Upstate NY Banter and General Discussion..

[BuffaloWeather]

52 minutes ago, Luke_Mages said:

Your other article stated that average income among the working class has increased at a rate 11% over the rate of inflation, these are saying its stayed about the same. In my opinion the average wage should simply keep up with inflation. As I said previously quality of life has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. 

I don't doubt that the wage gap has increased and will continue to increase. However people who work their asses off have every opportunity to work their way into the top quintile (+$230k).

 The thing to remember is that if you were to take all of this extra money the "rich" are making and lets say equally disperse it among everyone that the net affect would be 0 gain in purchasing power due to increased inflation.

That's incorrect. So the rich having the money doesn't increase inflation, but if you spread it out it increases inflation. So basically it's impossible to get the middle class back to what it was in past times?

[Buckeyes_Suck]

Just now, BuffaloWeather said:

Thank you for proving my point wolf. Luke must be living in a nice little cushy bubble. Us lowly folk are struggling. 

LOL. not true. I left my last firm because it was completely mismanaged. My point was just that its not the norm to hack off good employees, usually there's more to the story.

[Buckeyes_Suck]

Just now, BuffaloWeather said:

That's incorrect. So the rich having the money doesn't increase inflation, but if you spread it out it increases inflation. So basically it's impossible to get the middle class back to what it was in past times?

Yes. Because you and I arent competing with the rich for resources. They're buying different things than we are.

[wolfie09]

Well that's between you guys haha

That's just one regional manager for one company in a small area..I obviously can't speak for all the"higher ups" , i'm sure some care about the employees more so than money, I think lol

[wolfie09]

Not sure how much this will help "sleepy Joe" but I guess it couldn't hurt lol Obama still has a pretty big following..

[Buckeyes_Suck]

Guys on WGR this morning hinted at the idea that the coming year is going to be much worse than officials are letting on. I just cant see how we get back to normal anytime soon. The paranoia alone is enough to tank an economy, let alone everything being shutdown.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB12Cfqa?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

[BuffaloWeather]

3 minutes ago, Luke_Mages said:

Guys on WGR this morning hinted at the idea that the coming year is going to be much worse than officials are letting on. I just cant see how we get back to normal anytime soon. The paranoia alone is enough to tank an economy, let alone everything being shutdown.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB12Cfqa?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Statisticians need to do a cost/benefit analysis. The cost of letting the country stayed closed for a few more months is just too severe. There is always a point where the pros outweigh the cons. I think we are nearing that point.

[wolfie09]

Donald Trump on Tuesday called any governor who resisted his 'total authority' as president a mutineer and threatened to withhold coronavirus aid from them if they didn't heed his call to reopen the country.

 

The president was defending his claim that he has authority to reopen states to business in the wake of the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus, which goes against the 10th amendment of the constitution.

[wolfie09]

The New York governor made it clear he would not obey any such order from Trump to reopen his state, adding he would take the matter to the courts to let them rule on it.

'If he ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn't do it. And we would have a constitutional challenge between the state and the federal government and that would go into the courts, and that would be the worst possible thing he could do at this moment would be to act dictatorial and to act in a partisan divisive way,' Cuomo said.

The governor warned Trump could create a 'constitutional crisis.'

'The only way this situation gets worse is if the president creates a constitutional crisis. If he says to me, I declare it open, and that is a public health risk or it's reckless with the welfare of the people of my state, I will oppose it. And then we will have a constitutional crisis like you haven't seen in decades,' Cuomo said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.'

'I just hope he gets control of what he was saying last night and he doesn't go down that road,' he added.

[wolfie09]

Not related to the coronavirus but a shock nonetheless..

RIP

 

[Thinksnow18]

2 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Workers rights have also plummeted throughout the last few decades. Unions dominated the marketplace where workers had some negotiation ability and someone standing up for their working rights. Now you can be fired for anything, and trust me I've seen people fired with no warnings for the most trivial things I've ever seen. You know in most countries in Europe you cannot fire someone without probable cause? We have A LOT of catching up to do. People on here make fun of Germany yet they destroyed us in this COVID outbreak. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-getting-fired-looks-like-in-different-countries-2019-7#in-the-uk-employers-can-only-fire-workers-if-there-is-a-good-reason-to-do-so-and-they-tend-to-fire-older-employees-first-1

 

Being an "at will" state makes me cringe. Like yourself I've been in some sort of banking/finance for the past 12 years and I too have witnessed the here today gone tomorrow routine. I think unfortunately this opens the doors of favoritism to certain employees and unfair practices to others. Why we haven't gone the way of an actual reason to be let go is archaic. 

[DeltaT13]

Once we slowly begin to emerge from this lock down people better learn to hold their sneezes and coughs.  The slightest hint of sickness will get people chased out restaurants and stores, its going to be a weird paranoid existence for a long time.  Not cool.

[BuffaloWeather]

I read yesterday that the soonest timeframe for a vaccine is Winter/Spring 2021. With no herd immunity what other alternative do we have? Keep the country closed for a year? It would be martial law by this autumn. 

[BuffaloWeather]

22 minutes ago, Thinksnow18 said:

Being an "at will" state makes me cringe. Like yourself I've been in some sort of banking/finance for the past 12 years and I too have witnessed the here today gone tomorrow routine. I think unfortunately this opens the doors of favoritism to certain employees and unfair practices to others. Why we haven't gone the way of an actual reason to be let go is archaic. 

This country has a real hard time changing deeply embedded ideologies and customs. Revolutions and innovation take away control of the powerful. What leader wants that? 

[Buckeyes_Suck]

3 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

I read yesterday that the soonest timeframe for a vaccine is Winter/Spring 2021. With no herd immunity what other alternative do we have? Keep the country closed for a year? It would be martial law by this autumn. 

Any thoughts on the idea of opening up to everyone under 60 without underlying conditions? We've been half joking about that here at work. About half of us are in our 30s and the other half 60s. Let the low risk segment of the population build up herd immunity. Hell I'd even volunteer to purposely get infected and tough it out at home for two weeks. 

[wolfie09]

3 vaccines are already in human trials, over 70 total being worked on..

According to Pfizer they could have a vaccine in about half the time of the original 12-18 month time table..They aren't the only ones..

 

One of Britain's top scientists is "80 percent" confident that a vaccine for COVID-19, which has killed over 108,000 people globally, could be ready by September.

Oxford University vaccinology professor Sarah Gilbert told the Times of London Saturday that “if everything goes perfectly" her team's vaccine could be ready by the fall, The Washington Post reported.

“I know quite a lot about the Oxford project, and it is really great to see some hope, especially on the front page of the newspapers,” Matt Hancock, the U.K.'s health secretary, told the Post.

 

 

Article about Pfizer last week..

Drugmaker Pfizer said Thursday that it is working on a promising treatment for coronavirus, as well as a vaccine.

The drugmaker said preclinical studies showed that an unspecified compound that was originally used to treat SARS — a different coronavirus — has shown potential in battling the dangerous illness.

Pfizer research chief Mikael Dolsten said the drug blocks COVID-19 from replicating, slowing the spread in mild or moderate cases, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The company said it will conduct additional preclinical studies and plans to launch human trials in the summer.

Pfizer also said it will support studies to determine whether its existing medicines, including its rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz, may provide help for those suffering from respiratory problems from the virus.

The drugmaker has also finalized a plan to work with German company BioNTech to develop a vaccine, which could be tested in human trials as early as the end of the month. The companies hope to produce millions of vaccines by the end of 2020.

“I feel confident that we will win, battle by battle, to turn around this viral war against our society,” Dolsten told the Journal.

[BuffaloWeather]

31 minutes ago, Luke_Mages said:

Any thoughts on the idea of opening up to everyone under 60 without underlying conditions? We've been half joking about that here at work. About half of us are in our 30s and the other half 60s. Let the low risk segment of the population build up herd immunity. Hell I'd even volunteer to purposely get infected and tough it out at home for two weeks. 

That would make a lot of sense. 

[MJO812]

Upstate NY will slowly lift the restrictions early to mid May and then NYC  by the end of the month into June IMO.

[DeltaT13]

45 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

I read yesterday that the soonest timeframe for a vaccine is Winter/Spring 2021. With no herd immunity what other alternative do we have? Keep the country closed for a year? It would be martial law by this autumn. 

Testing Testing Testing.  If we could magically test every American over the next 3-4 weeks and actually quantify the real levels of infection and exposure we could make informed decisions.  We need both regular testing for the active virus and antibody testing.  We need a system ( a COVID card, if you will) where we know who is vulnerable and who is relatively immune or safe and we give the safe people a pass/app/card that gets them access to specific locations.  We need to shelter the ones at high risk and get the rest of back out there.  We just need testing, massive incredible testing.  Without it, its all speculation and fear.  

[DeltaT13]

And the other thing we need is medical overhead.  The only reason this disease has paralyzed us is because our medical system is just barely able to function during nominal levels of need.  It sounds outrageous, but we need large facilities that are "moth-balled" but always ready to be sprung into action in the event of a pandemic.  We a million ventilators (at a minimum) stored in a giant repository along with all the other PPE, this must be staffed and maintained perpetually.  We need the ability to quickly convert the medical system into a temporary setup that doubles its capacity. I understand that is a wildly complicated, but the alternative is the entire collapse of modern society.  Our hospital system can't be at capacity all the time, and it can't be for profit. 

[WNash]

10 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

That would make a lot of sense. 

I have a 39 year old coworker with zero underlying conditions, great cardio fitness from long distance biking. He and his family got sick. It hospitalized him and almost killed him. He told me "stay inside -- you don't want this".

We need to do widespread antibody testing to rebuild a workforce, carrying everyone else with direct payments right now. Then, when we can partially re-open the economy in perhaps a few months, we need a serious regime of contact tracing. I don't like the privacy implications, but it's that or just sacrificing a significant part of the population so a comparative few can recapitalize. The fact that some Fox hosts and even some presidential advisors have been implying that these people would die anyway and many are unproductive retirees sounds like it came from the Final Solution, which is not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years.

[WNash]

2 minutes ago, DeltaT13 said:

And the other thing we need is medical overhead.  The only reason this disease has paralyzed us is because our medical system is just barely able to function during nominal levels of need.  It sounds outrageous, but we need large facilities that are "moth-balled" but always ready to be sprung into action in the event of a pandemic.  We a million ventilators (at a minimum) stored in a giant repository along with all the other PPE, this must be staffed and maintained perpetually.  We need the ability to quickly convert the medical system into a temporary setup that doubles its capacity. I understand that is a wildly complicated, but the alternative is the entire collapse of modern society.  Our hospital system can't be at capacity all the time, and it can't be for profit. 

Just-in-time inventory doesn't work for outlier events, it's true. We have to accept that part of our productive capacity must be sacrificed as an insurance policy, which shouldn't affect most people because only a small percentage of people have been able to accumulate surplus wealth during the time that we have save money by destroying our capacity to respond to society-wide contingencies. 

It's also very clear that medical insurance needs to be separated from employment -- a different but related point. Are hospitals going to recoup all of the revenue they've lost by becoming exclusively COVID-19 field clinics? Some people think that insurance should be part of employment to punish people for being unproductive, and as our health care system is undermined, you can blame them.

[wolfie09]

It's rare but it does happen..

Source

[Buckeyes_Suck]

18 minutes ago, WNash said:

I have a 39 year old coworker with zero underlying conditions, great cardio fitness from long distance biking. He and his family got sick. It hospitalized him and almost killed him. He told me "stay inside -- you don't want this".

We need to do widespread antibody testing to rebuild a workforce, carrying everyone else with direct payments right now. Then, when we can partially re-open the economy in perhaps a few months, we need a serious regime of contact tracing. I don't like the privacy implications, but it's that or just sacrificing a significant part of the population so a comparative few can recapitalize. The fact that some Fox hosts and even some presidential advisors have been implying that these people would die anyway and many are unproductive retirees sounds like it came from the Final Solution, which is not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years.

Your coworker is an outlier, not the norm. You’re still way more likely to die or be hospitalized from another cause if you’re young and healthy. 

[BuffaloWeather]

New York new cases from 6,240 yesterday to 6,553 today. Deaths also up from 671 to 778. Looks like were still going up to me. 

[Syrmax]

8 hours ago, Luke_Mages said:

I find the article misleading and this is why. 
The fact that productivity has outpaced pay By 6X is completely expected (I would have expected that number to be higher) given technological advances, especially in the time frame given. The early 80s was when automation started to become widespread and the 2000s when the internet made nearly everything easier. 
The truth is that the 11% wage increase is a direct result of increased productivity, and that the missing number in the article is how much the standard of living has increased today vs the 80s, mainly a result of the 11% increase OvER what we should have expected, which was standard inflation.  We enjoy a lifestyle now that nearly everyone in the 80s could only dream of. 
 

https://www.aei.org/economics/political-economy/living-standards-better-for-americans-years-ago/

Productivity growth is an esoteric measure if one is talking about "standard of living".  The fact that I am more productive at work doesn't mean jack squat once i leave work.   Nothing has really changed since the 1980s, if you are talking about standard of living. The only thing that's really changed is the advent of communication technologies and certain medical advances.  There are no shortage of studies showing that the "average" US citizen's wagegrowth has been stagnant for the past 20-30 years, in real terms.   From a day to day standpoint...speaking for myself...what has really changed since the 80s?  There's the internet and online streaming services, which are mostly just a different way to waste time than staring at the TV.  (To be fair, internet capability has increased "productivity" because we are now available to "work" 24/7...at the same relative pay...and we can search/shop for things online).  Certainly, cars are nicer and those of us that want them, have smartphones.  Houses aren't really nicer.   Electronics are more capable, I can program my home's thermostat or coffee maker - whoopie - but I don't really count that as standard of living.  Some of our "advances" are actually a net drag given the costs, more of an elective convenience that we survived without quite nicely in the 1990s and prior.

[MJO812]

Governors of NY, NJ and CT want more testing. Good luck trying to re open.

[BuffaloWeather]

I'm really blown away at the stock market right now. Record unemployment/Furloughs, massive debt on corporate balance sheets, 25 trillion national debt, oil wars, and basically an entire economy that has shut down for 3-4 weeks already with no signs of reopening anytime soon. Why are the markets rising? 

[BuffaloWeather]

1 hour ago, DeltaT13 said:

Testing Testing Testing.  If we could magically test every American over the next 3-4 weeks and actually quantify the real levels of infection and exposure we could make informed decisions.  We need both regular testing for the active virus and antibody testing.  We need a system ( a COVID card, if you will) where we know who is vulnerable and who is relatively immune or safe and we give the safe people a pass/app/card that gets them access to specific locations.  We need to shelter the ones at high risk and get the rest of back out there.  We just need testing, massive incredible testing.  Without it, its all speculation and fear.  

They are opening up a drive thru testing facility in cheektowaga this week!  

https://www.wkbw.com/news/coronavirus/drive-thru-covid-19-testing-site-setup-in-cheektowaga

[Thinksnow18]

1 hour ago, Luke_Mages said:

Any thoughts on the idea of opening up to everyone under 60 without underlying conditions? We've been half joking about that here at work. About half of us are in our 30s and the other half 60s. Let the low risk segment of the population build up herd immunity. Hell I'd even volunteer to purposely get infected and tough it out at home for two weeks. 

Up to 50% of the population is not able to be affected by Covid. It would be beneficial to have the new testing out that can tell if you were positive in the past or if you cannot be affected. This would help an enormous amount of our country to getting back to normal