COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[caulfield12]

22 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

Would have been huge, would still be huge, but unfortunately our POSPOTUS continues to argue against masks.

And we’ve simply never had a viable tracing program ramped up when we knew this was potentially coming as early as January 8th, if not late December....either on a Federal, state or local public health department levels.

Information is now coming out about water supply contamination in Northern Italy the last two weeks of November...when many business travelers/tourists were going back and forth from the Wuhan area in pretty significant numbers.  There’s no way that it wasn’t on the radar screen as early as December, at least in the Pentagon/national intelligence community (which a certain someone always ignores, almost as if the Daily Brief was covered in germs.)

[Jack Parkman]

57 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

Again, what is it that you are proposing?  Can the federal government financially support a complete shutdown of manufacturing and retail operations for an extended period of time?  Show me the math on that.  Ray Ray doesn’t think food processing plants should have to run right now, how do the 300M people in this country eat then?  What about policemen, firefighters, and other public services?  Do they have to work or do we just assume nothing will go wrong and they won’t be needed?  As I said to begin with, there has to be a balance between keeping everyone safe and maintaining some semblance of a functioning economy.  All the southern / rural states opening back up and not taking this seriously is a big fucking problem, but I don’t think what you guys are proposing is a viable solution either.  Acting like essential services aren’t actually essential because there is a health crisis going on is simply ignoring reality.  There is no doubt in my mind that US leadership has failed in its efforts to manage this pandemic, but tell me which of the more successful countries have gone to the extremes you are proposing?

I already said I wasn't suggesting a complete shutdown. People have to and get food and water. 

I don't and never have since March suggested that retail and manufacturing shut down completely. I have suggested that allowing anyone other than employees into retail facilities is probably a better choice. 

Curbside or delivery should be mandatory for all shopping. 

Hard to get items should be limited for purchase per week, so there is enough to go around. 

Only stuff that is absolutely necessary should be open. 

I support keeping state parks and county forest preserves open but only people from your state and your county and adjacent ones can go to them. There should be a limit to how many people are allowed. 

State borders should be closed. 

 

[Dick Allen]

The next hammer coming is homelessness. Evictions are occurring again. People who haven’t been able to work will be out in the streets, and once they get employed again will find it more difficult to find housing with an eviction on their record. 

[Jack Parkman]

41 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

The next hammer coming is homelessness. Evictions are occurring again. People who haven’t been able to work will be out in the streets, and once they get employed again will find it more difficult to find housing with an eviction on their record. 

We are a heartless and soulless society. 

We couldn't care less if people are homeless in the middle of a pandemic. 

We force essential workers to interact with hundreds of people per week unnecessarily, while working for peanuts. 

Our government thinks it's better to force people off of UEI when the jobs they had aren't coming back. They bail out businesses instead of people. 

How ethically bankrupt can we be? 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Jack Parkman

[StrangeSox]

Don't worry guys the stock market had it's best quarter ever!

 

[ron883]

7 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

Thanks Ray Ray....I'm with ya. You can't put a dollar amount on human life. The fact that we are doing so as a nation is disgusting and disgraceful. I'm starting to believe our culture is ethically bankrupt. 

People had no problem ignoring the numerous atrocities happening around the world today (Uyghur death camps, slavery, human trafficking, billions living in horrendous conditions, etc.)

This just happens to be something that impacts people on our soil, rich or poor. Is this really the straw that broke the camel's back for being "ethically bankrupt"? You could easily argue that most of us were already "ethically bankrupt."

Edited July 1, 2020 by Yearnin' for Yermin

[Chicago White Sox]

4 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

We force essential workers to interact with hundreds of people per week unnecessarily, while working for peanuts.

I guess I don’t get what you mean by this.  Are you referring to people going to the grocery store?  I get forcing curbside pickup / deliveries would be helpful to slow down the virus, but is the infrastructure in place for that to be a reality?  I know you’re a money be damned kind of guy, but that’s a seismic change for that industry and I’m not sure it’s one easily executable.  Have other countries that have been successful at slowing down the virus stopped grocery store visits altogether?

[Chicago White Sox]

4 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

We are a heartless and soulless society. 

We couldn't care less if people are homeless in the middle of a pandemic.

Who is we?

[Jack Parkman]

33 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

Who is we?

Our culture 

[Jack Parkman]

38 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I guess I don’t get what you mean by this.  Are you referring to people going to the grocery store?  I get forcing curbside pickup / deliveries would be helpful to slow down the virus, but is the infrastructure in place for that to be a reality?  I know you’re a money be damned kind of guy, but that’s a seismic change for that industry and I’m not sure it’s one easily executable.  Have other countries that have been successful at slowing down the virus stopped grocery store visits altogether?

Jewel and Aldi are already doing curbside and Instacart exists. Not a huge stretch. 

[Jack Parkman]

2 hours ago, Yearnin' for Yermin said:

People had no problem ignoring the numerous atrocities happening around the world today (Uyghur death camps, slavery, human trafficking, billions living in horrendous conditions, etc.)

This just happens to be something that impacts people on our soil, rich or poor. Is this really the straw that broke the camel's back for being "ethically bankrupt"? You could easily argue that most of us were already "ethically bankrupt."

I'd agree with you there, but we've lost the credibility to point out human rights violations in other countries. The US used to have credibility internationally(albeit while waging pointless wars) 

More than anything else the pandemic has exposed the US as a fraud. All of these things have existed for 35 years at least....institutional racism never left. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Jack Parkman

[caulfield12]

2 hours ago, Yearnin' for Yermin said:

People had no problem ignoring the numerous atrocities happening around the world today (Uyghur death camps, slavery, human trafficking, billions living in horrendous conditions, etc.)

This just happens to be something that impacts people on our soil, rich or poor. Is this really the straw that broke the camel's back for being "ethically bankrupt"? You could easily argue that most of us were already "ethically bankrupt."

Maybe if a certain someone actually stood up and modeled the behavior of pretty much everyone in the GOP now except for Rand Paul and wore a mask in public, and cared at least a little bit about global human rights violations (well, we did bomb a couple of runways in Syria when we were assured Russian soldiers were already safely bunkered) more Americans would actually be aware of atrocities around the world.

Think if all the time talking about hydroxychloroquinine or weekend golfing was invested in something much more productive?...definitely not sending out late night tweets bragging about being the “Lone Warrior” left fighting a vast majority of his own countrymen over something quite simple to do that wouldn’t make him less of a man.  He’d just have to admit he was actually wrong for the first time, well, ever.

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by caulfield12

[Chicago White Sox]

28 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

Jewel and Aldi are already doing curbside and Instacart exists. Not a huge stretch. 

For 100% of their customer volume?

[NWINFan]

It would have helped if we faced up to facts from the beginning instead of crawling into a hole of denial. Saying that people should die for the sake of the economy  or that the whole thing would simply go away only made a horrible situation a lot worse. Obviously, there are no simple solutions to this but going nuts over wearing a mask is ridiculous. And opening up way too soon just because people wanted to go a bar or visit the beach didn't help things either. I have said this in other posts: We are not in this together. If we had been, things would at least be somewhat better.

[StrangeSox]

1 hour ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I guess I don’t get what you mean by this.  Are you referring to people going to the grocery store?  I get forcing curbside pickup / deliveries would be helpful to slow down the virus, but is the infrastructure in place for that to be a reality?  I know you’re a money be damned kind of guy, but that’s a seismic change for that industry and I’m not sure it’s one easily executable.  Have other countries that have been successful at slowing down the virus stopped grocery store visits altogether?

China had their national guard delivering groceries to everyone I think. @caulfield12 talked directly about it first-hand earlier in the thread. That was one city/region and not an entire country, though.

If we got to the point where someone's weekly grocery store trip is the biggest possible vector, we're already in pretty strong lockdowns/distancing to the point that we probably don't have to be that worried.

But the situation we find ourselves in now is an uncontrolled and probably uncontrollable outbreak growing in more than half of the US's metro areas while many states refuse to close down bars and restaurants or even mandate masks while the federal government still flails around at best.

 

 

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, StrangeSox said:

China had their national guard delivering groceries to everyone I think. @caulfield12 talked directly about it first-hand earlier in the thread. That was one city/region and not an entire country, though.

If we got to the point where someone's weekly grocery store trip is the biggest possible vector, we're already in pretty strong lockdowns/distancing to the point that we probably don't have to be that worried.

But the situation we find ourselves in now is an uncontrolled and probably uncontrollable outbreak growing in more than half of the US's metro areas while many states refuse to close down bars and restaurants or even mandate masks while the federal government still flails around at best.

 

 

Right, it was actually the PLA, or Chinese army units.

That was for the first 2-3 weeks, they were also involved in delivering supplies/PPE, helping to lock down the city, secure highways/borders, transporting patients to hospitals, etc.

Because we have two massive door to door delivery companies here, and they were classified as essential workers, just like the grocery stores...since these workers (there are literally an army in blue as well as black and gold uniforms) are independent contractors, they had no choice but to work, even without tipping.

Orders that used to be turned down for $1-1.50 to go 3 km during normal times were suddenly being picked up at 75 cents.  Entire blocks or neighborhoods could make group orders together.   Everything was delivered to the apartment complex main gate and picked up there.  Seniors had someone assigned to make sure they were getting supplied.  Every 2-3 weeks free vegetables and limited fruits would show up.  After the first couple of months, one designated person per household could go out but only for essential tasks (and only two hours, and couldn’t travel to other districts/areas of the city), and then they had to sign in/out, temp check, green QR code check...and go through that at the grocery store again as well, and then repeat the process to come back into the apartment complex.   With banks closed, someone even collected propane gas (for cooking) cards and deposited money into those accounts so everyone would still be able to cook after getting resupplied with new tanks.

Edited July 1, 2020 by caulfield12

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

Let me break some news to you; the government can print as much money as it wants.

Do you know why we have not seen massive economic hardship quite yet? (and don't get me wrong, there has been some as food banks have been packed). Because the actual income levels for 60% of the country went UP with the $600 unemployment add. It's sad to me that the majority of people in this nation working full time aren't even taking home 50,000 a year. If you look at ANY financial growth chart - I can analyze this in 100000 ways, whether Minimum wage hikes or Middle Class growth - the stagnation of the middle class and low classes for 40 years has been breathtaking. If you take the middle class and lower class and give it the same wealth growth as the top 1% since 1980, the middle class income per person (not family) is $280,000 and the lower class income is $115,850. THINK ABOUT THAT! Instead, what happened is every inkling of financial growth in this country since the late 1970's has "trickled down" to the .5 percent beneath the top .5%. You could have still normalized wealth growth at the top 1% and gotten the middle class and lower income people to well above a livable wage. And people shout about inflation!

People who do NOT put their money back into the economy are bad for the economy. Billionaires and generational wealth are bad for the economy; they remove a vast majority of their wealth from the actual money pool by hoarding it for generations. Money that is removed from the true spend market and only remains in the investment market inflates the true value of the market, as well as prevents businesses from making profits off your money.

So the moral of the story here is for years they taught you - and ME! - the fallacy that was inflation in order to sell the concept that poor people couldn't be helped with safety nets and that if everyone had money, inflation would destroy the country. It's COMPLETE nonsense. The government just printed money that equated to 35% of the national GDP and the value of the dollar and the price of goods DID NOT budge a cent. The price for taking all people out of extreme poverty in the USA? Well under the 5 trillion we just printed. As economics evolves rapidly - which is what is happening right now - we get a better understanding. The national debt took 300 years to reach 2 trillion, then doubled every two years under Obama and now it added 2 trillion in six months under trump! Obviously at some point you need to begin to balance things, but as long as the US dollar is the global currency, and the US remains the wealthiest nation on earth by a SHIT TON, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE that we should have as many people living at such a disadvantage. It's embarrassing, and the people have had enough. That's why the streets are talking now.

This by no means is arguing inflation does not exist, but again it exists in a supply and demand world but there is a supply shock right now, and the demand has shrunken for many items. Giving people money to survive - money that is put RIGHT BACK INTO the economy - in no way causes trauma or inflation. The poor people and people struggling are by far the best people to give money too because they spend every dime buying things they have to.

This is basic modern Econ 101; and as someone who is going back to school in September to get my masters in Data Science solely to attack big data in economics from a more modernized angle, this is something I love and am passionate about and it's also something that enrages me. Econ has a dark and evil past, and it's riddled with racism and sexism to this day. It is the whitest and malest profession of any of the advanced degree professions. The models that we have used for generations are riddled with racial and class biases on the data inputs, and it has destroyed the lives and opportunities for millions and millions of minority and/or impoverished people. It needs to change and it needs to be fixed.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Look at Ray Ray Run

[southsideirish71]

10 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

No dude, I think you're the one divorced from reality. This is a fucking public health crisis. You can't "save the economy" without solving the public health crisis first. The Venn diagram is the same circle. 

 There's a choice we have to make. The economy can be rebuilt. Dead people cannot. 

 I'd rather be alive, wouldn't you? You can't take money with you when you die. 

Everyone has to make the sacrifices. Me, you, everyone here. 

People shouldn't have to die so rich people can maintain their lifestyle. 

I mean, I think there's no way to stop this without shutting down the entire economy. 

Other countries have stopped this without shutting down the entire economy.  Wear masks, social distance and stay home when you can.  You don't have to hide in your basement and hunt in the backyard to get game meat.  

 

Unfortunately its not just about the rich people getting richer. In your social utopia where everyone stays in and food is delivered to your door humans are still going to need to be out working, and unfortunately be exposed in shitty conditions at times.   It requires people at the source of food production.   Then people to collect the food and bring it to processing plants.  You realize that it still requires people to go into warehouses, collect the items, put them into shipping containers.  Then people put them on trucks.  The trucks drive to a distribution point, and then those people have to sort them and load them on delivery trucks.   So in the end people are still going to have to work.  We don't have a robot army yet.  

[NWINFan]

20 minutes ago, southsideirish71 said:

Other countries have stopped this without shutting down the entire economy.  Wear masks, social distance and stay home when you can.  You don't have to hide in your basement and hunt in the backyard to get game meat.  

 

Unfortunately its not just about the rich people getting richer. In your social utopia where everyone stays in and food is delivered to your door humans are still going to need to be out working, and unfortunately be exposed in shitty conditions at times.   It requires people at the source of food production.   Then people to collect the food and bring it to processing plants.  You realize that it still requires people to go into warehouses, collect the items, put them into shipping containers.  Then people put them on trucks.  The trucks drive to a distribution point, and then those people have to sort them and load them on delivery trucks.   So in the end people are still going to have to work.  We don't have a robot army yet.  

Yes, workers still have to go to warehouses and meat processing plants. But those conditions can be made safer. That would mean that there would be less profit but so what? So it would be nice if workers wouldn't be treated like robots by putting them in impossible situations. Also, people wouldn't have to hide in basements, as you put it, if others did wear masks and practice social distancing but, for some reason, so many didn't want to do that. And Italy completely shut down the northern part of their country, and they are doing better.

You are right about one thing: there is no utopia. But we could have done better and we didn't. Over 125,000 and counting. It's time people stop calling this a hoax.

[Chicago White Sox]

24 minutes ago, southsideirish71 said:

Other countries have stopped this without shutting down the entire economy.  Wear masks, social distance and stay home when you can.  You don't have to hide in your basement and hunt in the backyard to get game meat.  

 

Unfortunately its not just about the rich people getting richer. In your social utopia where everyone stays in and food is delivered to your door humans are still going to need to be out working, and unfortunately be exposed in shitty conditions at times.   It requires people at the source of food production.   Then people to collect the food and bring it to processing plants.  You realize that it still requires people to go into warehouses, collect the items, put them into shipping containers.  Then people put them on trucks.  The trucks drive to a distribution point, and then those people have to sort them and load them on delivery trucks.   So in the end people are still going to have to work.  We don't have a robot army yet.  

Thank you, this is all I was trying to argue.

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

33 minutes ago, southsideirish71 said:

Other countries have stopped this without shutting down the entire economy.  Wear masks, social distance and stay home when you can.  You don't have to hide in your basement and hunt in the backyard to get game meat.  

 

Unfortunately its not just about the rich people getting richer. In your social utopia where everyone stays in and food is delivered to your door humans are still going to need to be out working, and unfortunately be exposed in shitty conditions at times.   It requires people at the source of food production.   Then people to collect the food and bring it to processing plants.  You realize that it still requires people to go into warehouses, collect the items, put them into shipping containers.  Then people put them on trucks.  The trucks drive to a distribution point, and then those people have to sort them and load them on delivery trucks.   So in the end people are still going to have to work.  We don't have a robot army yet.  

And those workers are making shit pay and receiving very little protections and have no benefits; we're literally sitting here arguing that these people are essential for the basic functions of human life in this country, and we treat them and pay them like they were replaceable garbage. They've been treated as subhumans for a long time and even in the media today, politicians openly state that it's not real people getting sick, it's the immigrants in the meat processing plants in places like Iowa and etc. The best part is many of them feel threatened or etc, and are working for less than the $600 they'd get on unemployment. It's shameful.

No one is saying close the doors on the entire world. That is not feasible, but drastic measures, restrictions and closures clearly saved a lot of people elsewhere, but we're too damn worried about the bottom line to give a shit about the people who actually produce those goods.

[StrangeSox]

42 minutes ago, southsideirish71 said:

Other countries have stopped this without shutting down the entire economy.  Wear masks, social distance and stay home when you can.  You don't have to hide in your basement and hunt in the backyard to get game meat.  

 

Unfortunately its not just about the rich people getting richer. In your social utopia where everyone stays in and food is delivered to your door humans are still going to need to be out working, and unfortunately be exposed in shitty conditions at times.   It requires people at the source of food production.   Then people to collect the food and bring it to processing plants.  You realize that it still requires people to go into warehouses, collect the items, put them into shipping containers.  Then people put them on trucks.  The trucks drive to a distribution point, and then those people have to sort them and load them on delivery trucks.   So in the end people are still going to have to work.  We don't have a robot army yet.  

Many if not all of the countries that have handled this much better than the US have much more robust social systems including (especially) health care.

 

[Chicago White Sox]

Just now, NWINFan said:

Yes, workers still have to go to warehouses and meat processing plants. But those conditions can be made safer. That would mean that there would be less profit but so what? So it would be nice if workers wouldn't be treated like robots by putting them in impossible situations. Also, people wouldn't have to hide in basements, as you put it, if others did wear masks and practice social distancing but, for some reason, so many didn't want to do that. And Italy completely shut down the northern part of their country, and they are doing better.

You are right about one thing: there is no utopia. But we could have done better and we didn't. Over 125,000 and counting. It's time people stop calling this a hoax.

100% we should have done better and that falls on our government.  Without a strict mandate to wear masks & social distance, too large of the population wasn’t going to follow through.  And allowing the states to open up at the very first signs of improvement has completely fucked us.  

I can’t really speak on what companies have done to make working conditions safer other than my own.  But I can assure you we have taken significant financial hits to ensure the safety of our workforce and so far those measures have been effective.  That being said, I fully expect by the fall that things will be so bad that further shut-downs will be needed to keep teammates safe, which our company will do so proactively despite the financial implications.  Again, I can’t speak to others that may not be taking care of their teammates who have to work through this shit and am definitely not giving my company a free pass for everything here as there are other things I think they’ve done poorly through this crisis.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Let me break some news to you; the government can print as much money as it wants.

Do you know why we have not seen massive economic hardship quite yet? (and don't get me wrong, there has been some as food banks have been packed). Because the actual income levels for 60% of the country went UP with the $600 unemployment add. It's sad to me that the majority of people in this nation working full time aren't even taking home 50,000 a year. If you look at ANY financial growth chart - I can analyze this in 100000 ways, whether Minimum wage hikes or Middle Class growth - the stagnation of the middle class and low classes for 40 years has been breathtaking. If you take the middle class and lower class and give it the same wealth growth as the top 1% since 1980, the middle class income per person (not family) is $280,000 and the lower class income is $115,850. THINK ABOUT THAT! Instead, what happened is every inkling of financial growth in this country since the late 1970's has "trickled down" to the .5 percent beneath the top .5%. You could have still normalized wealth growth at the top 1% and gotten the middle class and lower income people to well above a livable wage. And people shout about inflation!

People who do NOT put their money back into the economy are bad for the economy. Billionaires and generational wealth are bad for the economy; they remove a vast majority of their wealth from the actual money pool by hoarding it for generations. Money that is removed from the true spend market and only remains in the investment market inflates the true value of the market, as well as prevents businesses from making profits off your money.

So the moral of the story here is for years they taught you - and ME! - the fallacy that was inflation in order to sell the concept that poor people couldn't be helped with safety nets and that if everyone had money, inflation would destroy the country. It's COMPLETE nonsense. The government just printed money that equated to 35% of the national GDP and the value of the dollar and the price of goods DID NOT budge a cent. The price for taking all people out of extreme poverty in the USA? Well under the 5 trillion we just printed. As economics evolves rapidly - which is what is happening right now - we get a better understanding. The national debt took 300 years to reach 2 trillion, then doubled every two years under Obama and now it added 2 trillion in six months under trump! Obviously at some point you need to begin to balance things, but as long as the US dollar is the global currency, and the US remains the wealthiest nation on earth by a SHIT TON, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE that we should have as many people living at such a disadvantage. It's embarrassing, and the people have had enough. That's why the streets are talking now.

This by no means is arguing inflation does not exist, but again it exists in a supply and demand world but there is a supply shock right now, and the demand has shrunken for many items. Giving people money to survive - money that is put RIGHT BACK INTO the economy - in no way causes trauma or inflation. The poor people and people struggling are by far the best people to give money too because they spend every dime buying things they have to.

This is basic modern Econ 101; and as someone who is going back to school in September to get my masters in Data Science solely to attack big data in economics from a more modernized angle, this is something I love and am passionate about and it's also something that enrages me. Econ has a dark and evil past, and it's riddled with racism and sexism to this day. It is the whitest and malest profession of any of the advanced degree professions. The models that we have used for generations are riddled with racial and class biases on the data inputs, and it has destroyed the lives and opportunities for millions and millions of minority and/or impoverished people. It needs to change and it needs to be fixed.

Trickle down economics has been a lie for those same 40 years, starting with David Stockman and Reagan, through the Paul Ryan’s and Grover Norquists of today.

Cutting taxes on the rich and corporations, attempting to starve or defund the Federal government through austerity policies and “balanced budget” posturing...we didn’t even need to go back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, we ran surpluses for three years under Clinton largely due to increasing revenues/receipts from capital gains and estate taxes. 
 

That said, I don’t believe that you can accurately blame economists more so than, let’s say, Ayn Rand or the Koch Brothers.  Perhaps we can all neatly lay this at the doorstep of Alan Greenspan, but he was empowered and embraced by presidents of both parties.  In the end, economists or think tanks are unelected policy creators, but it’s the corporations and Top 1% pulling the string behind the scenes to fund their self-fulfilling research and theories that have hollowed out 2/3rd’s of the former middle class.
 

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

17 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

And those workers are making shit pay and receiving very little protections and have no benefits; we're literally sitting here arguing that these people are essential for the basic functions of human life in this country, and we treat them and pay them like they were replaceable garbage. They've been treated as subhumans for a long time and even in the media today, politicians openly state that it's not real people getting sick, it's the immigrants in the meat processing plants in places like Iowa and etc. The best part is many of them feel threatened or etc, and are working for less than the $600 they'd get on unemployment. It's shameful.

No one is saying close the doors on the entire world. That is not feasible, but drastic measures, restrictions and closures clearly saved a lot of people elsewhere, but we're too damn worried about the bottom line to give a shit about the people who actually produce those goods.

$2/hour bumps in salary, that was insulting enough.

But to have even those gains erased by premature openings that put those same workers at even higher risk (and back at previous salaries) while MANY were getting raises for staying at home...and topping it all off with the administration trying to kneecap ObamaCare one final time, it’s like something out of the French Revolution “let them eat cake!” days of centuries past.

Social mobility is becoming almost non-existent, with the US hovering near the top of the world charts in wage and wealth inequality figures...clustered right there along with a slew of banana republics and authoritarian regimes.