COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[caulfield12]

 

There's still time to stop the United States from becoming the next epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic, a World Health Organization spokeswoman told CNN on Wednesday.

"The potential is there, but you've still got time to turn it around," WHO's Margaret Harris said.

Though the number of cases and deaths continues to grow in the country, it's possible to reverse the trajectory, she said.

"You've got the best public health brains in the world," Harris said. "You've got people who can harness technology brilliantly. You've got people who can really think out of the box."

The formula for success is testing people, finding each case, identifying people who have come into contact with those who have been infected, isolating those who are ill or who have been exposed and quarantining, she said.

"Finally, getting the people who are ill to treatment -- and when you do that, really, really protect your health workers," she said.

Harris previously said that the US had the potential to be the next epicenter based on the "very large acceleration" in its number of cases.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-state-actions-wednesday/index.html

 

Still back to basics of what we should have been contemplating the last week of January or first week of February....instead of six or seven weeks later, reactively.

[bmags]

3 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Yeah you're talking 2 months without getting income if you were laid off and $1200-$2400 isnt going to pay months of bills.

The entire bill was not the checks.

It included a huge expansion of UI benefits which provided states benefits + $600/week. It expanded the qualifications for UI to include self employed and contractors, who will get a fully fed funded amount since states/employers can't fund that. They are getting 1/2 state amt + $600.

So if you are laid off, you are getting very near your full amount, plus the check. UI is delayed but should be faster than end of may for many.

Small businesses can apply for SBA loans and re-hire staff to get things like rent/utilities/payroll provided by gov't. 

So it's not just a check .

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

Just now, Quin said:

That's why Democrats were fighting for the unemployment insurance.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/white-house-senate-reach-deal-massive-2-trillion-coronavirus-spending-n1168136

I actually read the entire reworked UI proposal from the senator from Colorado. He didnt even write that for COVID - he's been working on it for months. It was an interesting and solid proposal but not one that is being reviewed today. 

[bmags]

1 minute ago, Quin said:

That's why Democrats were fighting for the unemployment insurance.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/white-house-senate-reach-deal-massive-2-trillion-coronavirus-spending-n1168136

The bill went from crap to very good in 2 days, and another phase is going to pass. Schumer did very good.

[caulfield12]

Just now, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

I actually read the entire reworked UI proposal from the senator from Colorado. He didnt even write that for COVID - he's been working on it for months. It was an interesting and solid proposal but not one that is being reviewed today. 

Gardner?  Similar to Wang plan?

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

9 minutes ago, bmags said:

The entire bill was not the checks.

It included a huge expansion of UI benefits which provided states benefits + $600/week. It expanded the qualifications for UI to include self employed and contractors, who will get a fully fed funded amount since states/employers can't fund that. They are getting 1/2 state amt + $600.

So if you are laid off, you are getting very near your full amount, plus the check. UI is delayed but should be faster than end of may for many.

Small businesses can apply for SBA loans and re-hire staff to get things like rent/utilities/payroll provided by gov't. 

So it's not just a check .

I dont think you realize how much it costs to reopen and pay rent/payroll/utilities and etc. People cannot return to their business because there is a virus attacking. No small business loan is going to cover a company that's going to be losing a million a week or etc until business returns. Also, unlike wall street, loans will destroy an industry with a margin between 6-12% regardless of how low the interest is. Its already an industry with very little profitability and a high failure rate; now you're tying in loan payments. Big Banks caused their own problems by being scumbag lenders and greedy; they were bailed out for bad business practice and made A LOT of money off the bailout. Hospitality didn't cause this problem yet will be straddled with even more debt via loans with no way of reinvesting that money into something with a guaranteed return higher than the interest rate.

In addition, If they reopen the economy too early, which looks like a scary possibility right now, this bailout did nothing and you're back at square 1.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Look at Ray Ray Run

[NorthSideSox72]

I just want to make sure people understand, the stimulus bill is $2T, not $6T. Any indication of support from Congress to the Fed, who can act independently in this regard to a great extent anyway, for QE measures or other market actions, are not spends of taxpayer dollars. That's not how it works.

Now on the $2T, I don't know what all is in there exactly and there may very well be corporate bailout stuff (in fact I am sure there will be, at least some of it). Those details I would like to see.

 

[Texsox]

Like individuals, I wanted to see corporate help limited to US corporations, disallowing items like cruise ships that fly flags of convenience. Now I hope the oversight committee considers how many US citizens that the company employees and the likelihood of them continuing to employee US citizens. 

[caulfield12]

7 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

I just want to make sure people understand, the stimulus bill is $2T, not $6T. Any indication of support from Congress to the Fed, who can act independently in this regard to a great extent anyway, for QE measures or other market actions, are not spends of taxpayer dollars. That's not how it works.

Now on the $2T, I don't know what all is in there exactly and there may very well be corporate bailout stuff (in fact I am sure there will be, at least some of it). Those details I would like to see.

 

Unless they end up taking equity positions in companies or buying bonds of corporations that eventually fail...

[bmags]

15 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

I dont think you realize how much it costs to reopen and pay rent/payroll/utilities and etc. People cannot return to their business because there is a virus attacking. No small business loan is going to cover a company that's going to be losing a million a week or etc until business returns. Also, unlike wall street, loans will destroy an industry with a margin between 6-12% regardless of how low the interest is. Its already an industry with very little profitability and a high failure rate; now you're tying in loan payments. Big Banks caused their own problems by being scumbag lenders and greedy; they were bailed out for bad business practice and made A LOT of money off the bailout. Hospitality didn't cause this problem yet will be straddled with even more debt via loans with no way of reinvesting that money into something with a guaranteed return higher than the interest rate.

In addition, If they reopen the economy too early, which looks like a scary possibility right now, this bailout did nothing and you're back at square 1.

Except the loans are expected to be forgiven. They are using SBA because there is infrastructure in place to get the money out.

 

 

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

2 minutes ago, bmags said:

Except the loans are expected to be forgiven. They are using SBA because there is infrastructure in place to get the money out.

 

 

It will not be as simple as you are portraying it imo. It would be nice to he wrong about this, but I doubt this will be as free of strings as you believe.

[bmags]

5 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

It will not be as simple as you are portraying it imo. It would be nice to he wrong about this, but I doubt this will be as free of strings as you believe.

"The agreement also includes $350 billion that would establish lending programs for small businesses, but only for those who keep their payrolls steady through the crisis. Small businesses that pledge to keep their workers would also receive cash-flow assistance structured as federally guaranteed loans. If the employer continued to pay its workers for the duration of the crisis, those loans would be forgiven."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/politics/coronavirus-senate-deal.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

[Texsox]

6 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

It will not be as simple as you are portraying it imo. It would be nice to he wrong about this, but I doubt this will be as free of strings as you believe.

It will require the corporations to participate in the election cycles. AKA donations

[ptatc]

54 minutes ago, Texsox said:

Like individuals, I wanted to see corporate help limited to US corporations, disallowing items like cruise ships that fly flags of convenience. Now I hope the oversight committee considers how many US citizens that the company employees and the likelihood of them continuing to employee US citizens. 

Some of the money will be used to help against lawsuits. There are already investors filing lawsuits against companies for the "poor decisions" to not have enough insurance for income loss due to a pandemic.

[StrangeSox]

1 hour ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

I just want to make sure people understand, the stimulus bill is $2T, not $6T. Any indication of support from Congress to the Fed, who can act independently in this regard to a great extent anyway, for QE measures or other market actions, are not spends of taxpayer dollars. That's not how it works.

Now on the $2T, I don't know what all is in there exactly and there may very well be corporate bailout stuff (in fact I am sure there will be, at least some of it). Those details I would like to see.

 

There's a $17B provision that seems to have been written specifically to bail out Boeing, who has spent >75% of their free cash flow in recent years on stock buybacks and recently said they didn't actually need a bailout if it came with strings attached.

 

 

1 hour ago, bmags said:

The entire bill was not the checks.

It included a huge expansion of UI benefits which provided states benefits + $600/week. It expanded the qualifications for UI to include self employed and contractors, who will get a fully fed funded amount since states/employers can't fund that. They are getting 1/2 state amt + $600.

So if you are laid off, you are getting very near your full amount, plus the check. UI is delayed but should be faster than end of may for many.

Small businesses can apply for SBA loans and re-hire staff to get things like rent/utilities/payroll provided by gov't. 

So it's not just a check .

The UI expansion, especially the parts to cover self-employed, contractors, and people quitting jobs for COVID-related illness or caregiving is really really good (and should be made permanent).

[caulfield12]

Gov. Cuomo is no nonsense, and he's a bit of a control freak and anal, but my god, we really need governors to coldly and rationally look at things from a data-driven standpoint and attack this problem in a logical/rational and non-partisan fashion.

He's taking responsibility, even to the point of saying he will go out across the country after New York peaks and assist other communities...like Atlanta, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana, Illinois, etc., that may be peaking first.

Has an exact number for every single category of needs, whether staffing or PPE or respirators.  Is considering the mental/psychological health side as being an area that's being potentially overlooked and needs to be reinforced.

Calling for volunteers has gotten 45,000+ in the last week, either psychologists, nurses or doctors.

 

If we can stop blaming the other side, other countries....and just concentrate and actually addressing the problems and developing creative solutions...for the first time in this crisis, I got the sense that there actually will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

It might not be Congress...but it certainly can be the people living in these affected communities who know those needs better than anyone else looking at the "big picture" of country-wide morale from the distorted lens of Washington, D.C.

 

Have also seen these same traits in the likes of Charlie Baker, Governor Hogan in Maryland, DeWine in Ohio, Inslee in Washington...interestingly enough, they're all "moderates/centrists" and not occupying the political extremes of the left and right (maybe Inslee is the furthest on climate change issues.)    Last election, Kasich stood out on the GOP side.

[mqr]

Every country in the world has no problem shutting down parts or all of their economies, and we're here debating sacrificing meemaw to the DOW. We are truly the stupidest country.  

[caulfield12]

The Department of Homeland Security stopped updating its annual models of the havoc that pandemics would wreak on America’s critical infrastructure in 2017, according to current and former DHS officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

From at least 2005 to 2017, an office inside DHS, in tandem with analysts and supercomputers at several national laboratories, produced detailed analyses of what would happen to everything from transportation systems to hospitals if a pandemic hit the United States.

But the work abruptly stopped in 2017 amid a bureaucratic dispute over its value, two of the former officials said, leaving the department flat-footed as it seeks to stay ahead of the impact the COVID-19 outbreak is having on vast swaths of the U.S. economy. Officials at other agencies have requested some of the reports from the pandemic modeling unit at DHS in recent days, only to find the information they needed scattered or hard to find quickly.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/24/dhs-pandemic-coronavirus-146884

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

1 hour ago, bmags said:

"The agreement also includes $350 billion that would establish lending programs for small businesses, but only for those who keep their payrolls steady through the crisis. Small businesses that pledge to keep their workers would also receive cash-flow assistance structured as federally guaranteed loans. If the employer continued to pay its workers for the duration of the crisis, those loans would be forgiven."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/politics/coronavirus-senate-deal.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

Yeah so again, does simply doesn't benefit the industry with no revenue.

So you have to pay your workers in addition to every other bill with no revenue. 

Many places have already furlough people so they'd be ineligible I assume. If you're a restaurant or a catering company or a hotel and no one is staying with you are you supposed to schedule staff as usual? How does that even work in a tipped based economy? Or a shift based economy? If there's no business to maintain or execute, what are your employees doing? 

I dont think this works out for that industry; jmo.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Look at Ray Ray Run

[Balta1701]

2 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Yeah so again, does simply doesn't benefit the industry with no revenue.

So you have to pay your workers in addition to every other bill with no revenue. 

Many places have already furlough people so they'd be ineligible I assume. If you're a restaurant or a catering company or a hotel and no one is staying with you are you supposed to schedule staff as usual? 

I dont think this works out for that industry; jmo.

Isn't a forgiven loan literally = revenue?

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

1 hour ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

I just want to make sure people understand, the stimulus bill is $2T, not $6T. Any indication of support from Congress to the Fed, who can act independently in this regard to a great extent anyway, for QE measures or other market actions, are not spends of taxpayer dollars. That's not how it works.

Now on the $2T, I don't know what all is in there exactly and there may very well be corporate bailout stuff (in fact I am sure there will be, at least some of it). Those details I would like to see.

 

You simply can't say QE does not effect taxpayers. I would argue it absolutely does even if it is not a direct cost/tax to a taxpayer. 

[bmags]

5 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Yeah so again, does simply doesn't benefit the industry with no revenue.

So you have to pay your workers in addition to every other bill with no revenue. 

Many places have already furlough people so they'd be ineligible I assume. If you're a restaurant or a catering company or a hotel and no one is staying with you are you supposed to schedule staff as usual? How does that even work in a tipped based economy? Or a shift based economy? If there's no business to maintain or execute, what are your employees doing? 

I dont think this works out for that industry; jmo.

What?

If you have no revenue, and then take out a loan you then pay your staff and liabilities with that loan, and if you do that without layoffs you don't have to pay the loan.

They have an option to hire back people by a certain date to be eligible if they did do furloughs.

[Kyyle23]

Truly amazing that there is a provision in the bill that prevents the trump family from accessing the funds.   Just think about that

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

9 minutes ago, bmags said:

What?

If you have no revenue, and then take out a loan you then pay your staff and liabilities with that loan, and if you do that without layoffs you don't have to pay the loan.

They have an option to hire back people by a certain date to be eligible if they did do furloughs.

I'm not going to spend all day going back and forth on this; businesses needed assistance reopening and etc when the market returned and the demand normalized. People needed assistance holding over until then. 

This bailout will not keep those businesses afloat. I know companies bleeding 2 million a week that generate about 125 million a year in revenues. There margins are small. 

The government is going to pay AP owed from prior to shut down? They're going to pay insurance renewals for the next 12 months for a company? This isn't as simple as we'll leave the lights on for you. Many small businesses in Chicago just paid property taxes and it's already a slow time of year. LOANS are not revenue. This is much more intricate than you are portraying it. Unemployment will approach 20% and it's because theres a demand shock. The government needed to support these businesses when it was time to reopen and assure no one lost their business because of this and support the people until then. They didnt need to tell the businesses to keep their employees to receive assistance; keep them with no business to actually execute.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Look at Ray Ray Run

[Look at Ray Ray Run]

22 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Isn't a forgiven loan literally = revenue?

No. It's absolutely not. But they will tax you on it at years end if that wasnt excluded.

Also, if there is no work to do theres no work to go back to. The fact that the only way you can receive any government assistance is by maintaining your payroll makes very little sense. Businesses need help reopening when the demand returns. 

This thing could last another 2 months for all we know. For a decent sized small business that's 2-4+ million in payroll obligations alone

Edited March 25, 2020 by Look at Ray Ray Run