Saturday, March 21, 2020

Watersheds

P.A.T.C. Facebook Page

A little play on words there, a riff on the pop-rock band Panic! At the Disco.  It's actually the name of a cover band founded in 2015 that plays 80's and 90's hits, although it works well for what's been going on at every Costco in the Nation due to COVID-19.  I'm sure their Tee-shirts are selling quite well right now.  Not sure if you have a Costco where you live, but it's a big warehouse store, like Sam's Club, that is experiencing huge crowds and massive runs on bottled water and toilet paper.  And this often results in mob-mentality behavior as seen during Black Friday- pushing, shoving, fights, injuries, etc.  Damn hoarders, I'm almost out of TP!

It's obviously not the first time we've had a major crisis that affected the entire nation. 


Remember the subprime mortgage crisis?  President Clinton rescinded a couple acts and signed a couple more leading to risky housing loans for millions of people who had no business owning a home in the first place.  Ninja loans as I recall- No Income, No Job - no problem.  And he pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to secure these loans with our money.  It was a big house of cards that eventually crashed and caused a global recession that hurt the world for nearly eight years and put 10 million out of work.

And of course you remember 9-11.  We had never heard of, or at least cared about Al Qaeda, but there they were, on our doorstep, killing thousands of Americans in a matter of minutes.  The economy tanked then and a million people became long-term unemployed.

These are all watershed moments in recent U.S. and world history.  Whether it was actions by terrorists, leading to the deaths of over a half million people, or policies put in place by terrible politicians, causing eight years of suck and a crushing recession, they reshaped the world and have forever changed how we live, how we fly, and how we borrow.

However, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Coronavirus, aka COVID-19, aka the Chinese Wuhan Virus, the Kung Flu, or whatever you want to call it, will have an even greater and longer lasting impact on us and the world's economy.


You see, it's quite a different world than it was just three weeks ago don't you think?  We were sitting in financial bliss with the stock market soaring, unemployment barely on the register, and a virus over in China.  And now we're 180 out from that- on lock down as we attempt to flatten the curve, social distancing ourselves, with thousands sick, millions soon to be out of work, and the market crashing more and more every day.  After 9-11 it was a gradual decline.  After Clinton, it took years for the Great Recession to come about and about three years more for unemployment to reach its peak.  

However, COVID-19, originating in China and possibly manufactured*, has caused an immediate and massive closing of the world's economy.  In order to avoid being infected, we've closed EVERYTHING.  We're on lock down here in California as of last Thursday at 1700 to help slow the rise in infections and flatten that curve.  That means ALL businesses are asked to close, not just social-type gathering places such as bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc.  The Governor of CA is now ordering everyone to stay home.  Think of how many people are now out of work, doing nothing but watching Netflix, ordering takeout, and staying inside- not working, not earning money that gets put back into the economy, not buying, selling, trading, building, paying taxes, or anything that is vital to our economy.  

Source
It's not just the economy that is on hold.  I feel really bad for the kids, over 50 million of them, who have to put their education on break for what is likely to be six months or more.  I don't know how the education system will correct for that.  It's not as if they can just start in September with an automatic promotion to the next grade, nor can schools easily add months to a school year.  Budgets are somewhat fixed and teachers would require additional pay to teach longer, or during cancelled or reduced holiday breaks, etc.   College applications, scholarships, cancelled graduations (my daughter's included) are lost opportunities to some extent.  

The Artist as a 16 year old on her College tour

We're very disappointed that our daughter, once the Teenangster, and now The Artist as I've referred to her a few times, won't be having a commencement ceremony.  She's devastated.  The school told them to extend their spring break by a week, then cancelled graduation** and ordered them out of the dorm for the year, moving to online coursework for the remainder.  For the seniors, that meant not getting to say goodbye to friends, roommates, professors, nor see the product of their year's efforts at the end of year showcase of their art.  Those were very important as they were used for their resumes and a key component of their job hunt.    
I'm flying to Savannah GA tomorrow with her to help her pack up and ship stuff back.  I'm sure more tears will flow.  Probably some from her too.

Weddings, vacations, anniversaries, and many more milestones are gone as well.  Some will be re-attempted, but many just can't be rescheduled.  Our timeshare reservation in Orlando following her graduation is probably gone because there just isn't excess inventory or open dates for us to reschedule into- all the other dates are booked.  Even if we could get down there, I'm not sure that the Disney parks will even be open.  Same for restaurants, bars, the pools, etc.  We have until next week to cancel, but I'm not sure we have any good options.  Oh well.  Yet another victim of the virus.

As a member of DoD, we were directed to go to essential/non-essential manning at work.  I'm so non-essential that I'm barely useful.  This was after USNORTHCOM set HPCON Bravo, then Charlie (minus).  That minus is key.  Not really anything like DEFCON, HPCON is Health Protection Condition.  I think my command's work was fairly unimportant over the past week or so since every exercise or event in the next couple months was already cancelled or pushed back, so that we really didn't need to be at work anyway.  But I work for Surface Warfare Officers who could be given no job, no duties, and they'd figure out a way to work Sundays.  Give them a deadly pandemic, cancel everything, and they still found a way to keep working.  One of the O-6's at work who is on his last job just raised the BS flag and ordered his folks to stay home several days before the NORTHCOM order, and despite what our Admiral at HQ had ordered.  Gotta like it when common sense breaks through.  And in an epic showing of bureaucratic intelligence, we're directed to come in to work today, to be told to go home.   We set up a phone tree and a group text to pass the word, but nope- come in to hear it live and in person I guess.***

I think this virus will hurt the economy far worse and far longer than the previous recessions since so much is shut down.  After 9-11 and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, people were still working.  Many were out of work, but not everyone.  This time, we're hiding from a virus and nothing is happening.  No work, no travel, no manufacturing, no buying anything but food and excess off of Amazon.  Small business will go out of business, big businesses will be laying off workers, and we don't know how long this might last.   It's not just for 14 days of incubation, it's not just a few weeks and we'll all go back to work like it was the Christmas holiday, this is expected to go through the summer.      

Like President Obama did in 2008, an Economic Stimulus plan has been proposed by the White House.  In 2008 it was $152 Billion.  Trump does everything bigger and it's $1 Trillion.  Understandable because of how far reaching this virus is though.


Finance.Yahoo.com

While that '08 stimulus sort of worked, over time, the economy show signs of recovering in 2011 or so.  It took another 5 years for marked recovery.  Amazingly right after President Trump was elected.  I think that was a key factor.  Consumer confidence has been at an all-time high under Trump.  I do think this will happen again.  He is not the stuffy refined diplomat that some might wish him to be, but he understands business.  I think everyone believes in him, even if they hate him and will never admit the economy was good before, and that eventually we'll recover from this.  It's a watershed moment, but water flows and is eventually water under the bridge.  Wow, two metaphors in one sentence.  My high school English teacher would either be proud or appalled.  I'm not sure which.

So I guess I have that same consumer confidence that we've all had since 2016.  You could say I have high high hopes for the economy.





However, and this is more of a post-script epilogue, I'm not a big fan of those stimulus packages to be honest.  We're just screwing our economy over the long term- adding more to the debt.  We're into crazy town with the debt now- over $23.5 Trillion, 24.5 with this latest package.  Nobody is a fiscal conservative any more and it's going to come back to bite us, but probably in our children's lifetime, not ours.  Oh well.  Nevermind that! Lets get that stock market back up!

*Not to be a big conspiracy theorist, but I think COVID came out of China's bio-weapons program.  Not that it was an intentional release into the world, but it probably got out somehow.  They claim it was from people eating bats or snakes, but the Chinese have been eating weird stuff for centuries so I don't buy it.  

**Parents begged for them to just postpone the graduation, but the school claimed it wouldn't be fair to ask grads to return at the end of the summer, financial hardships, disrupting jobs, etc.  

***Found out as I came in Friday morning that not only is the Military is exempt from the California order, but  civilians aren't part of any essential/non-essential plan.  So I'm still working, violating 6 foot spacing, like nothing ever happened.  More stupidity- while the CA order and intent of HPCON C is to help the social distancing, my command only seems to care about the mission that isn't really being accomplished now anyway.  The C- means that it's up to the Commander to decide what he wants to do.  

34 comments:

  1. Forget this Wall Street money.
    Think of all young people working part-time often just to stay afloat at cinemas, bars, restaurants, non-essentail retail trade.
    All their jobs gone until god knows when.
    Prime source for radicalization of all stripes.

    And on the other side of equation?
    Look at Italy and following with time skip the US trend of cases.
    https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DNqnhgI-Hmb1d3fm7wyT7VhiIBg=/0x0:1800x3202/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x3202):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19821442/italy_us_gap_10.jpg
    over 4k dead in Italy already.
    Brace for impact!

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    1. Good points. Hadn't thought about the young being radicalized, but they were already left for the most part. I still have to wonder why this is so different from Flu deaths.

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    2. This Covid-19 is different from the seasonal flu in several different ways. The biggest way is this is a new virus. Which means total completely unknown. So, we didn't really know, for sure, how it spread, how long it will stick around, what does it do in the body--for example Chicken pox and hepatitis are both viruses, and we know that when you get them you get sick for about 2 weeks, you are contagious before you are showing symptoms, and once you are well again, you still have the virus hiding deep in the body someplace. To pop back out again, maybe years in the future as shingles (in the case of chicken pox) or as a relapse in the case of hepatitis.

      The kicker here with Covid-19 is what we DON'T KNOW. We, as a country, hate, absolutely hate NOT knowing something...the end of the movie, the end of the book, does the Bachelor ask the girl to marry him, who is taking home the mirror ball, who is going to win the Super Bowl, the Olympics, WHO SHOT J. R.????????

      We do not know if this virus will die down with warmer weather--seasonal flu does--And currently, we don't know what kind of medications to give you if you get sick with this new virus. Are there some meds out there that look promising? Yes. There are. They do. BUT, and it is a big but, while chloriquin is effective against malaria, the only uses of cloriquin against Covid-19 has been a doctor who is throwing everything except the kitchen sink at this virus in an attempt to stop his patients from dying. Docs get REALLY annoyed when they have folks who come in with cold symptoms and a few days later are being rolled out in body bags. Pisses them right off. Big time.

      One of the good things to come out of the AIDS/HIV epidemic was the explosion of investigation into the immune system, and development of medicines that work in a different way than antibiotics. After all, don't forget, Penicillin has only been around since 1928 when Sir Alexander Fleming discovered it while working with (wait for it) influenza viruses. Mapping the human genome took a while (about 20 years I think), but once it was mapped, then researchers have been able to take that knowledge, and are now able to take giant steps forward into researching, and developing new meds/therapies to fight different types of cancers, diabetes, autoimmune disorders such as lupus, arthritis, and so on.

      So, this Covid-19 is different because it is a new virus, we don't know what we don't know, we are not sure how it will act in warmer weather (because it is in Australia and New Zealand just like it is in New York and California), and, unlike the seasonal flu, we do not, yet, have a vaccine against it.

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    3. Vaccines are important because they contribute to "herd immunity". Which is because folks who do go get their flu shot are beefing up their own private immune (security) system to fight off those evil invaders who are wandering around out there knocking on each individual moat/castle walls to see if there is someone who hasn't done their annual castle maintenance and gotten a shot to boost up (wake up the slackers from last year, or a few years ago) their immune military cells--usually called white blood cells, and other cells in the body (ya don't want me to go deep into the weeds about what our immune systems all involve). Folks that do get an annual flu shot, and have gotten a pneumonia shot, help to protect those who, for a variety of reasons, CAN'T get the seasonal flu shot. For example, if you are allergic to eggs, I am not giving you a flu shot. If you have had Guillian Barre Syndrome, same deal. If you choose not to get a flu shot because the last time you got one you"got very sick", it because of 1 of two reasons: you have a robust, hyperactive immune system that over-reacted to the stimulus of the DEAD virus, or (waaay more likely) within the previous 2 weeks you were exposed to someone else who had the flu and they gave it to you. Because when you get the flu shot, it is like taking an aspirin or a Tylenol, it takes about 2 weeks to get your system fully ramped up and at full battle readiness to fend off that particular type of seasonal flu.

      If lots of folks get the vaccine, that helps to protect folks who can't get it because of allergies, or they are too young, or they are getting chemo, or have some other immune system compromise. Those are the folks to whom all the other actions are more important.

      Currently, there is no vaccine for Covid-19, so ALL of us have to practice the "good hygene habits" that the immune compromised folks have to use every flu season. They include avoiding crowds, washing hands, keeping hands away from face/nose/eyes/mouth. Not touching surfaces that everyone else has touched. Covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze with a tissue, and then throwing the tissue away, and WASHING YOUR HANDS. Not getting all huggy/kissy with other folks, especially little kids--potent little petrie dishes that they are--because THEIR immune systems are developing and they are busy fighting off all those virus germs that are wandering around looking for a place to cause havoc.

      Viruses do not stay the same, they continue to evolve and change. Like the seasonal flu, and the common cold. Every year they are a bit different. Which is why there is no one time flu shot. And why we haven't been able to cure the common cold yet. But there is lots of researchers working on it. And the big pharma company that comes up with THAT medication will be bigger than Amazon or Google.

      So, although the death rate of the Covid-19 is currently small, relative to the 22,000 deaths of the seasonal flu so far this year, medical folks are looking at everything we DO NOT know about this new virus and going "Crap!! Our ventilators are all in use with folks who have flu, what are we going do when we get folks in here with this new virus?!?!?!!! We need for folks to start doing actions we know work to keep contagious germs under (sorta) control. (wash hands, etc, etc)
      So we go back to the early 20th century and previous years/decades/centuries when folks were quarantined to prevent/slow down the spread of (pick your favorite pestilence) smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, bubonic plague, etc. So channel your inner Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale, clean surfaces, wash your hands, eat right, get enough rest, yada yada yada so you do not get this latest virus that is wandering around out there knocking on lots of castle walls.

      At least now, we still have power, the internet, water, and take-out!!



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    4. Wow, great explanation Suz, thanks so much. You should blog here about it!

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    5. It doesn't help when most of the information coming out of Communist China AND Italy is... filtered. Mangled. Folded. Spindled. Mutilated. And that's just the stuff they're lying about.

      After this is over, in a civilized world, all the rest of the nations would gather together, take Communist China behind the world's woodshed, and beat said ChiCom senseless with a little 'Frontier Justice' combined with a little 'Street Justice' and a touch of 'Jungle Justice' with a smattering of 'Machete Justice.'

      Seriously. The people in Italy need to, afterwards, pimp slap their leaders and policy makers.

      But, worldwide? ChiCom needs to feel... some payback.

      Denying the world critical information on a bug generated in your nation and released upon the world by your people? In previous, less civilized times, that would be reason for war. In modern times, treating them like the leper colony they have become is a start.

      And, yes, Suz, thank you for laying out and guest-hosting a response. What you said is much more sensible and, in some ways, alarming than what some blogger using a Greek handle is saying.

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    6. Thanks Beans, but the blogger with the Greek handle is directly on the front lines, and I can tell you to read his stuff closely, think about it, discard all the pissing contest stuff on there, and take his advice for the solid gold it is. He is very direct, and definitely not PG rated all the time, but I find that I can toss the language and learn at lot from someone who has been there, is doing it daily/weekly. I would add that if you had to go to an ER--his is the ER ya want to be in as that is where you will get quality care. ER nurses are like LEO's and old firemen--blunt, crusty, honest to a fault and they do not sugar-coat the important stuff. And all of his posts on this virus have been very important.
      One a topic about something that is changing the world as we know it, blunt honesty, with the links to back his premise up is needed as well as refreshing.

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  2. I'm with you Tuna. I feel your pain, because it's mine, and I think that everyone is in the same boat. The Chinese Plague is disruptive at the least and if you're in one of the at-risk categories, you could be very ill or die. There is enough in the US to buffer this. Detroit isn't cranking out cars, but nobody is buying right now; but my nearest Costco (Prescott, AZ) is fully stocked including toilet paper. In fact, there's more "stuff" than usual, and it's stacked even higher. There was a lot of complacency in the USA and some of that has been blunted by the plague. It will come back, but people will remember China. And not in a good way. Likely for the best.

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    1. I'm not sure we'll remember, since we have such a short-term focus for so much these days. It would be nice to buy USA (and not demand the absolute lowest price possible) to keep Americans at work, but we love a good bargain, and therefore we turn a blind eye to some of what the Chinese do.

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  3. All UK schools *conditionally closed yesterday ufn.

    *Government decreed parents who fall into ‘key workers’ category, of which there is an official list, and who cannot work from home can send their kids to their school. My daughter’s friend is a deputy head teacher and told her yesterday of a very angry lady parent who applied under the above scheme to have her kids schooled but was rejected. Said parent was furious, insisting that, as a beautician, she was a ‘key worker’ particularly as she had ‘qualifications’ in ‘Botox and collagens’. 🤔

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    1. That's hilarious. Something I didn't mention was the loss of jobs because of needing to take care of their kids. Yet another negative effect.

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  4. Wow, Here in the prairie of USSF land (and not far from NORTHCOM), we've had the place cleaned out of non mission essential folks. All of the exercise planning cells, the Aggressors, training shops etc are finishing their first week of work from home. Anyone who had traveled in the last 30 days is on self quarantine, same for folks who had gone skiing here in Colorado. For entry into the workcenter, only one entrance is open, and temperatures are taken, and you must be on the mission essential list. The few folks who are in are scheduled so they are far apart from each other, and communicate inside the shop by phone and online chat.

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    1. Our Admiral declared our training and assessment mission as essential to national security. I don't agree, but I'm not in charge.

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  5. There's always "That Guy" who doesn't understand the intent.

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  6. This thing will be far-reaching, what the final effect will be, God only knows.

    I remain optimistic though, what will be will be, no matter what we might wish otherwise.

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    1. (Don McCollor)...It will be interesting to see if American society shifts to a new paradigm as a result. More tendency to stay/purchase locally, a large increase in distance schooling and working, greater closeness within families and with immediate neighbors, and less complacency and high expectations...

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    2. Don, it's Sunday now and I just wrote the same thing in a response. Great minds I guess.

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    3. (Don McCollor)...Thank you Tuna! It is also good to be grateful to have the simple things we take for granted - like food, water, electric power, heat, communications with friends and family. I was in the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, ND. I remember the account of an interview with a family who had lost their home and everything in it and were sheltering at the GFAFB. The wife said 'My children are safe and warm...everything else was - just stuff"...

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  7. Well, in defense of us, very few places in the US of A are as bad, physically, or as concentrated in poor oldness as the affected and hardest hit areas of Italy.

    The magic combination of 2 packs or more of unfiltered cigarettes and air pollution levels that would freak the LA Basin out, and the same type of terrain as the LA Basin holding all the wonderful air pollution in, and old buildings that are decidedly not-modern (and would be condemned in the USA, but they are quaint and Italian and...,) and an advances socialized medical system and a huge percentage of old people in less than stellar health living off of government pensions and stupid government policies that allowed shadow-immigration of Chinese from Wuhan (it's okay as long as government officials get paid under the table) and other stupid government policies that did not address quarantining, restriction of travel, closing borders, actively taking measures to not stop the spread, well, Deaths.

    On the other hand, we have... South Korea. With many of the same issues as Italy, but a functioning government that acted promptly to the flu.

    And we have the Flu Cruise as to what can happen amongst old people confined in a closed environment where proper precautions can be taken.

    Will the Flu devastate parts of the USA? Most likely, especially places that are like rural Italy in terms of cleanliness, medical service, a class of illegals, government bungling... Like the LA Basin, or certain places in Appalachia.

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  8. Anybody remember the hyper-hyper-inflation of the Weimar Republic? I know what the experten say on the teevee. I'm just not convinced that "printing" digital money for the "too big to fail" sector is sound fiscal policy. What will people who have their "wealth" tied up in retirement schemes and mortgages do when paper/digital wealth is devalued by several orders of magnitude? What did all those Germans do when their personal wealth evaporated?

    The virus isn't much of a threat. Yeah, it's a novel virus. Nature makes novel viruses all day every day. If this was an actual wildfire event you'd be seeing bodies on the street and we'd all know a lot of folks who had actually been boomer removed.

    The bigger threat is the self-inflicted wounds driven by the panic of those who've completely outsourced their sapience to the teevee and assorted experts.

    Finally, variation is not change. The world is not, in fact, a different place today.

    Finally-finally, FDR said, "We have nothing to fear butt fear itself." He then proceeded to leverage all that luscious fear into more power for him and his in exchange for diminished liberty for all the deplorables.

    Just sayin'.

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    1. On the upside, my Mom no longer believes the news. Ain't news after all, is it?

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    2. Definitely the fear is the worst part of this. I shouldn't be surprised but I guess I sort of am that they continue to attack Trump during such a major crisis. Never write a crisis go to waste!

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    3. *Never "let" a crisis go to waste.

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    4. To be fair, very few if any folks in government are intentionally trying to do bad stuff. They all want very badly to help. It's just that government help is not a precision tool. It's a big hammer and there are thousands of people with their hands on the handle, each trying to hit a slightly different target. Where the hammer will finally strike is unknowable ahead of time, but it'll be a big area and it'' hit with lots of force. That said, there are people in government who do always want to use crises to enhance their own personal power and grow their bureaucratic footprint. It pays to keep an eye on what is happening on and beneath the surface. Sounds like a job for an ASW guy! ;-)

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    5. HA! My interest in being a member of politics, vice just a pithy part-time political blogger, evaporated many many years ago. Nice analogy about the hammer.

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  9. A Very Proper Post, Tuna! Well Done, That Man.

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  10. Something else I thought about was the disparity between home schooled kids. Some parents will attempt to home school, some districts will send work home. Some may even attempt online classes. When you come back in the fall, how will districts assess the success of these efforts and the differences between the varied home schooling?

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  11. I can clearly see reasonable seeds for there being a panic/crisis. The Chinese government didn't know when it started if it really had come from their bio weapons lab in Wuhan or not (giving them the benefit of the doubt), so the suppression followed by massive clamp down - to the point of welding people into their apartment buildings and pulling people off the street press gang style - made sense. They were in a panic about the potential that they'd contaminated themselves. And once they'd gone high order there was no way to dial it back. So the world was stuck with the "killer virus" problem we're now dealing with.

    Second thing that makes me go "Hmmmm....." is how a seemingly small relative increase in lung infections due to CORVID-19 is resulting in a "collapse" of medical systems. Looking at the CDC influenza web site as a proxy for the world, we've had flu seasons in the recent past with more hospitalizations that this year (2017-2018 season was almost double) yet no news to my mind of hospitals failures. How much of what we're seeing today is a result of "hype" leading to problems in logistics, etc, vs. actual increased use of personal protective gear, etc. Inquiring minds want to know :)

    /
    L.J.

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  12. LJ- maybe Suz will see this and have an answer.

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  13. I think the increase in lung infections is a bit worse than the usual. With the seasonal flu, the main side effect is a bacterial pneumonia, which is sort-of easily fixed with a butt load of heavy duty antibiotics, lots of oxygen, physical and respiratory therapies.

    With this covid-19 infection, it was originally "found" by a doc who noticed he was getting a lot of x-ray readings stating interstitial pneumonia, which is not a common diagnosis, as I understand it, and leads to a VERY slow recovery, needing a lot more "supports"--ie lots of oxygen, ventilators for much longer than usual, and the highly skilled nurses and doc to manage these patients. Typically these folks are given large doses of sterods and NSAIDS to help hasten their healing, however the Covid-19 patients get worse when these meds are used. So do not take Motrin or any Ibuprofen or aspirin if you come down with this as it makes it WORSE. Tylenol/acetaminophen only.

    There have been studies that show that while kids live through the illness, they are left with pulmonary fibrosis, which is basically significant scarring inside the lungs around the air sacks, which decreases how much air you can breath in and get into your blood system.

    So, basically, you have patients needing far more resources to survive to the point when they can be discharged and the bed can be used for the next guy in line. If you can't turn the beds over quick enough, you exceed capacity pretty quickly. So you come down to exactly what IS the hospital capacity here in the US. Obviously they don't have enough in places like Italy, or Germany or Switzerland compared to places like South Kora, who, thanks to their neighbor to the north have always maintained a LOT of extra capacity as they never know when NK is gonna punch the button and try to invade. Treating wounds from war requires lots of beds and all the staff that goes along to support them.

    With the seasonal flu, yes, we have a couple of hundred thousand hospitalized every flu season--which ranges from December through end of March across the entire country, so it is fairly well spread out. This Covid-19 virus is hitting hard and very very fast--so instead of getting a slow rise in need for beds, hospital are getting hit with a huge wave. And don't forget--it has really only been on most folks radar for a few weeks now or less. I heard one chick on TV say it had only been 12 days that the MSM has been paying attention. So the curve is pretty well flattened for the flu, not so much for the Covid-19 virus. Yet.

    SO far as the PPE goes, this is a capitalistic society. Our medical products industry (what there is in this country) sells to folks who call up or get on Amazon and say Hey!! Need some XYZ...so it gets made and sent. The problem is most of the companies who make this stuff--masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators, etc are located in CHINA...and wait for it...in Wuhan!!! Which has been closed for business for a few months now. Rumors are they are trying to get back up and running--but they have fewer folks due to the illness, and they need to get their supply lines back up and going. It all takes time to do. In the meantime, folks in other countries are using a HUGE boatload of PPE--more than their usual--simply because that is best medical practice. After all this is the 2020's, not 1865 when no one used gloves, and physicians used a leather apron to keep their clothes clean and were not worried about giving the patient someone else's germs. So it is simple supply and demand. In normal flu season, the flu doesn't hit everywhere all at once, and not this hard.

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    1. For those with the bucks, get an M50 or M51 gas mask (not the Airsoft cosplay ones on Amazon!!!) with extra filters. Rated for chemical and biological warfare. Buy the whole MOPP4 suite and impress your co-workers as you march in for the day prepared for the worst they can offer!

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  14. Not a fan of most stimulus bills. I'd say that for people who can't work, .gov should make unemployment insurance cover this, but not only would they be flooded with claims and take forever to process them, I'm pretty sure it would drain them quicker than the toilet paper supply. So I could be convinced that something extraordinary is needed at the moment, especially if none of the money is going to the big banks, etc. But what needs to happen is a good old-fashioned African machete party on needlessly burdensome business regulation and red tape -- at federal, state, and local levels. Unleash America!

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