Coronavirus

Shellhead wrote: It's a flaw in human character that we can't easily cope with threats unless they are big and tangible. It's the same reason why we ultimately aren't going to do anything useful about climate change, at least not on a scale that matters.

I was just listening to a podcast yesterday with Adam Tooze as the guest, and he basically expressed this exact sentiment--the global response to COVID can't inspire much other than existential dread and despair about the prospect of tackling climate change.

The fact that we are still demanding so many products that require rare earth metals tell you all you need to know about the prospects of stopping climate change —- hard to mine those at that scale with renewables.

That and the fact we aren’t moving to nuclear as the cornerstone of our renewable program

We need some of those rare earth metals for electric car batteries, which is not necessarily a green technology. Local electricity might be generated by burning coal, for example.

This dropped today; seems relevant. I recommend the channel generally.

I've been on permanent work from home for all of this, and today's zoom meeting sure made me glad. During this meeting, the following details were said by different coworkers.

1. It's just a flu
2. The CEO is staunchly anti-vax and has recommended to employees to NOT get the shot
3. Two people in the office are actually dying of it in the hospital right now.

Fucking bonkers. I'm crossing my fingers that there is no Christmas party again this year.

Our company CEO is also anti-vax. Fortunately, he is one of three owners of the business, and the other two outvoted him regarding pandemic safety. Our company doesn't have a vaccine mandate, but we do require non-vaccinated workers to wear a mask. I am only one step down in the organization from the owners, so I sometimes talk to the CEO, often about non-work matters. We recently had a very polite, respectful disagreement about COVID and the vaccines for it. During the discussion, I picked up on a religious fanatic tone to his opposition to vaccines. I'm an atheist who used to argue with religious people all the time, and I got that same vibe from our talk. So I carefully kept my tone very respectful, and agreed to watch the YouTube videos he promised to send to me, knowing that YouTube has probably recently banned said videos.

There's footage out today of Lindsey Graham telling some constituents that he recommends the shot. He didn't support mandates or any of that, just said that he thinks people should consider getting it. He got really chewed out. Granted, it's South Carolina. But one of the guys was a Navy contractor explaining that he was going to lose his job in 60 days. He barked at Lindsey "I'm a veteran!" and Lindsey replied back "I am too. I didn't say you have to get the shot, I'm saying you should consider it. In the military you have to get a lot of shots and you don't get any choice." The small crowd sitting there listening to him speak clearly were in consensus, and for the one guy that included losing his job over it.

So there's still a dug-in crowd that simply are unreachable. As they vacate vaccine-mandatory jobs on principle the job market will become even tighter, putting more pressure on low end wage employers to lift their hourly rate.

hotseatgames wrote: I've been on permanent work from home for all of this, and today's zoom meeting sure made me glad. During this meeting, the following details were said by different coworkers.

1. It's just a flu
2. The CEO is staunchly anti-vax and has recommended to employees to NOT get the shot
3. Two people in the office are actually dying of it in the hospital right now.

Fucking bonkers. I'm crossing my fingers that there is no Christmas party again this year.

Did anyone speak in opposition? I've found that most "normal" people are reluctant to express disagreement on the issue.

I had a run-in with an abusive boss on vaccines back in 1996. I was having a meal with him and one other guy on a business trip and he spoke to how his kids weren't vaccinated and never would be, because vaccines don't work. The other guy agreed with him. They looked to me for my opinion and I asked the obvious questions (which was much easier to do back then) -- did smallpox disappear on its own at the very moment the vaccine was distributed? Measles, mumps, polio and others? His response was that smallpox had simply run its course.

Later when I spoke to the other guy he indicated that he was buttering the boss' bread. His kids were vaccinated and he had no doubt they worked. But he chose not to speak up because my boss (Tim Lorello) was a blowhard and an obnoxious asshole.

At the time the encounter seemed quaint. Looks different now.

At this point, I actually hope that the pandemic lasts just long enough that every anti-vaxxer gets a severe case of Covid-19. And if I ever see an anti-vaxxer or anti-masker physically assault anybody over a mask or vaccine mandate, I will intervene with extreme violence.

Sagrilarus wrote: Did anyone speak in opposition? I've found that most "normal" people are reluctant to express disagreement on the issue.

A little, including myself. I have to tread very lightly at my job. My pro-science attitude would quite literally get me fired if I expressed it very loudly. That's a sentence I am typing, in 2021.

Right to work, baby.

This question is Coronavirus-adjacent. It looks as if the entire workforce upgraded their jobs, and the bottom rung is now short of workers. How did that happen? I see articles where some ice cream shop owner had to shut down because nobody will work at his shop for $8/hr, but I don't see exactly how that happened - people still need jobs here in the US, and the big unemployment bonuses are no more. But here in Columbus a person can get a $15/hr job by just walking in a business' door and saying "Hire me." Did Covid start up a game of employment musical chairs, except that chairs are being added as the game goes on?

I'm not complaining - $15/hr still isn't enough to make ends meet, much less the $8 or $10/hr it was before. Just curious.

Sidebar: My wife and I went on vacation. The hotel we stayed at was short of staff, so it was "clean your own room." No big thing - I've known how to make a bed and throw clothes in a pile for a long time. But still mildly annoying, especially for what we paid.

There's a couple of factors at play.

One is child care. It's much harder to find now because a lot of the unlicensed places couldn't get subsidies and a lot of moms didn't like the idea of bringing six disease vectors into their house on a daily basis. So there's a lot of women out of the workforce because they don't have someone available to cover their kids.

Two and granted much smaller, some of the work force has died, gotten ill enough to not be able to work, or are attending to someone too ill to take care of themselves. 700,000 total people dead in the U.S., likely 300,000 of them are of employment age. That takes an entire month of new hires out of the picture in the last 18 months, about 5%, deaths alone.

Three and I think the biggie -- people have figured out that they had a shit job. Your hourly rate doesn't matter much if you can only score 20 hours a week, and that 20 hours effectively blocks you from taking another job. I know two people that have figured out that they do better making minimum wage 40 a week than they did making more per hour working 25. Put the full-time benefits package into the picture and it can be a huge step up. If you do shift work and you have a kid, you're paying for full-time day care even if you don't get full time work, because you can't depend on your hours. So landing a 40 job even at less pay can result in a big net gain, and you don't smell like chicken when you come home from work. Those jobs that rich white Senators say are designed for high school kids are now being filled by high school kids, and there's only so many of them around.

Four, some people took early retirement.

And finally a lot of dual income families have realized that the second income doesn't bear much fruit. Years ago I read an article on what you need to consider when the second person in the marriage gets a job. You need to stack their income on top of the first person's income from a tax perspective, meaning that second job is paying a much higher income tax rate. Health benefits mean nothing if the first person already provides them. Both parents gone means daycare is a necessity, even for much of school age. (Back to item 1 again.) Food bills go up because more meals are eaten out or purchased for take-out. The second income is nice, but it pays less than it would if it was the only paycheck in the house. I think a lot of families that had someone laid off realized they could make it work, and that it wasn't so bad. They started seeing their kids more than two waking hours a day and decided they enjoy that.

I had thought that the unemployment + bonus gave a lot of people a chance to get a better job, and that there was a bit of musical chairs going on. Everybody gets a better job, but nobody wants the old, shitty job for shitty pay. Hence Taco Bell is offering $15/hr and it's still not enough.

I had heard the dual income families issue before, long before Covid. I remember a news show where they sat a couple down and showed them that they were basically putting their children in daycare for effectively zero benefit. The wife was floored. Being a housewife/husband does have its rewards, but they are not the same rewards that being successful in a field can give you. However, the wife was just working to make ends meet, or so she thought.

Personal experience: my daughter worked every summer since she was 16, but not in 2020. She didn't look really hard for a remote job, and I didn't push her to get a job that would put her out in public. I bet there are still some parents that would rather give their kids an allowance or a credit card than have them work and bring Covid home to Grandma, vaccinated or not. So I can see Taco Bell not getting the usual influx of teenage employees. However, I did see the usual gang of kids working at the Dairy Queen this summer; six teenagers behind the counter, and two of them working their asses off while the other four are chatting.

I'm going to try to force myself to drive the speed limit for the near future. Only 1% of the ICU beds in Twin Cities hospitals are available right now.