I was thinking awhile ago that passing that sacrament tray with the pieces of bread or water cups is similar to the sample trays at Costco
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Medium, March 19, Tomas Pueyo ā Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance.
Terrific model in Tomasā piece today.
I donāt really know why I feel the way I do, but today, for the first time in weeks, I am optimistic. If folks in the US take social distancing seriously for a few more weeks or a month, I believe, like in China, the number of cases will decline dramatically. Iām also optimistic that best practices among the medical community will begin to save lives that otherwise may not have survived. Next, I believe private companies will develop faster, better and cheaper tests and many more folks will be tested. Finally, I believe a vaccine for Covid19 will be developed faster than at any other time. Iām just not wanting to be pollyannaish here, but I am a lot more optimist now than I was yesterday for reasons I cannot explain.
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Well, among other things they are using the national health database and layering the positive case information with cell phone triagulated locations to map out exposure.
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This assumes that China isnāt lying, which I have no reason to believe ATM.
As for the rest, I am optimistic too. And I think the economy will rebound. This is gonna blow in the short term but we are saving our skins in the long term.
True, but at Costco they wear gloves before touching anything. Plus the sample workers arenāt 14 to 18 year old boys who may or may not have washed their hands in the last three days.
Student loan interest is being suspended for 60 days.
As of Sunday, between CA, NY and Miami Dade under stay at home orders, that is almost a third of national GDP covered. This is may the most catastrophic economic event since the Second World War. . No one has a clue about the collapse in demand.
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I dunno, 1929 would like a word.
At our church the elements are distributed by a select group of volunteers for that week. They sanitize their hands prior to handling the tray of wafers and cup. That is done in plain sight. We queue up when an usher moves to our pew row, move forward in a line to the folks distributing the elements (which includes the pastor who blessed them). We are handed a wafer (we do not pick it), then move to the cups, one grape juice, the other sacramental wine. We are asked to place the tip of the wafer we now hold into the cup we select. Pretty sanitary all things considered.
Yeah, I saw today that China reports no new cases. But we do know that China is actively working to divert responsibility.
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Fixed it. Gracias.
To be clear yet again, I am not saying that we shouldnāt be sacrificing to save lives, what Iām questioning is whether the sacrifice is necessary to save the lives. While we are in the midst of it, maybe itās hard to tell but I am continually frustrated by the lack of availability of the raw data on demographics and underlying health issues. This leads me to believe that the raw data doesnāt support the current response.
I have immune compromised and higher risk folks in my family too. I care about them as well. But I also care about the millions of americans that are getting severely damaged economically for this. You may be willing to sacrifice, and that may be just fine for you in your socioeconomic situation. Might not be so great for someone that canāt pay their mortgage or buy food.
I hear ya, and I guess my point is that people can draw those lines around themselves with the right info, and those people who intersect with those individuals can as well. And understanding that some of those lines will be imperfect or timing is slow, there will be individuals that end up in the hospital and ICU. And even if you agree that number would be bigger, probably much bigger than it is now, you can throw up a pretty huge response in expanding makeshift ICU and cranking out mechanical ventilators like crazy if you are willing to spend trillions of dollars.
My point is I have utmost faith that the results of the virus and the challenges it presents would have been met without a substantially higher death toll than we will experience anyway. But I will freely admit that I donāt have anything other than my faith because the raw data on who is sick, how sick they are, and the treatments being used are, and how effective those treatments are is being highly suppressed.
That sounds nice unless you or a loved one is one of the dead.
Where I used to work there were layoffs all the time. Survived probably 20 or more. One of the times someone said, āhey, they only laid off 20 this timeā, but if you were one of the 20 it might as well have been the whole work force.
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And isnāt that always the case? If something effects you personally, itās always personal, but that doesnāt mean that itās right to cause a bunch of other people to suffer just because it might hurt you. There is a balance of consequences here, and we seem to be prioritizing the possible suffering of a few at the expense of the many. At least thatās my perception. But I get it that Iām in a very very small minority that refuses to accept the orthodoxy we are being fed, and probably at risk of being rounded up as a dissenter. So Iāll drop it.
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Exactly right. Maybe Iām the worst offender. If folks donāt want to see these charts from me, let me know.
Not seeing the emerging China covid19 spread for what it was back in December was really bad thinking. The response delay in the US of three weeks to a month was particularly unfortunate. The mis- and disinformation we all received from various quarters left us in the dark and deprived us of critical information needed for us to make appropriate decisions. Regardless of who or why, that was darn right tragic. I can forgive government being unprepared, but not the intentional misdirect. Even so, the last administration held an exercise for incoming admin folks on specifically pandemics. And we know a certain program was cut from the federal budget. So be it.
We are not like Italy because we will practice social distancing now. Italy was an unconstrained case of advance of covid19 for far too long. That said, those three weeks were critical in getting to the rates we now see in the US.
We are not like Singapore or even China because the level of lock down in those places cannot be replicated here. If we had better information, we would better understand. Even now, getting good data from CDC is frustrating. Its as if they have intentionally made it hard to get data. I have found several sites to get data, and I posted those links above. My models are loaded with real data and matched growth rates to date.
Here is a new chart that shows the spread of covid19 in a highly unlikely unconstrained case and in a reasonable model matched to actual data in my constrained case. The slowing of the spread I modeled is based on what has occurred elsewhere, not yet in place in the US. But its just a model, everyone can make them.
The point is quite simple: to slow the spread of the disease, stop putting yourself in situations where you are near folks you donāt know. If we can do that for a few weeks, this thing will slow. Right now, the cases coming up each day were predetermined by contact 14 to several days ago. Itās baked in as it were. We can stop that going forward only by doing what the Singaporean government has mandated. Just stay at home except for medical visits and to get food.
Today, actually I feel optimistic. My āOn The Beachā surreal sense has passed. We are going to be okay. Iām confident in our medical community.
This makes me happy for the people it will help. But wonāt it create problems for the banks and other mortgage lenders?
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I did the 15-year mortgage instead of the traditional 30 year. I paid my house off about two years ago. My wife and I were talking about all the uncertainty and decided the best thing we ever did was pay off the house early. I feel really lucky to be in that position.
