Syrmax

Basically not. He doesn't really have a Constitutional leg to stand on with much of it. It may be good politics for Trump though as he's basically willing to let Blue states choke themselves while others take a different tack. We'll see how it plays out.

All businesses, schools, transportation should he shutdown until Dr. Fauci and Gov Cuomo say its safe to come out of the bunker. Otherwise people are going to die. People that go out of their homes are essentially murderers! Somebody's grandma somewhere might die because people are selfish and insist on going outside.

Yeah i was being a bit flippant but not totally...as far as Common Core...i went thru that with my kid. Mixed feelings. Generally not impressed but i get the idea, just implemented pretty ineptly. Distance learning after a certain age could work but not everyone has internet access and frankly, inner city school districts would probably drop to a 10% graduation rate. But OTOH, why pretend anymore? In a future lockdown world there will be increased emphasis on remote work, learning, and less participation in society outside of work. Which isn't all bad. Education systems should probably start looking at new learning models, soon, with an emphasis on STEM and languages early on. The rest of it all is pretty much crap anyway. IMO. Does anyone even care about government studies or 19th Century social justice warriors? LOL.

Why not?

They should probably just cancel public schools for the next year. There's no reason to continue to think that they are going to reopen schools anytime soon. School admins and parents will never feel safe enough to go out again or allow their kids to go to school because they might pick up the virus (even though mortality for under 20s is almost nil). Or it'll be some other excuse (what about Grandma?). So, as an alternative why not just give diploma's to anyone that can pass a GED test? Schools will barely be reopened once the 2nd and 3rd waves hit this fall. This could be a model going forward. Less staff needed, less costs. If you can pass the test who really cares if you sit through years of bullsh!t?

I've been to Syracusa italy Mt Etna and Sigonella NAS in Sicily via the Navy. Loved visiting there. I almost requested Alitalia to just give me a voucher credit for my trip to Rome (which is where I am supposed to be right now) but...unsure if/when travel will be allowed again. So i requested a refund of airfare. I saw that Germany and other EU nations have been reimposing enhanced border checks and restrictions so no telling what you may run into overseas for the indefinite future.

Here's another indicator for why we will not reopen for probably years...Unrealistic expectations, but here's a sample of what one "thought leader" (Katherine Baicker, economist and dean of the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago), has to say: “The longer it takes us to get the testing in place that we need, to develop the treatments we need, to ensure we have adequate health care resources in terms of beds and personnel and equipment, the more we risk businesses not being there when it is safe to resume business activity,” Baicker said. Most Americans said they do not feel safe about sending children back to school, allowing people to dine inside restaurants or allowing large gatherings for sporting events in this latest poll. About two-thirds said testing for the virus needs to improve before allowing people to return to work. __________________ ...Enjoy the lockdown, cuz it's not ending soon...

The USS Kidd offers a cautionary tale as to why covid-19 will likely never really go away anytime soon, or until it fully burns through the population or a vaccination is developed. Illnesses started onboard even after last port call was 30 days prior. So, while flattening the curve to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, we are guaranteeing that it will take forever for covid-19 to fully run through the population. As new cases will not get to zero anytime in the next couple of years (barring a deus ex machina), there will always be a demand pressure to not re-open, ostensibly to save lives. No politician wants to be seen as a "murderer," which is what histrionic people are already alleging. We see them all over social media and even in this forum. The whole situation is almost farcical, in that we're not isolating to limit total infections, we're only isolating to delay the infection spread, "flatten the curve!" This may save some lives although in the final analysis its not yet clear how many lives this will also cost due to delayed treatment for the usual host of all other diseases and maladies, cancer, heart, etc.). Someday in the distant future, perhaps a post-grad doing a doctoral thesis (if there still are such things in a few years), will unravel the net cost/benefits of all this. There's no reason to believe that you won't get covid-19 eventually. Hopefully, one experiences mild symptoms when they get it.

Same here. I actually went to Oktoberfest in Munich while i was in Europe last September. That was a lot of fun. The NY state fair probably has a wider range of attractions (agricultural, crafts, etc.), although the park rides were probably better at Oktoberfest. And of course there's the Bierhalls and tents! I didn't get on any rides though, as after the first couple "Maas" of bier, that wouldn't have been a good idea. Good thing i went last year cuz looks like international travel is all but done for years. Maybe for good as the airline industry collapses and consolidates.

We don't have the core institutional competency to "ramp up" testing or the production capability or means of administration or analysis. Places like Harvard or other public health organizations have these pie-in-the-sky academic recommendations and projections that aren't realistic and are full of fudge factors. This becomes a problem when entire nations are unprepared for pandemics, haven't seriously thought about what to do, and have this type of non-workable magical thinking as input to decision makers. Result is paralysis. And that's where we are and will largely remain into 2021 -2022.

We did have Measles declared eradicated in the US at one point around Y2K but its made a bit of a comeback due to a variety of factors...immigration, cultures, anti-vaccination trends...The Hasidic community in NYC is apparently a prime (but not the only) example of how Measles made a comeback.

meh. I don't think so. The State can and will keep this imposed indefinitely, which may not be the stated plan, but is likely IMO. There may be some relaxation in some areas but it'll all be re-imposed as soon as numbers start to look bad again. Other states will choose different paths, we'll see how it all works out in the end. I don't know what the correct answer is, i just believe that either way, there are big costs in terms of lives and $.

I saw that with Germany....here, there is no plan, just sh*t scribbled on a napkin somewhere. There's insufficient testing to conclude much of anything and everyone is panicked. There will likely be a 2nd or 3rd wave (or maybe even just a brief "pause" between waves). This will induce additional lockdowns or re-institution of them. It will take months/years to definitively determine things like continuing asymptomatic spread and reinfection characteristics as the virus mutates, which medical science doesn't fully understand right now. At least temporarily, we can print enough $ to give to people and businesses affected but eventually it'll all collapse, but that's another subject.

Agree but we don't have the capability or competency to do much contact tracing or enough testing (both antibody and actual virus presence). So we're going to be lost in a wilderness of the numbers game indefinitely. NY won't fully reopen for years (2022-23) unless a vaccine gets deployed or a magic treatment appears. We'll see how other less population dense areas fare as they play the game...

Unless the virus mutates into something less deadly or virulent, which is possible eventually, a 2nd or 3rd wave seems likely. A deployable vaccine doesn't appear imminent before 2021 at best and treatment improvements have been incremental / experimental. It'll be interesting to see the results from areas that are "re-opening" or relaxing controls. I'm especially interested to see how Germany fares as they seem to have been one of the more competent states/nations in handling this overall. If they have to re-institute a more aggressive lockdown then I don't think parts of the US will fully re-open for years (esp NY).

The conspiracy people are going to have a field day with that news. I'm going to hazard a guess that they've been sandbagging numbers all along and this is an attempt to keep things under some sort of control. It might be malicious calculating on the part of CCP or it could just be a result of re-opening with huge population centers without fully getting rid of the virus, which could be impossible until "herd immunity" does its dirty work.

If the state DOH is requiring Nursing and Rehab facilities to accept covid-19 positive people that would normally be hospitalized, when there is space available in actual hospital facilities, there needs to be an investigation of the Department ASAP. I have yet to discover a legitimate excuse for this decision. People (myself included) love to bash Trump for his many inane statements but this decision can actually kill many people...something like 25% of covid-19 deaths are associated with Nursing / Rehab type facilities due to their elderly population. It's almost tantamount to manslaughter.

I just ran across this recently developing issue regarding NY Nursing homes being required to accept elderly covid-19 patients, apparently at the Order of the Governor, or at least his office. This seems very odd and I can't think of a good reason for such logic as the elderly are the most vulnerable and in need of isolation. This would seem to make matters much worse. The below opinion article seems to summarize concerns with this edict. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/04/25/new-york-lacked-common-sense-in-nursing-homes-coronavirus-approach/amp/

I'm kind of "glad" this storm wasn't earlier and colder IMBY...we recorded about 0.5" of rain in my area, which would have been 5-6" of snow. Undoubtedly, we would have has WS Warnings issued for the same storm back during Winter....and come up a bit light...

April 1983 was also epic for CNY and much of upstate. Yes, some of us remember...

I still am amused by the GFS really long range out near 360-384 hrs the last few runs, May 10th or so. If we're gonna live in crazy land this year, let's go all the way!

Wow. A friend of mine, bartender, told me about 2 months ago that he lost taste and smell for a week or so. I didnt think anything of it at the time other than it was weird with no other symptoms. I don't think that I had it based on timeline (although emerging studies saying it was around as early as September in China), but I was sick with flulike, walking pneumonia symptoms for almost the whole month of October as soon as I got back from Europe. I didnt go to China but I can tell you that China came to me with all the Chinese tourists in Prague, Salzburg and Amsterdam especially....

I suspect this is a politically motivated effort (Trump Lied - People Died), or pranksters, or both. OTOH, if it's real, it looks like Natural Selection is doing its dirty work. Future generations will be thankful.

You hit on some good points and I had read the same article recently (NYT?). Part of the problem with all these numbers, covid-19, seasonal flu, model projections, is that the final infection/mortality values are estimates. Not everyone that gets the flu, dies or even gets tested. Same with covid-19, so there are a lot of extrapolations that occur. Which means a lot of uncertainty...esp with modeling, which appears to have been overly pessimistic. I could be wrong here but wasn't the main objective of distancing to "flatten the curve?" It's not so much to directly prevent infection / deaths but to string out the number of cases at any given time so as to not overburden the healthcare system and wind up with higher mortality. I think in the end the models project roughly the same number of infections. I suppose if the R0 value gets low enough the virus will just "go away" as they all do so that could be another good reason to isolate but there's also a gigantic cost to this. So, trying to figure out when to sound the "all clear" is really problematic as we are using a lot of projections and guesstinates... but not sure of a better way.

Congrats to @wolfie09 and @WesterlyWx I think...