Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Xenos]

4 hours ago, dtait93 said:

So if the cure is going to take as long as many people are suggesting (because we won’t be completely cured from this in a few months), poverty rates will sky rocket. If you look at the suicide statistics from the 2008 recession there was a massive increase because of the increase in economical poverty. The unemployment peak reached 10% during that time and according to the NYT our true unemployment rate currently is closer to 13% and increasing rapidly. 

The longer we go on like this the mental health crisis will be exacerbated through anxiety, debt, home foreclosures, isolation, etc. How many more businesses will be gone forever? It’s not like when this thing is, “over” they just open back up. Many used their life savings to start their business and now everything they worked for is gone. In a month’s time we’re already at 700,000 jobs lost and a $1200 check isn’t sustaining anyone. Domestic and child abuse rates are increasing daily because of the lockdown as well. There are long lasting problems I respectfully don’t think you have considered if you think the cure can’t be worse than the disease.

So a few things:

1) When I talk about the cure, I'm not talking about the vaccine or potential treatment. No health expert, including Fauci, expects us to shutdown for that long.  I'm talking about the current restrictions and social distancing guidelines we have in place. And it seems to be working based on the forecast of deaths going down. But that forecast only continues going down if we continue to be vigilant for the next few months.

2) I agree about the $1200 check not being able to sustain anyone. Not to mention the point of the $1200 was to get people to spend again and stimulate the economy. I doubt that happens. People are more likely to save that check than use it. Personally, I much prefer the more aggressive House bill. But what's done is done. The more important aspects of that bill is the unemployment insurance, and the billions going to small business and specific large corporations. My wife's work, for example, needs to have those small business loans to continue to remain open. Hopefully they find a way to improve the application process soon. It's still being overwhelmed. Additionally, this won't be the final bill when it comes to aiding this nation's most vulnerable people.

3) With regards to your last sentence. I have considered the problems and understand completely. Not just as someone who knows remotely from a distant (ie. work in the finance industry for 10 plus years and it was my main degree as an undergrad and grad). But also as someone who has family and friends who are currently unemployed and are suffering because they fall under the nonessential umbrella. As well as knowing people who fall under the domestic abuse situation. Most importantly, I also understand completely as someone who has suffered from severe anxiety and depression over the years, and have known what it was like to be unemployed for long durations. It sucks to say the least. What I am not is a medical or health expert. Which is why as I previously stated in another post, when it's time to "reopen" this country again, I would rely on the their advice first before trusting anyone else.

 

 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Xenos

[vikesfan89]

Wouldn't the health experts main objective be to stop the spread as much and save as many lives as possible? They should be heard but other experts should have a say also for when the leaders make decisions about opening up the economy

[Chiefer]

So with the American stimulus package, will I get 1200 even though I’m still working?

cant find any answers for that anywhere 

[vikesfan89]

Just now, Chiefer said:

So with the American stimulus package, will I get 1200 even though I’m still working?

cant find any answers for that anywhere 

I think it depends on your income but yeah they are supposedly going out to everyone under a certain income

[TwoUpTwoDown]

1 minute ago, Chiefer said:

So with the American stimulus package, will I get 1200 even though I’m still working?

cant find any answers for that anywhere 

I'm still working as well and the $1200 is pending in my bank account right now.

[Dome]

Some dude came to the store today and left a fat stack of $20 bills. 
 

He told the front end manager it was a $20 tip for each employee at the store, and any extra was supposed to be donated to the food bank 
 

was a very kind gesture. this pandemic is definitely bringing out the best in some people.

[Dome]

2 minutes ago, TwoUpTwoDown said:

I'm still working as well and the $1200 is pending in my bank account right now.

Sweet, I can use it to pay my taxes. 

[mission27]

2 minutes ago, vikesfan89 said:

I think it depends on your income but yeah they are supposedly going out to everyone under a certain income

 

[naptownskinsfan]

5 minutes ago, Chiefer said:

So with the American stimulus package, will I get 1200 even though I’m still working?

cant find any answers for that anywhere 

If you are single and making under that amount, yes, you will get the money.  Everyone is getting the money.  I personally would like to see more go to people who are currently unemployed, but the idea is to give people money to put right back into the economy.  That's my plan.  I see a lot of people sitting on it, or using it to pay off bills/debt they are waiting to pay. 

[mission27]

4/11/2020 MoL Scores:

"No cameras catch my pageant smile
I counted days, I counted miles
To see you there"

- Taylor Swift

Today a bunch of countries plateau but one in particular hits Tier 2 (USA! USA!)

Tier 1: Outbreak under control, safe to begin relaxing social distancing measures

South Korea: 1.1 (another day, another drop, could they possibly get below 1?!)

Australia: 2.4 (come on Shady, ya'll gone open up?!)

Hong Kong: 2.5 (reported only 11 new cases today, unreal)

China: 5.0 (China's data is weird, we're not moving them into Tier 2 until there's more concrete evidence of a wave 2, the numbers are still so low for a country this size.  it is worrying though)

Tier 2: New case growth is minimal suggesting social distancing is working, likely a few weeks away from breaking into tier 1

Austria: 3.5

Italy: 4.2 (Italy ticks up by 0.1, but the same happened last Saturday, could just be pattern in the waves or timing of data reporting... they are also testing way, way more which is going to lead to more reported cases and deaths even as things improve)

Philippines: 4.5 (#seasonality, getting close to Tier 1)

Israel: 4.5

Switzerland: 5.4 

Iran: 5.9* (plateauing?)

Germany: 6.1 (slow but steady progress, expect it to accelerate this weekend and into next week)

Spain: 6.4 (new cases continue to go down, now 11 days since they peaked on April 1st, likely getting close + thinking about easing lockups)

Netherlands: 6.7

Portugal: 7.5 

Denmark (NEW): 8.4

Global: 8.5 (another down tick, its now been 9 days since new cases peaked on April 3rd)

France: 8.8 (France starting to triangulate closer to the likes of Germany, Netherlands, etc.)

Sweden: 9.0 (continues to be fine, great job)

Belgium: 9.5

USA: 9.6 (USA jumps into Tier 2!  Just a week after getting into Tier 1, very impressive, good job!)

Tier 3: Countries in this group that are showing increased MoLs have the potential to go deep into the danger zones, but countries with falling MoLs may only be a couple of days from tier 2 status and may have already peaked in gross # of new cases

Canada: 10.5 (our great neighbors are not too far behind)

UK: 11.9 (hoping they're still falling and yesterday was a blip, god save the queen) 

Ireland: 13.8 (Ireland ticking back up the last couple of days however this is apparently driven by tests they sent off to Germany coming back, probably a blip)

Turkey: 15.5

Brazil: 15.3

India: 17.2 (numbers are stabilizing / slowing, very promising, just announced extended lockdown to April 30th which could be a real disaster) 

Japan: 17.6 (oh boy... here we go... @Malfatron)

Tier 4: Aggressive growth, still likely have not peaked in single day cases, and likely a week or two minimum from peak in deaths (however many of these countries are still slowing down)

Tier 4 was empty so we went looking for newcomers who are worrying and found one:

Russia: 24.6 

USA State Level MoLs

A lot of these numbers are plateauing but the big states and hot spots (CA, NY, NJ, LA) keep dropping.  My main concerns at this point remain DC area, Delaware, and Rhode Island.  South Dakota is just weird.

The MoL would like to thank everyone for their contributions to this important work including @ET80 @acowboys62 @dtait93 @Dome @naptownskinsfan @kingseanjohn @Malfatron @Shady Slim @malagabears @daboyle250 @vikesfan89 @ramssuperbowl99 @sdrawkcab321 @Nazgul @kingseanjohn @mistakeyand the others who love us so much

We'd even like to thank @pwny @Glen for their critical attitude because of the attention it brings to the great work MoL is doing 

I would tag Webby as well, who makes this all possible, but I do not want to get banned

@TLO

[vikesfan89]

I thought I saw something about people making under a certain amount would get less. That must have been fake

[pwny]

3 minutes ago, vikesfan89 said:

I thought I saw something about people making under a certain amount would get less. That must have been fake

That was in one of the previous versions of the bill.

[dtait93]

1 hour ago, Xenos said:

So a few things:

1) When I talk about the cure, I'm not talking about the vaccine or potential treatment. No health expert, including Fauci, expects us to shutdown for that long.  I'm talking about the current restrictions and social distancing guidelines we have in place. And it seems to be working based on the forecast of deaths going down. But that forecast only continues going down if we continue to be vigilant for the next few months.

2) I agree about the $1200 check not being able to sustain anyone. Not to mention the point of the $1200 was to get people to spend again and stimulate the economy. I doubt that happens. People are more likely to save that check than use it. Personally, I much prefer the more aggressive House bill. But what's done is done. The more important aspects of that bill is the unemployment insurance, and the billions going to small business and specific large corporations. My wife's work, for example, needs to have those small business loans to continue to remain open. Hopefully they find a way to improve the application process soon. It's still being overwhelmed. Additionally, this won't be the final bill when it comes to aiding this nation's most vulnerable people.

I question what doing this for even just a few months would do (end of July/June) and if that would be worth it. The average cash buffer for small businesses is about 27 days (https://www.npr.org/2020/03/16/816398498/america-closed-thousands-of-stores-resorts-theaters-shut-down) and most areas haven’t been quarantining for half that time and we’re already closing in on a million lost jobs.

I hope your wife’s work is able to secure that small business loan soon (unless they have already and I misunderstood you, if so then wonderful). Unfortunately as you mentioned the system is overwhelmed and businesses all over the country can’t secure it either. It’s been up and running for less than a week and 30% of the funding has already been used up. Not every small business is going to get help either with the system bottlenecked and funds rapidly depleting already, especially when you see the Senate failing to pass additional funding (250 billion was the proposition) to the program. Relying on the government was terrible before this. Relying on it during this is will likely be worse.

Cases seemed to have peaked as a whole in the US. I personally hope we take the Spain route and start to relax the lockdowns sooner than a few or couple months while we slowly and cautiously open the economy back up.

[Chiefer]

1 hour ago, TwoUpTwoDown said:

I'm still working as well and the $1200 is pending in my bank account right now.

Huh not mine, but I haven’t put in taxes from last year 

[dtait93]

“In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID-19 cannot be made, but is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 deaths as “probable” or “presumed.” - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf

So in other words, they’re guessing and aren’t required to show proof? How can anyone say our death count numbers are accurate?