On 4/11/2020 at 2:36 PM, birdguy said:

We are independent lot who don't panic easily.  If we see the numbers starting to grow rapidly in our neck of the woods we will respond appropriately.

Noel

Noel my distant friend, it is creeping very close to Roswell already! There are 19 cases in your neighborhood:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

She'd gone shopping at Walmart for a new sewing machine (none available)

It's a shame we live so far apart. I have a brand new, never out of the box sewing machine that I bought about ten years ago and never got around to using... 😷

5 hours ago, birdguy said:

BTW...My brother is in a long term care facility because of several health problems.  The place is in lockdown.  The patients can't leave and no visitors are allowed inside.  Yesterday he called me and said he needed mouthwash and toothpaste.  This morning I delivered them to the place.  

I went into the lobby and noticed one girl in an office was wearing a mask but the girl manning the desk where you go to to deliver stuff to the patients wasn't.  I told her to deliver the bag to my brother.  She went down the hall sans mask.

Later I phoned him and asked him if the staff wore masks.  He told me they were very loose about that and only about half of them did.  Less than half at the market where I went to buy the stuff for him.

That doesn't really sound like a proper lock down if you can directly interact with the person who is also in contact with the residents. I do hope for you and your brother that they aren't faced with what happened to one nursing home here in Canada.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/covid-19-coronavirus-pinecrest-nursing-home-bobcaygeon

Being a small town didn't help Bobcaygeon much. Talking with someone from there,  there is another nursing home in the town that still has not had any cases as they were better prepared.

3 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

it is very likely a vaccine is never found

The prospects for a vaccine are actually good.  One helpful factor is that the virus doesn't seem to mutate much - because it doesn't need to, it's so successful as it is that it isn't under any pressure.

That said, the best-case timeline is still 12-18 months.

Here's a pretty good overview of vaccine and drug development, from just a few days ago: https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-race-to-find-a-coronavirus-cure-11586189463

Fr Bill, that's 19 in a 6000 sqmi county.  I don't know how many are in the city.

Two weeks ago I made two trips to the hospital the get a CAT scan and an ultrasound to see if the blood clots from my pulmonary embolism have gone away so I can come of the blood thinners (Elequis).

The hospital was pretty lax too.  Of the people I saw only about half were wearing masks.  The CAT scan operator and the guy who ran the ultrasound were not wearing masks.

I'm not worried about getting it myself and if I do I'll survive.  Except for pulmonary embolism I got last May because I wasn't aware I had to move my legs on airline flights I had never been admitted to a hospital.  

Noel

13 hours ago, birdguy said:

They now say the virus can travel 13 feet.  Does that mean we have to separate ourselves twice as far as now suggested?

Time to buy a larger dining room table, Noel!  Sorry, you started it by extending the leaves on your current one!

I'm measuring the dining room now Mark.  Going to try and find a conference table that will fit.

I wonder how 13 feet will impact the biblical phrase, "Go forth and multiply."  Of course when masks become more available closer contact might be feasible.

Noel

Part of why I think we tend to grow progressively more cynical as we get older.

Throughout my entire working life I've navigated the chasm between managements tendency to paint rosey pictures, and the reality of the workers and people on the ground, glancing at each other sideways as the higher up blow rainbow-bubbles.

I think it'll be quite a while before the world finds out how many people really died, unnoticed and uncounted in their houses, as opposed to how many were officially tallied as Corona deaths right now.....

Photos show bodies piled up and stored in vacant rooms at Detroit hospital

With some people out in the world touting the existence of empty hospitals instead of medical staff everywhere being rushed off their feet, I am not surprised that the photos you linked to showing bodies piling up have been released .

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

the chasm between managements tendency to paint rosey pictures, and the reality of the workers and people on the ground

One of my favorite books on that subject: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SKDGQ0/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i4

 

This was an interesting read...

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-04-10/south-korea-offers-lesson-best-practices

Hi Flyer...

When I became a first sergeant my commanding officer gave me a book.  The Principles of Management by General George C Patton.  The two things that really stuck with me were to let subordinates make the minor decisions themselves and that no good decision was ever made sitting behind a desk.

I think the civilian counterpart to that is management by walking around.

Whenever I gave one of my troops a task I told them they owned it.  Make your own decision on how to do it.  If you run into trouble call me.  Otherwise don't bother me until your finished.  I also told them not to be afraid of making a mistake.  Just never make the same mistake twice.  Learn from it.  I would never criticize them for making a mistake I would just tell them to figure out how to make it right and I would assist them if they needed it.

I never held back information I thought they needed to know or the background behind decisions.

There are times when 'don't ask questions, just do it' is appropriate.  But if you have been routinely honest with them they will accept that.

Noel

On 3/11/2020 at 1:09 PM, Rob_Ainscough said:

I've lost a bunch of my retirement money in just a few days (and that's on very conservative investments), but it's not all about CoronaVirus, lots of other economic warning signs were there and just being ignored over the past 2-3 years.  Dropping the fed rate again only makes matters worse for investments and encourages people get more into debt, a stupid idea that just doesn't apply to these situations (more than one) that are causing this economic collapse.

I agree with you in regards to low interest rates and the high levels of debt, both public and private BTW.  However, this hasn't just been ignored for the past 2-3 years, but for the past 20-30 years.

Governments are trapped - they spend more and more but don't want to raise taxes to pay for it, so they borrow, but they need interest rates to stay low, or even negative in the case of Europe, so the debt service payments remain manageable.  So they encourage, and likely coerce, the central banks to lower interest rates and create more currency(money printing) so they can continue to finance their exorbitant spending.

There is no free lunch.  Something will eventually have to give.  The question is: when this all starts to fall apart one day, will people turn to the politicians and bureaucrats and accept more govt. control and less liberty, or go the other way?

Dave

On 4/10/2020 at 6:29 PM, n4gix said:

Daily Kos is my go to site for maintaining my sanity these days

There are also other less biased, more objective news sources out there.

Dave

They not only don't they want to raise taxes Dave, just a couple years ago they cut taxes.  And now a 2 trillion + dollar giveaway.  And when all of this is over and businesses are struggling to recover and many people unemployed how are they going to recoup that?  This has the makings of inflation as the government prints more money to give away.  And that hurts the people at the bottom of the economic ladder the most.

I will be getting a check soon for $2400.00 that I don't need.  It's crazy.  There is no political partisanship here as both parties are going full steam ahead giving away money during an election year.  You do the math.

If any of you here are getting the 2400.00 and don't really need it I suggest St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and the Shriners Children's Hospital can both use help.  They treat kids with cancer at no charge to the parents.

Noel 

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

I never held back information I thought they needed to know or the background behind decisions.

There are times when 'don't ask questions, just do it' is appropriate.  But if you have been routinely honest with them they will accept that.

I never got a book in it, it just seemed like common sense. On both sides of the fence, both as a plebe and as an high-and-mighty "company officer" I always knew whose side I was on, and when decisions were made to withhold information that affected people's lives and or safety, I sat quietly in those boardrooms then calmly went to my people and told them what was up.

Did that make me a bad manager? The company would probably have said so in that regard, but my people trusted me, and would do work for me that they would not do for anyone else.

I said and believe quite simply that I was and am a human being long before I was a company person, and long after I've left, (and after the company has forgotten I ever existed) I intend to have remained a human being.

Regarding the article I posted, what's happening is what always happens: Some in authority will continue to spout any nonsense that they find it expedient to spout... And the rank and file will eventually, when the poo gets too deep, find ways to reveal what's really going on in front of their eyes but away from public view.

This is happening all over the world, people on the front lines speaking out repeatedly, even when they know they will be punished.

The human condition.