Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Iormlund]

As I came home this evening I saw a lot more people on the streets and over 80% without mask, especially kids and the elderly. I have a bad feeling about this.

Though if people are getting too relaxed maybe they'll buy cars and I'll have a job when this ends ...

[Syt]

https://kstp.com/national/iowa-tells-workers-to-return-to-jobs-or-lose-their-benefits-coronavirus-covid-19/5712298/

Iowa tells workers to return to jobs or lose their benefits

Iowa is warning laid off workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return when their employer calls them back to work.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is moving to partially reopen 77 of the state's 99 counties Friday, relaxing restrictions that were intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Restaurants, some bars, malls, fitness centers, and retail stores are expected to open their doors for the first time in weeks. The reopening comes as Iowa experiences one of the nation's fastest growth rates in coronavirus cases.

Iowa Workforce Development is warning that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

[Razgovory]

It's nice to know that all this economic hardship caused by the lock down will have been in vain.

[Admiral Yi]

No more free money. 

They made the UI bonus too big.  People are going to be screaming that they should be allowed to keep collecting it.

[Sheilbh]

In something I know about there's an interesting divergence in European approaches to track and trace apps that's emerging. They all work in similar ways so in one way or other your phone communicates with other phones near it (that have the app). If you later self report because you develop symptoms or test positive, those individuals you spent time with get a message and they then request a test or self-isolate.

On the one hand you've got the UK, France and, until this weekend, Germany on developing a centralised approach. The argument here is that it allows public health authorities to identify clusters as well as allowing individuals to self-isolate as necessary. The centralised systems would receive the codes when people self-report, this is arguably more secure because the centralised server then pings an update to people the individual had contact with. It is also being backed by investment wings of the UK and French governments and they are generally developing it themselves (with input from regulators).

On the other hand you have Austria, Switzerland, Estonia and, after this weekend, Germany who are partnering with Apple and Google on developing a decentralised app. This is similar and done through bluetooth - but instead of a central repository the server is just a relay so if you self-report it informs all users of the app, but only those you came into contact with will actually get a message. The theory is this is more secure because there's no central repository (the counter is that everyone receives everything). It is also meant to be more privacy oriented because public authorities don't see anything and all of the work is done on each user's device. The flipside is I am highly suspicious of anything developed by Apple and Google (in partnership) as being the most privacy focused...

But I'm not sure, I think there's fairly strong arguments on both sides. Hopefully there'll be some degree of inter-operability between these apps that are developing all over the world so they could help when we start traveling again, especially within Europe?

[fromtia]

No more free money. 

They made the UI bonus too big.  People are going to be screaming that they should be allowed to keep collecting it.

screaming like the petulant little babies they are, right Yi ?! Yuck yuck yuck.

Do you think they should have finessed it more carefully and taken more time over it? Do you think that a form of UBI would have been preferable? Is it that the word "unemployment" is involved and so there's moral hazards and things? What should we be doing with these 26 million newly unemployed Americans?

Other than making them all mop hospitals, one of your other suggestions, something less bonkers than that perhaps?

[Admiral Yi]

screaming like the petulant little babies they are, right Yi ?! Yuck yuck yuck.

Do you think they should have finessed it more carefully and taken more time over it? Do you think that a form of UBI would have been preferable? Is it that the word "unemployment" is involved and so there's moral hazards and things? What should we be doing with these 26 million newly unemployed Americans?

Other than making them all mop hospitals, one of your other suggestions, something less bonkers than that perhaps?

It's going to be a mix, isn't it?  Petulant babies who want to hold on to that sweet, sweet bottle as long as possible, and people with sincere concerns about getting sick if and when they return to work.

I don't really know how I would have handled it better.  I do think Pelosi and company had a coastal perspective on UI and cost of living.  $600/week is barely enough to buy gelato and pay the pool guy in some places.  Here in fly over country it's a wind fall.  But on the other hand imagine the uproar if they had tied the free money to cost of living.  Fat cats make out!  Us hobos are screwed again!  Grab your AR!

[fromtia]

It's going to be a mix, isn't it?  Petulant babies who want to hold on to that sweet, sweet bottle as long as possible, and people with sincere concerns about getting sick if and when they return to work.

I don't really know how I would have handled it better.  I do think Pelosi and company had a coastal perspective on UI and cost of living.  $600/week is barely enough to buy gelato and pay the pool guy in some places.  Here in fly over country it's a wind fall.  But on the other hand imagine the uproar if they had tied the free money to cost of living.  Fat cats make out!  Us hobos are screwed again!  Grab your AR!

A casual reader of your posts might be forgiven for thinking that 2020 wasn't the year of Covid19, but TEh Year Of Too MUch Unemployments! Speaking as one of the freshly unemployed your concerns seem rather odd. On one level I agree with you, of course people shouldn't receive girthy unemployment benefits in normal times, but these aren't those times and there is a gigantic number, unprecedented in suddenness, of unemployed Americans who are desperate for help, watching the blazing and unremarked speed, efficiency and generosity of handouts to the magnificently rich, worried sick about wether or not they'll have a roof over their heads by the end of May.

Nothing unremarkable about your snide tone describing these people, including yours truly, but for what it's worth I can assure you I'm not looking for any teats to suck on, nor will I be screaming when the hypothetical assistance comes to an end.

Like 26 million other people it was mandated that I no longer go to work to save hundreds of thousands of American lives. Perhaps for months, no one was sure, and hurriedly the government thought best to throw me a bone so I don't lose everything while we are doing that.

I say hypothetical because like most in Florida (DeSantis {R}) I haven't gotten a penny of my ill deserved moral hazards, not a cent or a centime since applying 5 weeks ago when my employer was shut down. The news is beginning to roll in from my colleagues that after 5 weeks of waiting, their claims have been denied. No teats for these poors down here! Sad!

[fromtia]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/florida-coronavirus-unemployment.html

[crazy canuck]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/florida-coronavirus-unemployment.html

Very important to keep taxes low, at the cost of providing benefits - or so goes the conservative mantra laid bare by COVID.

[alfred russel]

Dorsey, the area under the curve is definitely not the same, sorry.

Dorsey,  there is a direct correlation between number of ICU beds occupied and deaths.

Dorsey, the whole point of the most restrictive approach is to spread out the cases so as not to overwhelm the system. See: Italy.

Dorsey, this has been pointed out and explained a gazillion times, in the media, in scientific papers, on this forum and in this very thread.

What, exactly, do you not understand?

Your chart (copied again below) is not the way things work. If the cases ever go to near zero, it is because there is a vaccine, the disease just went away on its own (such as in the summer), or we reached enough immunity in the population to get there even without a vaccine.

The point being--the procedures that are "flattening the curve" won't get us to zero any faster than doing nothing, and may in fact slow the process down.

I don't understand why you won't acknowledge that.

You can get to zero cases very fast. You can nuke any town/city where somebody tests positive, then nuke the ashes to make sure. That would get you to zero, yes?

Because getting to zero cases fast is a super important thing, not, you know, saving lives.

Keep squirming! You are getting Trumpian in this. 

Yes nuclear weapons could get cases to zero very quickly. If nuking everything was an option in your chart, I agree it would drop cases to zero. However, your chart only had two lines, and those were: 1) With business as usual, and 2) With prevention and precaution efforts.

The relationship between those two lines was ridiculous, and that would not change even if a third scenario of "nuke everything" that flat lined to zero almost right off the bat was added.

It's just painful to discuss anything with you dude. How dense are you. Jesus Christ.

Good luck out there.

Hopefully it was excruciating.

Your ad hominem attacks against me, the misdirections about the purpose of the policies and my intentions, a bizarre foray into discussing nuclear weapons...None of those change that your graph has a "with business as usual" strategy going into the stratosphere while the "with prevention and precaution efforts" going to zero in the same timeframe, and that is not how this is going to work (for those not scoring closely at home, that is all I asserted--I wasn't bringing up what I thought we should do or our approach).

On a more general point, all of you might want to practice admitting I'm right, because the data is coming in and that is where it is pointing.

[merithyn]

https://kstp.com/national/iowa-tells-workers-to-return-to-jobs-or-lose-their-benefits-coronavirus-covid-19/5712298/

Iowa tells workers to return to jobs or lose their benefits

Iowa is warning laid off workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return when their employer calls them back to work.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is moving to partially reopen 77 of the state's 99 counties Friday, relaxing restrictions that were intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Restaurants, some bars, malls, fitness centers, and retail stores are expected to open their doors for the first time in weeks. The reopening comes as Iowa experiences one of the nation's fastest growth rates in coronavirus cases.

Iowa Workforce Development is warning that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

Trump is planning to sign an executive order requiring packing plants to remain open, too. Because fuck the poors, amirite?

To be fair, they're mostly brown poors, so doubly fuck them. The Republican mantra at work.

[merithyn]

On a more general point, all of you might want to practice admitting I'm right, because the data is coming in and that is where it is pointing.

Really? Is that what they're pointing to? Because what I'm seeing is over a million Americans - that we know of - have gotten COVID. More than 55,000 people have died so far. And all of that is with lockdowns.

But I'm with Zoupa. You do you, boo.

[crazy canuck]

https://kstp.com/national/iowa-tells-workers-to-return-to-jobs-or-lose-their-benefits-coronavirus-covid-19/5712298/

Iowa tells workers to return to jobs or lose their benefits

Iowa is warning laid off workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return when their employer calls them back to work.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is moving to partially reopen 77 of the state's 99 counties Friday, relaxing restrictions that were intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Restaurants, some bars, malls, fitness centers, and retail stores are expected to open their doors for the first time in weeks. The reopening comes as Iowa experiences one of the nation's fastest growth rates in coronavirus cases.

Iowa Workforce Development is warning that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

Trump is planning to sign an executive order requiring packing plants to remain open, too. Because fuck the poors, amirite?

To be fair, they're mostly brown poors, so doubly fuck them. The Republican mantra at work.

We are going to have to keep the border closed a long time.

[alfred russel]

Trump is planning to sign an executive order requiring packing plants to remain open, too. Because fuck the poors, amirite?

To be fair, they're mostly brown poors, so doubly fuck them. The Republican mantra at work.

Meri, I have no idea about the durability of our food supply chain, but if packing plants need to stay open to keep it going, then they need to stay open. The country won't be better off with food joining toilet paper as items that can't be found in grocery stores.