Coronavirus

If Denmark does a good job like South Korea, it won't be temporary. Given how smart the social insurance plan is from the Danish government, I'm guessing you'll do a pretty good job w/testing.

For us? I think the US is def in it till September. It's still hard to get a test and there's no coherent response.

We haven't done that much testing. The message from the authorities was that we should consider all symptoms to be the virus and then they would focus on treatment of the severe cases. Recently they added intensive testing to that.

It seems like they are going for "flatten the curve", but the big question is when it is flat enough to resume normal life or something close to it. My totally uneducated guess it that they at some point will wager that we have had enough cases for it to not run wild once normal life resumes.

I think our government is handling things great and I believe we are doing the right thing. What is lacking, though, is some information on what the next step will be. What are we aiming for? What numbers are the powers that be looking at and why? And so on.

Weak leadership from the Trump Administration has left us like 50 small countries with different policies and weak borders with respect to this virus. I get that they didn't want to tank the economy, but the best way to do that would have been extensive testing and self-quarantine for the afflicted. Thanks to the slow and conflicted response so far, we are stuck with these widespread shutdowns that will result in extensive harm to the economy, at least in the short run. And we probably will end up with a nasty spike in a few weeks, because half the states still haven't taken any useful precautions. A shortage of ventilators will mean many unnecessary deaths.

Again, South Korean response is informative since it's a relatively transparent democracy. It's almost certainly too late for this in western europe and the us, fwiw, but it is the natural next step if the curve was flattened. Here's the south korean health minister

"However, that does not mean all other countries should follow suit. South Korea's mass-testing and early detection may have afforded it the luxury of being able to avoid declaring a total shutdown.

"Because Korea has the ability to sample and test faster than in other countries, there was no reason to do what other countries are doing [and lock down]," Roh said.

"The method of blocking off certain areas and stopping movement was what people did in the Middle Ages when they were dealing with the Black Death. It was because they didn't know what was causing infections at the time and they didn't know where the disease was spreading."

From here, which is a good story about the potentially problematic aspects of their response too:
www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/south-kor...200319011438619.html

Well the UK Conservative govt with their latest daily announcement has just made every Labour supporter fall out of their chairs - they will be paying 80% of the wages of all staff that businesses would have to lay off otherwise.
I think everyone here, and elsewhere, who still thought it wasn't major can now see just how worried govts are that this could destroy western economies and they should pull their heads in and do what they are bloody told.

It's not a great thing to believe what gets posted online but if this post is remotely correct then you can understand why right wing govts are giving money away to the workers:
www.facebook.com/brettrvogel/posts/10218087242626155


Oh, and we're not allowed to go to the pub from tonight … bugger.

I saw that! I personally think it is a good reaction but very surprising from the current government.

Current U.S. estimate from Goldman Sachs is a -24% GDP growth in Q1-2. I think that's giving way too precise an estimate but that sort of figure makes sense since everything's closed.

Gary Sax wrote: I saw that! I personally think it is a good reaction but very surprising from the current government.

Current U.S. estimate from Goldman Sachs is a -24% GDP growth in Q1-2. I think that's giving way too precise an estimate but that sort of figure makes sense since everything's closed.

As mentioned I think their actions show just how close we (western economies) are of being decimated/destroyed by our (correct) reaction to save lives from this virus. Better they give away billions now and still have a viable economy to earn it back next year, remember even though they are a right of centre govt they still agree with/support the free welfare and health system over here.

Australia:

www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/bondi-bea...parks-anger/12077618

Unbelievable.

I cannot legally get my hair cut in Minnesota anymore. The governor ordered all salons and barbershops closed on Tuesday.

I got a little Remington home grooming kit off Amazon about five years ago for $20. I used to spend $20/month on haircuts. So it’s one of the better returns on any purchase I’ve ever made.

That said, I’m looking forward to growing my apocalypse beard.

Shellhead wrote: I cannot legally get my hair cut in Minnesota anymore. The governor ordered all salons and barbershops closed on Tuesday.

I like how this post implies illicit back alley haircuts.

hotseatgames wrote:

Shellhead wrote: I cannot legally get my hair cut in Minnesota anymore. The governor ordered all salons and barbershops closed on Tuesday.

I like how this post implies illicit back alley haircuts.

When haircuts are outlawed, only outlaws will get haircuts.

All of a sudden the short back and sides becomes de rigeur for any self respecting motorcycle gang.

^sounds like you did the right thing, those were some tough choices they were going to have to make anyway.

I'm not trying to bum out anyone's day, so apologies if this is too morose. I've kind of burned out my maximum perceived "darkness in the world" sensors that other people still have.

The journalist Adam Serwer had a twitter post that really resonated with me and I've been thinking about it all week.



My parents are in their 70s and live several states away. My dad had a bad pneumonia in his 40s that lightly damaged his respiratory system, had a mild stroke (I missed Trashfest for ha) and my mom has high blood pressure and recently got diagnosed with diabetes. My family doesn't do casket funerals anyway so that doesn't affect me too much in a "I WON'T SEE A BODY" way but I may never see them again in person and that's a pretty deep decision. I had no idea when they left at Thanksgiving. I mean, it was always possible but this is so real.