Coronavirus Thread

[684Bee]

It’s a bastardization of the numbers. I’m for both social distancing and opening back up the economy. They asked one question and then reported it under a different answer.

Yes, social distancing should continue. I think that's just good common sense that most everyone will grasp and practice going forward, especially if they see signs that someone may be ill.

 

[GCdaJuiceMan]

Direct Deposit from the IRS showed up this morning.

It sure did. Lets see if I have the restraint to spend it on golf clubs.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

It sure did. Lets see if I have the restraint to spend it on golf clubs.

Mine will cover 70% of my tax bill I've been holding off on paying, LOL. But I wouldn't have qualified if I had already filed my taxes this year, so I'm taking advantage of them getting my money that was supposed to be theirs from mine coming from them via me.

 

[kg01]

Yes, social distancing should continue. I think that's just good common sense that most everyone will grasp and practice going forward, especially if they see signs that someone may be ill.

Sadly, there's a lot of folks who see it as overkill. They think, "Welp, this was all much ado about nothin'." Since not as many people died as was projected. Totally ignoring the impact of distancing.

There are a lot of people who are gonna be forced back into work soon. I'm just hoping all the progress doesn't get undone.

I also agree with you on the CDC. See, I'm not all bad.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Sadly, there's a lot of folks who see it as overkill. They think, "Welp, this was all much ado about nothin'." Since not as many people died as was projected. Totally ignoring the impact of distancing.

There are a lot of people who are gonna be forced back into work soon. I'm just hoping all the progress doesn't get undone.

I also agree with you on the CDC. See, I'm not all bad.

Its two interesting dichotomies (if I'm using that word correctly - be gentle, I am an injuneer, not an Englishman). On the one hand you have a bunch of people out working and making a living who are at almost a zero chance of bad effects of the virus all being told to stop working and stay home...while you have a bunch of old people who aren't hardly affected by these economic decisions at all since they're not working but they're the ones at risk. And you have some big urban highly dense cities fighting a war, while 98% of our land mass hardly sees much of anything going on. We have to do a good job of balancing all those things together.

 

[armeck]

Sadly, there's a lot of folks who see it as overkill. They think, "Welp, this was all much ado about nothin'." Since not as many people died as was projected. Totally ignoring the impact of distancing.

There are a lot of people who are gonna be forced back into work soon. I'm just hoping all the progress doesn't get undone.

I also agree with you on the CDC. See, I'm not all bad.

Looks like movie theaters might become a thing of the past as we continue with the social distancing philosophy. I rented a "new in theaters" movie couple of weeks ago for half of what it would have cost the wife and I to watch in theater, $19.99 v. ~$50.00.

 

[684Bee]

Sadly, there's a lot of folks who see it as overkill. They think, "Welp, this was all much ado about nothin'." Since not as many people died as was projected. Totally ignoring the impact of distancing.

There are a lot of people who are gonna be forced back into work soon. I'm just hoping all the progress doesn't get undone.

I also agree with you on the CDC. See, I'm not all bad.

I never thought you were bad in the first place.

I'm not so sure on your assertion that a lot of folks see social distancing as overkill. I believe way more people than not grasp the concept that it's a good practice. I can see it in my limited interactions with people. Most everyone is keeping their distance.

 

[kg01]

Looks like movie theaters might become a thing of the past as we continue with the social distancing philosophy. I rented a "new in theaters" movie couple of weeks ago for half of what it would have cost the wife and I to watch in theater, $19.99 v. ~$50.00.

I don't want to see that happen but I also expect to see some changes even as we get back to "normal". I can see a lot of folks getting used to having most things delivered, for example.

The kids and I rented a 'new in theaters' movie this weekend. I looked around like, "How much would it have cost to have all 5 of us go to the theater?". It'll be tough to go back to that.

I never thought you were bad in the first place.

I'm not so sure on your assertion that a lot of folks see social distancing as overkill. I believe way more people than not grasp the concept that it's a good practice. I can see it in my limited interactions with people. Most everyone is keeping their distance.

You're giving folks a lot of credit. There are a lot of people who think distancing is overkill. They think the death toll failing to reach projections was just because folks were overreacting. It's really weird.

 

[armeck]

I don't want to see that happen but I also expect to see some changes even as we get back to "normal". I can see a lot of folks getting used to having most things delivered, for example.

The kids and I rented a 'new in theaters' movie this weekend. I looked around like, "How much would it have cost to have all 5 of us go to the theater?". It'll be tough to go back to that.



You're giving folks a lot of credit. There are a lot of people who think distancing is overkill. They think the death toll failing to reach projections was just because folks were overreacting. It's really weird.

Family movie outing in the theater = small home equity loan.

With big, cheap TVs and decent sound systems, It is hard to justify the movie theater experience.

 

[sidewalkGTfan]

I'm probably in the minority here with this opinion, but this just makes me sad that an overwhelming majority feels this way. I think it's more a function of the way this thing has been covered than the actual reality (I know I'm going to get jumped on now). Many people believe that this is almost like a certain death sentence, and I can't really blame them for feeling that way, with how this has been reported. Nevermind that many, many people have had mild cases and many, many more people have recovered versus have died.

Peoples psyches have really been shocked to the core with this, and it's going to be tough to bring some of them out of it.

I am one of the ones that agrees with you. It has really bothered me how this entire situation has been reported on and ultimately handled. Imagine if the news gave daily reports on how many people died in the last day from suicide, drug overdoses, drunk driving, physical abuse, etc. All of which are completely preventable, yet we have never brought our nation to a complete standstill to address these issues that has plagued our society for decades. Out of respect for the moderators, I'll stop there...

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Some numbers from Europe hot spots. We were roughly 10-14 days behind Italy I think on the big transmission blowup. However, we enacted our shutdown much quicker. Whereas theirs went into effect March 9th, ours was only a few days later that weekend. So our mitigation efforts, as best I can tell, are about 5 days behind them.

Spain's daily positive new cases peaked at 8,000 from 3/25 through 4/1, and is now down to 2,500 per day.
Italy's daily positive new cases peaked at 6,500 from 3/20 through 3/28, and is now down to 3,000 per day.
Germany's daily positive new cases peaked at 7,000 from 3/26 through 4/4, and is now down to 2,000 per day.
(The UK has a horrible testing shortage, so its not really fair to compare them in this regard, but they are still at their peak at 5,000 new positive cases per day if anybody is wondering.)

Spain's lockdown was actually about the same time as ours. They just sent several hundred thousand people back to work in the last couple of days, as their death count was seen moving past the peak.

What I still find strange is that since our peak new daily positive cases were around 32,000, comparably to everyone else, we should see our daily new positive cases drop to 8-12,000 per day. We were at 27,000 yesterday. This is dramatically different than these countries. We are now on average 2 weeks past their peaks, but not seeing the same decrease we should be based on their data. Its a full month later after the shutdown and we're not seeing a peak. In South Carolina (where I live), we were peaking at 300 new daily cases and yesterday we had 115. In my County (population 500,000) we peaked at around 30 new daily cases (going from memory), and we're now between 5-10 with only 2 total deaths ever. That's the type of change in the data I would expect to see 1 month into a shutdown.

Some have speculated that perhaps a hundred thousand plus tests by private labs are not in our daily total tests numbers. That would certainly explain it if we're actually testing 3x the number of people we were before, but having the same total new daily cases...because we effectively wouldn't have the same number of daily cases - we were just missing a bunch before. But I can't find any confirmation our test volumes have changed much over that time period.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I am one of the ones that agrees with you. It has really bothered me how this entire situation has been reported on and ultimately handled. Imagine if the news gave daily reports on how many people died in the last day from suicide, drug overdoses, drunk driving, physical abuse, etc. All of which are completely preventable, yet we have never brought our nation to a complete standstill to address these issues that has plagued our society for decades. Out of respect for the moderators, I'll stop there...

Its the same as reporting on shark attacks, shootings, etc.

 

[RonJohn]

I don't know about that. Based on the article, the study will include 10,000 samples from the MLB...including all socioeconomic backgrounds, races, genders..etc. It will capture samples from the largest metropolitan areas in the country when you get the staff of the organizations (top to bottom... I assume). It will capture players (no idea how many)... some of whom probably were out of the country in January (international players and others who were getting that last vacation trip in prior to spring training). I know you're taking a wait and see position on it. Me too. If the main intended purpose is to assess how many folks have been exposed (carried) the virus and unaware... that will probably be a good sample to figure that out.

As an aside, I believe MLB when they say they just wanted to cooperate for this as a public service.... but I have to wonder if the results will inform any course of action they are considering. Frankly, as I think about the 2 extreme answers (lots of positives v very few positives)... I wonder what either of those answers would mean IF you're pulling for MLB to get back to business. I guess you'd hope for a lot of positives (thinking there is more immunity).... but there is still the outstanding question regarding re-occurrence. That 'debate' is heating up now too.

The study could include all socioeconomic backgrounds, but is it going to include all socioeconomic demographics? Sure it will have different genders and races, but everyone involved in the study will have a job. How many of those people are going to be homeless? How many of those people are going to be living in housing projects? You might find some lower income people working as janitors or something like that. Are the crews at the ballparks employed by MLB organizations, the stadiums, temp agencies, etc.? Also, I would assume the study will be concentrated on metropolitan areas since all MLB teams are in metro areas. It will totally ignore rural areas. It might be sufficiently statistically randomized, but I am skeptical.

It is possible that MLB is mainly thinking about public health. You do have to consider that they will probably jump at the chance to use the results if they favor opening baseball back up. I don't think it is reasonable to believe that baseball acted 100% in public interest with absolutely no thought about how the pandemic is affecting baseball. With the praise for MLB's pure altruistic intentions, the ESPN article read as if it were written by MLB publicists.

 

[684Bee]

You're giving folks a lot of credit. There are a lot of people who think distancing is overkill. They think the death toll failing to reach projections was just because folks were overreacting. It's really weird.

Yep, I do give folks a lot of credit. I believe individuals know their specific set of circumstances better than anyone else, and they should generally be left alone to order the affairs of their life. And if they don't act in the way that I think they should, it's better to not ascribe malice or stupidity. I can't know everything that's going on in that person's life.

I own a small business. I've had to work on myself with this and do better about trusting and giving people autonomy. There's been way more cases than not of people surprising me to the good side.

 

[WreckinGT]

I am one of the ones that agrees with you. It has really bothered me how this entire situation has been reported on and ultimately handled. Imagine if the news gave daily reports on how many people died in the last day from suicide, drug overdoses, drunk driving, physical abuse, etc. All of which are completely preventable, yet we have never brought our nation to a complete standstill to address these issues that has plagued our society for decades. Out of respect for the moderators, I'll stop there...

Why would we shut down anything because of suicide and drug overdoses when they are largely mental health issues? Should we invest millions in mental health to combat COVID-19? Of course not, that wouldn't make any sense. We kinda need different tactics for different problems.

 

[Wrecked]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/we-must-count-the-deaths-from-shutdowns-as-well-as-from-coronavirus/

Interesting article about the deaths caused by a shutdown. To me this is the important quote:

"Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet.

These are facts based on past experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs."

 

[684Bee]

Why would we shut down anything because of suicide and drug overdoses when they are largely mental health issues? Should we invest millions in mental health to combat COVID-19? Of course not, that wouldn't make any sense. We kinda need different tactics for different problems.

I believe what we are doing is greatly impacting peoples' mental health. You can't keep people shut up in isolation and not have serious mental health effects. I also think some people are going to come out of this with a variation of PTSD and they will struggle to assimilate back into "normal" daily function (whatever that means going forward).

 

[684Bee]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/we-must-count-the-deaths-from-shutdowns-as-well-as-from-coronavirus/

Interesting article about the deaths caused by a shutdown. To me this is the important quote:

"Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet.

These are facts based on past experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs."

Wow, that is a very sobering statistic, and it should definitely be a part of the considerations going forward.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/we-must-count-the-deaths-from-shutdowns-as-well-as-from-coronavirus/

Interesting article about the deaths caused by a shutdown. To me this is the important quote:

"Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet.

These are facts based on past experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs."

And this is 1 place (of many) our government has failed. Dr. Fauci and Dr Birx have enormous expertise around Epidemiology/infectious disease...not economic models. Anything we do should always be appropriately weighed in that regard.

On a side note, my County of 500,000 people reported only 2 new cases yesterday. Our last 5 days combined is still less than a single typical a day a week earlier. That's what I would expect 1 month into a shutdown like this.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Direct Deposit from the IRS showed up this morning.

Mine was deposited this morning too.