Coronavirus

Joebot wrote: His stupid wall isn't going to keep out a virus.

It won't keep out people either.

First day working at home, Zoom meeting in the morning was fun. internet is terrible nowadays.

Boss tested positive for Corona. Wondering whether HR keep to their word and let everyone know, and where he'll turn up in the numbers. He lives in South Dakota (in a county w/zero cases) but works in WY.

Gary Sax wrote: news.gallup.com/poll/298313/president-tr...approval-rating.aspx

Dubya had 90% approval after 9/11. Heck, I thought he was doing an okay job immediately afterwards, and I despised that man.

Have a friend whose 5-year-old daughter was on a video call with her kindergarten class. He walked in to check on her and she dismissively shushed him: "Dad! I'm on a call!"

He said after two weeks of her having to tiptoe around while he was on calls, he deserved that.

ChristopherMD wrote: USA RANT: This unquestionably required a coordinated Federal response from the beginning. We had plenty of warning for politicians and experts to get together and formulate bipartisan plans for a lockdown while protecting the economy. This could even have been the ongoing war that got Trump re-elected after showing everyone what a strong leader he was when he took credit. Instead our politicians are too divided to ever truly work together for the country. The Feds response is every state/territory for itself, pay the private sector for help, we're going to bail out the rich again, and we'll give everyone else a pittance to placate them. I've heard 15-20% require hospital stays so millions of survivors are also about to go bankrupt from medical bills regardless of what happens with the stock market. Voting in a handful of different people won't fix a broken system.

Well, it turns out it's worse than you imagine. Remember when Trump appointed VP Pence as the head of the task force. And we got all the news stories about how he messed up his own state when he was governor. By all accounts he was doing a good job. Problem is he was doing too good a job and Trump's sycophants let him know that he was being outshined by Pence. We all know what happened next. Trump took over to lead all the press conferences from then on out. Couldn't let the #2 get any credit, eh.

I think a dangerous narrative that could be coming soon is that no one could have prepared for this. There's some truth to that, it's likely even a prepared US would have major problems, but it's also 100% false that we couldn't have been ready with proper medical supplies, a plan, etc. I find this story very enlightening:

www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-c...nUY2Zce6SD9YQt4fg6tU

Like I said, I can feel this "who could have known?" narrative about 3 days away as the death toll becomes absolutely wrenching and I hate it.

Interesting article. Just to point out that HEB is privately held and can make decisions that reduce profitability but that support their values. Having a full time emergency preparedness guy and building an inventory of emergency supplies isn’t something a publicly traded company can do without impacting profits. It’s easy to say that publicly traded companies *should* be willing to go without all the profits but I have a bunch of these businesses in my 401k and I need them to kick ass so I can afford to eat *wet* cat food when I’m retired.

Gary Sax wrote: I think a dangerous narrative that could be coming soon is that no one could have prepared for this. There's some truth to that, it's likely even a prepared US would have major problems, but it's also 100% false that we couldn't have been ready with proper medical supplies, a plan, etc. I find this story very enlightening:

www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-c...nUY2Zce6SD9YQt4fg6tU

Like I said, I can feel this "who could have known?" narrative about 3 days away as the death toll becomes absolutely wrenching and I hate it.

I think that's a bit unfair - we have just had the UK Deputy Chief Medical Officer saying basically that today and let's remember how slow WHO was at declaring this a pandemic and asking countries to shut borders and stuff, hell WHO didn't even do that. The only country that reacted like this could be the end of the world was China when they locked up Wuhan, and all the western media could do was to highlight how brutal they were being about it.
Hindsight eh ?

BALEETED

shit's bad, yo.

sorry to anyone who saw this

Now I wish I'd read it.

Hi folks,

Just wanted to pop my head in to say I'm thinking of you during this challenging time, and to share with you the following interview with Max Brooks (World War Z, etc), which I found quite informative: www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820740966/how-the...bilize-in-a-pandemic

physically isolated but socially connected,
Neil
Toronto

southernman wrote: I think that's a bit unfair - we have just had the UK Deputy Chief Medical Officer saying basically that today and let's remember how slow WHO was at declaring this a pandemic and asking countries to shut borders and stuff, hell WHO didn't even do that. The only country that reacted like this could be the end of the world was China when they locked up Wuhan, and all the western media could do was to highlight how brutal they were being about it.
Hindsight eh ?

No. It's not really unfair in the US. CDC had been planning for situations like this for years, especially after SARS and H1N1 emerged earlier in the century. They had a complete playbook assembled (i.e. detailed prep procedures.) They had a special response team for just this type of situation. They had a transition team assembled for the new administration. But just like with every other agency, said new administration both completely fumbled the ball (Michael Lewis goes into morbid detail about this in his book, The Fifth Risk) and allowed all of those resources/people to be abandoned. Why is South Korea in such good shape? Because they had a plan and followed it (i.e. testing and more testing, discover clusters, isolate them.)

I can't speak for what the UK's response may have been like (although the idiocy of Johnson's plan of "herd mentality" in the face of something with this high a mortality rate is, uh, short-sighted, to say the least) but the US had a plan. It just wasn't followed and everyone who knew how to run it was cut from the CDC's budget by this administration.

If you want a similar example of Trump's moronic thought process, witness the governor of Mississippi overruling local lockdowns because he continues to insist that everything can just keep proceeding normally. As one of the largest recipients of federal aid among the states, doubtlessly they'll come begging for more when the situation inevitably blows up there.

We're an international embarrassment, but half of the voters don't seem to care.

BTW it wasn't Boris Johnson's plan, it was the top health professionals in the country whom he immediately deferred to. It is therefore a bit rich to castigate him personally over the approach to the pandemic. With due respect, you are not a top epidemiologist currently advising the UK government.

COVID Telework

Sisyphus am I
All tasks ephemeral
Yet eight hours I sit

Honestly I look forward to the two days out of six I am rotating essential. I just feel that the telework we are doing now is bullshit makework. Does not accomplish anything, and has no real value. Sorry, just wanted to get that off my chest. I miss actual work, despite being grateful for secure employment.