How long will the lockdowns last?

[Losbot]

Quick 12 mins. I think some interesting points are made, especially the 3 & 7 minute marks. How long should we be locked down and is it really good in the end from a health perspective? The stress of job loss could be worse than the virus. Could a lot of it be pointless? There's more data coming in. Plus the WHO was talking about possibly going into people's homes to forcibly remove family members. WTH? CA encouraging people to snitch on others? It's getting a little nuts out there.

Thoughts?

[Executioner]

I don't know, but what I do know is that the economy will never be like it was, and it may take several years for it to return pre 2020. I'm looking at my county statistics, and for an area with 50,000 plus people, it's not bad at all.

[Losbot]

If you watch the video, it seems the lockdown is creating a lot more problems than the virus itself. The numbers alone regarding domestic violence, suicide, etc...
There's some valid concerns there.

[Genom]

Take that video as everything Fox with some big salt shakers. The WHO statement is taken WAY out of context right there.

“In some senses, transmission has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units,” responded Dr. Ryan. “Now we need to go and look in families to find those people who may be sick and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner.”

Also, he is criticizing the science on suggested responses, but that's how science works. You suggest based off what you know and continue to research and investigate and do your best. Mortality rates would skyrocket just from complications if infections aren't kept under control simply because other people would die of other reasons due to overloaded medical facilities.

It's real easy to put on a know it all 20/20 hindsight attitude, but I wanna see his tune when HIS family members get sick and die. I bet his commentary would be "Oh no, we didn't do enough". You cant have it every way possible. Current suggestions are the best known methods to control it considering human life only. Economical impacts are, in the medical establishments viewpoint, secondary and for someone else to worry about.

At the end of the day, people can go on about how the mortality rate is only 2% or whatever number sounds less scary, but put it into the right context. If you suddenly have 2% of the US population die in a span of 2 months, you are talking about 6.6 million people dead, more than double the regular total YEARLY mortality rate for the country.

So yeah, unemployment issues are gonna be shit, and it's gonna take a while to recover, but as someone who is currently jobless, I'd rather deal with that, than have my wife or my parents dead.

[FlyingPenguin]

Tucker Carlson is the Rachel Maddow of Fox News. I have zero interest in either of those shitbags OPINIONS. And that's what they are, opinions. They're no journalists, they're opinion show hosts.

Tucker Carlson trying to teach me science, that's about all I could stomach at the 3 minute mark.

Sure, all the epidemiologists in the world are wrong. But Tucker is right. Tucker is going to get people killed. I already bump into enough a-holes at the super market who think this is all a joke.

I'm guessing Tucker has all his money invested in high yield risky investments, and he's getting impatient looking at his portfolio.

[Losbot]

So I'm assuming you didn't watch past the 3 minute mark? There were some interesting points which I had hoped we'd discuss here but if you're just going to say "Fuck Tucker" because you don't like the guy, then don't even bother commenting. I'm curious about the economic & mental health side of it as well. With SARS, there were tons of murder-suicides. Had you watched, you'd find that this thing is not as lethal as assumed but apparently spreads easier than we thought. Apparently through plumbing.

https://nationalpost.com/health/coronav ... -isolation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3323345/

Seriously had hoped you guys could get past that it's Fox and listen to the content. Tucker is not all bad. He helped bring the whole 3M mask shit to the public eye by bringing on the FL Div of Emergency Mgmt Director, exposing that 3M was selling masks overseas to the highest bidder and not fulfilling orders here at home.

[Losbot]

“In some senses, transmission has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units,” responded Dr. Ryan. “Now we need to go and look in families to find those people who may be sick and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner.”

Exactly what would they constitute to be a "safe and dignified manner" because when they start talking about that sort of action, it typically ends ugly. Nobody should be going into our homes to remove people against their will. Plus if they're all in the home and staying home, just let it run its course. As contagious as they say it is, it's too late. The whole family would have been exposed to it and many have contracted it but were asymptomatic, having never known they had it.

I still believe that in the end, we're overreacting and the media doesn't help. Some are suggesting we shouldn't ever ease up on the lock-down until there's no more infected people. Talking about possibly going a year like this. That's just fucking insane and economically catastrophic. Then again those people probably haven't a clue what it's doing to businesses.

My wife's employer has been releasing people every 2 weeks because cash if getting tight. The more people they let go, the shittier her odds get and more likely to get released. I believe this virus just needs to run its course and it will. We'll probably have something reliable down the road to combat it more effectively but it's like other things we've dealt with. Those just didn't get so much media attention like this one has.

[FlyingPenguin]

I will try. He's better than Sean Hannity, I'll give you that. And he was one of the few people raising the alarm about the Corona virus while Hannity and others were calling it a hoax.

But I've also seen some pretty vile spin coming from Carlson in the past. He is, in the end, an entertainer, not a journalist.

When I want straight news on Fox, I watch Chris Wallace on Sunday and occasionally Bill Hemmer in the afternoons.

[Losbot]

I completely agree. Most of the crap is opinions. I'm interested in the points made. Not who presented them.

I personally believe we've blown this a bit out of proportion but if you come out and say that, it's interpreted by many as "F' them! Let the people die." We're obsessed with this virus.

[FlyingPenguin]

Love how Tucker implies the WHO is going to come and remove your Kids by force. So let's just quietly tiptoe past that bit of BS scare mongering and skip ahead.

At 4:40 he claims that experts initially thought the primary transmission was through surfaces, which is not true. It's a Corona virus which every expert knows is primarily a transmitted in droplets in air. Surface contamination was always secondary.

I agree however we all should have been told to wear masks in public day one. But I suspect (my opinion) that CDC and the fed feared people would hoard masks even more than they did if they told us that. I always personally thought the 'masks don't work' line was just total bullshit to keep people from buying up N95 masks, but I guess it was a call they made to secure the mask supply for front line people.

5:38 He's using the one incident of defective sewer pipe drains in a Honk Kong apartment building as a rationale that we all already have the virus - at least if you live in an apartment building. That's the only known case, and it would require some failures in the plumbing system, and yeah it should be a wakeup call for all building managers to check the toilet traps in their apartments, and the septic vents: https://www.fastcompany.com/90488321/li ... oronavirus

The supermarket situation IS troubling. It's the likliest place to get infected, which is why I take great precautions there: I wear a mask (gloves are a joke and I'll rant about that if you want - just sanitize your hands afterwards. I shake my head at people who come to the store wearing gloves and no mask), I don't get near anyone, I go as rarely as possible or just use Instacart. The Publix stores here are using one way lanes to keep people from bunching up, but they're not limiting the number of people in the store yet.

Look, his whole argument it seems to me is that day one we should have continued business as usual, and just isolated the sick, well that's what they did in most of the hot spots, and that's why they're hotspots now.

I think Tucker and others still misunderstand WHY we're doing the isolation. It's not to keep people from getting sick. It's to keep people from getting sick ALL AT THE SAME TIME and thus overwhelming the hospitals. The 'flattening' the curve idea is to accept that a certain number of people will get sick no matter what we do, you just want to spread that number out over several weeks and not have it spike during one week.

I agree we can't sustain this - it will destroy the economy, particularly small and medium businesses with little or no cash reserves, and big companies who squandered their cash reserves during the boom.

But we can sustain this through the end of April easily. End of May? That will be rough, but still doable. June, now that could be a disaster.

Yes the unemployment numbers are staggering, but only if you ignore the fact that most people will be rehired after the shutdown. The people that will suffer are people working for businesses that fold during the shutdown.

Don't worry about the Market. The market will bounce back in a quarter or two once people go back to work and consumers start spending again.

That's another thing people don't understand. Sure it's shocking to see your 401k lose 25% of it's value, but that's the key word VALUE. I probably have a larger amount of money tied up in investments than any of you because we sold all the commercial real estate we owned ten years ago and invested it (and let me tell you I'm happy we don't own warehouses anymore during this). I will tell you that I have lost 6 figures in the value of our investments. I am not worried. If I owned 50000 shares of Burger King before this started I will still own 50000 shares when it's over. It's value will have gone down, but it will also go back up. BK is not going out of business.

Most of you don't actually own stock, because 401ks are Mutual funds. You own a fund, and that fund owns stock, and the fund managers play around with that stock to maximize growth or a steady return, depending on the level of risk the fund is designed for, and you choose a fund based on the level of risk you want. You personally don't own any BK stock, but the fund you are a member of might, and again when the value of that stock goes back up, you as an investor in that fund will regain some or all the lost value. Investing is a long game. Write off this year, and next year is another opportunity.

Same thing happened in 2018. When Trump announced the tariffs at the end of the year, the 4th quarter was terrible - I lost everything I had made the first three quarters, and your 401ks probably did as well. The year was a wash for me. I know people who had riskier portfolios and they lost money instead of breaking even. Some of them panicked and pulled out of the market, and thus lost out when in 2019 the market made all that up, and more. I normally get a 5 - 7% return every year, but 2019 was a spectacular 19% return. If all goes well, 2021 will make up for 2020 and then some also.

If you're old enough to be living off your 401k then that's a problem, because for the next few quarters your source of income will go down, but most people that age who have a 401k also have alternate incomes (social security, pension). I'm surrounded by a large community of people in that situation, so I suspect consumer spending in this area will be down even after the stay at home order ends, because people will cut back on spending. That will Hurt the local economy.

I think what will we really need to concentrate on is testing. With more testing we can
avoid doing this again next Winter (and after that we should have a vaccine). Especially if we get a widely deployed test for immunity. If we know someone has developed immunity, then we know they aren't a source of infection. We all will probably be a lot more careful from now on, and I suspect we'll all be wearing masks in crowded places for the next couple of years out of personal choice, and that will all help. Next Winter, I hope, will be more of a voluntary stay at home for people at high risk, and imposed distancing at stores and public places, and more of a normal life. We are already seeing companies like Amazon and Apple take it upon themselves and test their own employees.

My issue with opinion people is that they are in the fear game. Hey, it improves ratings. You have the morons on MSNBC saying it's only going to get much worse, and the morons on Fox News saying it's completely overblown but the economy is going to tank, and the actual truth is probably somewhere in between.

And the lack of good information and consistent guidance from the White House is not helping. Trump is treating the daily virus conferences as rallies (bragging about his TV ratings of all things, because yeah, people, are tuning in just to watch him and not to hear guidance from the CDC - right. On top of that you have him giving out confusing information at these conferences that the experts then need to correct without injuring his fragile ego.

He needs to turn the damn conferences over to Pence and the medical experts, and then maybe give a once a week fireside chat if he feels the need to toot his own horn.

[FlyingPenguin]

Another thing. Tucker makes it sound like if only 60k die, it wasn't worth the hit to the economy. This ignores what the number of deaths would be if we HADN'T shut down the country. What's a fair trade off for maintaining the economy? 90k? 200k, 1 million deaths? More?

I heard the same nonsense after Y2K. "We spent all that money, and it wasn't a big deal.'. It wasn't a big deal BECAUSE we spent all that money.

Tucker makes it sound like we're the only country who is going to this extreme. Just about every country is shut down. Countries that didn't take it seriously, how are they doing? Well look,at Iran. They are only admitting to 3000 deaths, and most outside estimates think it's double that at least, probably far more. We certainly have lots of satellite evidence of mass graves, and there's photos smuggled out of neighborhood grave sites in what were public gardens, capable of holding dozens of bodies.

[FlyingPenguin]

Hmm. Tucker equates going to the super market twice a month for an hour at a time to being the same infection risk as working 40 hours a week in a cubicle farm. Glad he's not on the Covid virus commission ...

[psypher]

Thoughts?

I watched the whole thing because you asked. Still not commenting.

[Losbot]

Hmm. Tucker equates going to the super market twice a month for an hour at a time to being the same infection risk as working 40 hours a week in a cubicle farm. Glad he's not on the Covid virus commission ...

I agree with just about everything but one could argue this might have SOME validity. In the work place, you're exposed to the same people the entire day but but each trip to the super market you're exposed to many more strangers. It also depends on the work environment. Our office for example is taking serious steps to prevent spreading. Lots of napkins everywhere to grab things, doors propped open so you don't have to touch them, lunch being catered daily so as to discourage going outside, masks being worn in the office and they hired a team of 3 people to simply go around and keep spraying and wiping down every surface repeatedly. They even observe the staff and follow them around, wiping down everything that gets touched. They're not playing around.

Most of what's said are assumptions because we don't know the conditions in all offices and supermarkets but yeah, it spreads too easily.

[psypher]

So what's better, a random employee working at home potentially getting sick and bringing it home or bringing it to an office and potentially getting everyone in the office sick and then the business has to close completely? If working from home is an option, it should be used by all businesses that can.