO) isn't really the saddest part. This is...

Because no one can visit him in the hospital, he will die alone. His family won't be able to say goodbye to their father. I know the reasoning WHY they can't. But I do not agree with it.

I can tell you now...I'd be permanently scarred for life if I had not been able to say goodbye to my mom or dad before they died. That scarring would have absolutely been passed down in some way/shape/form to my kids, etc.

Absolutely devastating, IMO, to the many many families that this is happening to.

[Luke Cook]

I still like this paper to put the flu in context:
Trends in Recorded Influenza Mortality: United States, 1900–2004

Thank you for this. Stand out points for me were:

The present concern over H5N1 avian influenza21 has highlighted the degree to which the risk of influenza (particularly pandemic influenza) is being assessed almost solely on the basis of the perceived pathogenicity of influenza viruses. Such a view, however, risks overlooking other significant microbial and nonmicrobial host and environmental factors that influence the course of human disease. The severity and clinical expression of disease depend on a multiplicity of additional factors, such as the novelty of the pathogen to the host, age, cocirculating pathogens, living conditions, physiological status, and access to treatment.

Although the effort to know influenza’s true impact is important and relevant from the perspective of potential public health interventions, there are several points of concern with present modeling efforts. First, current CDC estimates of seasonal influenza-associated mortality consistently dwarf recorded influenza deaths, varying from 5 to 60 times as large. Second, the CDC’s model projects that influenza-associated mortality rose 67% from the 1980s to the 1990s; however, over this same period, recorded influenza deaths declined 38%

[Barry Charles]

Everybody gets sick. A few people get sick and die. The City Council cannot change this. The Government cannot change this.

But can a modern City Council or federal government make a decision to single out the old and sick for shelter?

I don’t think so. They fear an accusation of discrimination as worse than economic obliteration.

This debacle is a direct consequence of political correctness.

(Btw where are all the photo journalists? Pictures of the morbidly obese dying with breathing tubes? Or being wheeled around in XXL chairs? I’ve seen plenty of pictures of young people on the beach. Are the photographers just showing reasonable and polite discretion? Did cell phone camera suddenly stop working? At any other time, a story whose main subject is death, has as many gruesome pictures of death as possible. Too many. Why suddenly none?)

[George Christiansen]

Breaking news from political radio. China and other countries are reporting that previously infected are now becoming reinfected.

If this isn’t true I wouldn’t expect this shutdown to be over anytime soon.

Now if I was the head of a lying piece of shit government that was willing to let a bunch of people die because warning them of what was happening in my country would make me look bad........and it destroyed my biggest business competitions' economy.....but before I had bought up all the failed businesses and loaned all the more to those countries...I saw them showing signs of sanity coming from them..............

Now that's just what I'd do and as a nondictator I probably should just stay in my lane, but....

[David Kirkham]

Hospitals do not have the luxury of not providing services to non-paying "customers," and they should be reimbursed appropriately for their work. Caring for patients in an ICU is very costly due to expensive equipment and staffing, and they're paying a lot of overtime to nurses intrepid enough to stay on the job. The critical care part of this will probably be break-even at best for hospitals. The shutdown of "elective" procedures, however, will be financially devastating to hospitals, and I would expect to see a wave of hospital closures after this. Anyone who sees this as a hoax-for-profit on the part of hospitals and doctors hasn't looked at the whole picture. Hospitals have invested in remote field-hospitals to care for the big wave of patients, and they will be out some decent bucks if that wave doesn't materialize. I don't put it past hospitals, like any business, to try to financially capitalize on something like this, but it's going to be tough for them to make money here. And if they wanted to concoct a scam, they have perfected many other better ways to do it than this. I'm sure I'm missing some small angle, though, which is why I will never make it as a hospital administrator.

Next time I'm in Boston I'm buying the beer, whiskey, whatever you want. I really appreciate your point of view on this board (and not only just on Corona virus). Thanks!

[RKC]

It's time to re-read V for Vendetta, and start wearing your Guy Fawkes mask.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It's time to re-read V for Vendetta, and start wearing your Guy Fawkes mask.

That's the only mask I'll wear.