Syrmax

This is what happens when public "benefit" assignments get involved. It gets to the old moral hazard vs Meritocracy debate. One can see both sides. As far as the workers still carrying on while others get unemployment...as we used to say the Navy, "it's a f@ck job" but no good alternatives exist. Someone has to get it done. Maybe gov't can also provide some extra comp in acknowledgement? As long as we're throwing helicopter money around, why not. (The repercussions of all that is a separate discussion).

He's probably right. We need antibody testing and a lot of it, soonish. Of course it would be helpful if we actually had enough covid-19 test kits instead of having to be stingy with them. And then there's the vaccine... One can dream though...

Supposedly, covid-19 appears to be fairly well behaved in terms of mutations thusfar. It could always change but right now it looks like a vaccine could be targeted for it without much risk of the virus changing enough to matter.

I saw a rough analysis of temp vs cases for New Orleans that an ex coworker of mine posted on LinkedIn - he lives in Louisiana. There does seem to be a correlation developing between lower cases and temps in 70s and higher. We'll see...

Good question.

I remember April 1989. About half the month was snowy, cold in the Binghamton area. It was right before I went in the Navy. I think we had a nice early April, even had temps in the 70s & 80s IIRC...and then all hell broke loose.

We just had a snow shower blow through. Enough to record a "T". So we are off the schneid for April. Great.

Yes, undoubtedly it was travelers from China into Europe as indicated by natural changes in the virus over time enableing it to be tracked etc. I kind of suspected this was going on in Jan/Feb as we were seeing covid-19 cases springing up everywhere after the initial northern Italy outbreak (possibly linked to a manufacturing facility there that apparently uses Chinese workers). Regardless, what this indicates is that we (the globe) realistically had no way of containing this, maybe only delaying it a bit. It would have taken some real global preplanning to enable tests of an previously unknown virus to be created and then manufactured and disbursed in large quantities within a matter of days/weeks. The Chinese government delaying and fumbling around looks like it removed any hope of containment although I wonder whether it would have made much of a difference in the end as reaction time was going to be somewhat slow, in the pre-covid-19 world...

Interesting Plot Twist regarding source of NY-based Coronavirus infections...Europe! If confirmed, we really had no realistic chance to limit this once it got out of China, which was inevitable... Snip: New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia. “The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review.

Germany getting ready to open back up (edit: partially, carefully). Biggest difference appears to be their ability to test up to 500,000 ppl per week. So they know where they really stand. Much like S Korea. UK and US a small fraction of that, just blundering around...arguing about ventilators and panicking the public.

Golden Snowball race isn't over yet!

Some thoughts. Not a rant. Onondaga County data shows a 93.4% negative test rate...and they're only testing "sick" people. There are under 300 active cases (377 total). Yet, the Cty Exec is railing on about the potential for as many as 5,000 cases at one time if we don't stay in lockdown or increase it (which he has...albeit largely voluntary). He is getting the 5,000 number from an Upstate Medical model of virus case progression for various R0 and participation rate values (38% participation gets us 5,000 new daily cases in August..). He claims we are at 33% participation, don't know how that value us determined, it's likely fuzzy math. I won't even get into the ventilator-need projections. Yet, hospitals are laying off staff because they're empty (elective treatments postponed). So, in essence, they declare this "a war" (ok I'll buy that), and destroy the economy, but then we downsize the Army. Something is really amiss here, big picture. I suspect what's amiss is an over projection of R0 values in lower pop density areas, and an underestimation of lockdown participation rate, coupled with basically a panicked response. Granted, high pop density areas have been a problem but that's likely due to a preponderance of transmission being between family members in urbanized areas (per info from China and Italy, Spain). How long do we sit here with empty hospitals, masses unemployed, businesses shuttering and low case loads? There are 29 people hospitalized in the county. 29. The good news is we are trending far below projections of cases (here). At some point soon, they are going to need to relax restrictions and transition to normal if caseload growth remains low. Even at 15 new cases a day that's 1,500-2,000 total cases by August, which sounds like a lot but is manageable, as we are seeing by the empty hospitals. Or, be a slave to models, which means it'll never end because we'll never get "low enough" and they will always point to exponential growth possibilities. I think in a couple of weeks we will begin to see a lot of friction between the Governer, who is NYC focused, and leaders in the rest of the state as i suspect Cuomo will be much more reluctant to relax any measure of control he has in place.

I don't think it'll ever be over. They've boxed themselves into following model output! We here know the folly of that!

It's really good. I won't say its better than BB but it's in the ballpark.

Pretty much same here on those shows. And I'm a Better Call Saul fan. I won't spoil the Dexter ending but since you already are warned...all I'll say is that if you survived GOT finale...you can handle this.

It's really good. You'll be shaking your head wondering, is this real? LOL. I finished binging Dexter a couple weeks ago...glad I did.

Gotta say, this is rubbish. And 300 ventilators needed in the county? There's not even 300 active cases! This is getting out of hand. Panicked and power mad little Hitlers seizing their chance to feel important....fueled by a panicked media and an army of snitches. Sad.

Is it too late for KSYR to edge out KROC for Golden Snowball? Let's Do This!!

I follow this guy's channel on YouTube, younger American that lived in China for 10 years, fluent in Chinese, has Chinese wife and kid now...back in US because Chairman Xi's CCP began harassing and clamping down on foreigners a few years ago. He has a lot of great pieces on China from his life there. Interesting to get first-person info and perspective on China. Here he discusses the drop in Cellphine useage and information and the utter madness of what's going on there from his personal contacts within China. Frankly, I'm at the point where I'm beginning to refer to this as the Chairman Xi virus.

Euro...almost out in fantasy land...but i guess the key takeaway is that the next 7-10 days or so aren't looking great, certainly not mild. Which i guess, as long as we're in #coronapocalypse lockdown...at least we're not missing much outside...

I've been reading another aspect to the virus, it applies to many viruses or illneses... and it has to do with the "loading" of virus you get. Apparently, and this makes sense, the amount of virus ingested makes a difference in many cases as to how severe your symptoms will be (discounting other pre-existing medical issues). The less virus load that your body has to initially deal with, the better your immune system can handle it and better the outcome. Data is suggestive that something like 75-80% of cases are thought to be transmitted person-to-person within families. So, it would be in a home environment where your exposure could be greater if someone is contagious. Or healthcare workers, people working or meeting in close quarters. So masks, even if not N95 medical grade, would seem to make sense for even the uninfected to wear depending on where they are, which makes CDC's recommendations regarding mask use, any mask, all the more mystifying.

Here's some factoids... final #'s aren't in yet, obviously. These are a snapshot in time, to ponder. -The ratio of jobs lost to Coronavirus deaths so far is 1,665 to 1. -We’ve lost 46 jobs for every confirmed case of Covid-19 in the U.S. -6.6 million jobless claims reported this week. The highest claims posted for a week during the financial crisis was 665,000. -In two weeks we surpassed all of the job losses from the 2008 financial crisis by 2 million. And the S&P500 is 10% off the lows... -So far the S&P has gone up ~1% per million confirmed job losses. -The S&P 500 is up 6.3% from the Christmas Eve 2018 lows and since then we’ve lost 10 million jobs and counting...

I don't think the Banks can charge what they like on the SBA loans. They are bitching though... Update (1800ET): And so Wall Street wins again. After we warned earlier that the SBA's $350BN Paycheck Protection Program, which is expected to be launched at midnight tonight and is meant to bailout America's small and medium business (<500 employees), may never even get off the ground because the proposed interest rate on the loan of 0.5% is too low lender banks (alongside with various other considerations as listed below) with JPM saying it “will most likely not be able to start accepting applications on Friday, April 3rd as we had hoped", in a press conference late on Thursday, Steven Mnuchin said that he will double the interest rate on the SBA loan from 0.50% to 1.00% in order to appease banks seeking higher interest rates to participate in the Treasury's bailout program and lend money to the same taxpayers who bailed them out 12 years ago. These are same banks, mind you, that just sold all $1.6 trillion in securities to the Fed to expand their balance sheets capacity in the past three weeks, and which also just benefited from the Fed's decision to remove Treasurys and deposits from the Fed's SLR test, freeing up another $1.6 trillion in liquidity. Furthermore, these loans are guaranteed by the federal government and don’t require collateral, and will be forgiven if funds are used for payroll costs, mortgage interest, rent and utility payments for two months and if businesses retain and rehire employees. So bank don't take any risk - why are they charging any interest at all, or rather why do they have any say in what the rate should be?

Read the article on the looming small business bailout fiasco...if that doesn't spell it out I don't know what will. I'm far from a hapless Bernie Bruh but ... If we're going down I'm all in for going full Vlad the Impaler. What did Rahm Emanuel say? Never let a good crisis go to waste?

Why give out loans that are backstopped by the taxpayer? Meaning the SBA stimulus loans in particular. It's not even the Banks money! Are you effing kidding me? And then have the gall to demand higher interest rates that they will make $ from when these ****bags routinely blow themselves up and require bailouts? Are you serious? And i would think the usurious interest rates banks charge for Credit Cards would cover their "costs" especially during a time of national crisis...and since the Fed has taken their sh*t loan book off they're hands... I won't even get into the Great Lie of Mark to Market...the scam that keeps on giving...